David Bowie - The Man Who Fell to Earth

David Bowie was a creative and curious artist, he combined science and philosophy in his works. He created music, acted in movies and left an important mark on our culture.
*The language of art is the experience, to get the full experience please play the clips in the article, one after the other while reading!

Wild is the wind - David Bowie
Oh no, David Bowie is dead!
That's how I reacted when I heard the news about two days ago. Even now his death seems unrealistic to me.
He kept his cancer a secret, suffered from it for the last year and a half until he died yesterday 10.1.16, three days after he celebrated his 69th birthday and released his 25th and last album, blackstar. An album full of hints of his imminent death, and I almost believed he would live forever, the man who fell to us from another planet. How could I miss the chance to see him in concert, how? In 1996 he came to a concert in Israel and I still didn't know his works enough. Instead of going to his concert, like several kids did, I went with the majority to the high school graduation party that was happening that very evening. Now obviously I missed the last chance to see him live.

David Bowie was a creative and curious artist, he combined science and philosophy in his works. He created music, acted in movies and left an important mark on our culture. For me, his artistic peak was in the seventies, but it's nice to see how he changed styles throughout his career, renewing himself and creating himself every time until his last album. He is the only artist who created so many rock compositions without any band around him. I define rock music as an art that powerfully expresses the inner experiences of the artist who sings. Rock compositions are those rock songs that manage to do this in an original and complex way. Not another three-minute song with a simple structure of verse, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, chorus, but a long and complex piece that surprises the listeners and conveys different experiences and emotions. Such works send me to a powerful experience, an experience that is difficult to describe in words. The best description I can provide for this is an experience of touching infinity. An experience where I feel part of infinity, part of something heavenly and beautiful. For me, this is the peak that music and rock music can reach and to which music should strive. David Bowie managed to create a large amount of such rock works. This is an unprecedented achievement especially when you see that usually most rock compositions are created within bands while brainstorming and jamming by all band members. Usually, as soon as the band breaks up, the band members are unable to continue as individuals and restore the strength that the band had and pretty quickly after an album or two they start to sink. On the other hand, David Bowie managed to create more and more rock works on his own throughout the seventies and here he is even surprising in the creation of rock in his last album (the song blackstar). It seems that artists who know they are preparing their last album go back to their roots and rock compositions and usually release interesting and deep albums (like for example the last album of Freddie Mercury and the band queen, the album Innuendo).
Implementation Time:

The song Time from the album Aladdin sane. A rock piece that combines cabaret music and electric guitar. Do not sing any structure between stanzas and chorus.
David Bowie invented almost by himself a new type of rock, space rock and fantastic - space rock. He managed to create with the words and music an experience of levitation, a rocket that sends you into space and the infinite void. Starting with his first hit, space oddity from 1969. A huge hit that introduced the world to the character of Major Tom, a space pilot sent on a solo mission in the depths of space from which he will not return, when his last request from "Ground Command" is to deliver his love to his wife whom he will never see More. To create the feeling that we too are sent into the depths of space without the possibility of return like Major Tom, Bowie used a lot of musical effects. The song does not have a clear structure and the whole song is very different and strange. Instead of giving the rhythm of the song in a simple and danceable way, the drumming changes and does not repeat itself. The feeling you get is a kind of imbalance, a departure from equilibrium. Throughout the first stanza you hear "behind" the countdown towards the launch of the missile and when the countdown reaches zero the guitars come in and simulate the take off. In the chorus, there is suddenly applause out of nowhere, and the song begins with a fade in (slowly getting stronger) and ends with a fade out (the music continues all the time and gets weaker and weaker) so that it seems that the song is eternal, never started and never ended. We keep drifting through space like Major Tom. What a rock piece! What a space rock!

Space oddity - a clip I made for a song ten years ago in 2006. I was looking for a clip to put in the first lecture I gave in my life at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque called "Einstein on the Dark Side of the Moon" and I couldn't find any nice clip that combined space videos with the original song. I took on the task and created the clip in front of you.
Bowie got the idea for the song after seeing in Time magazine the first picture of the Earth taken from the moon (by a satellite). In addition, he was influenced by Arthur C. Clarke's book and Stanley Kubrick's film "2001: A Space Odyssey", which was released a year earlier in 1968. In excellent timing, the song was released a few days before the first man's landing on the moon in July 1969. What a beauty to see the connections and cross-fertilization between Science and art.

This is how the Major Tom trilogy began for her. His character would reappear about ten years later in another Bowie song. After he got addicted to drugs and managed to overcome it, he released in 1980 another rock work with Major Tom called ashes to ashes. The song talks about his addiction to drugs and the struggle to overcome the urge to take another dose. Turns out our Major Tom is a junkie. His space flight is just a symbolic flight, he's just hi. But after the good feeling came the fall and he is at the "bottom of all time". David Bowie opens his soul in front of us and tells how every time he has to fight the little voice in his head that asks and nags "I'm happy, are you happy?" Like some drug addict who sells drugs and promises you that only if you take the next dose everything will be fine. At the peak of the song, the addict shouts a heart-wrenching phrase, "I want to break the ice, I want to get off now!" The song ends with the immortal sentence that repeats over and over in the fade out "My mother always warned me not to mess with Major Tom". A beautiful personal song wrapped in fine space music and an illusory and fantastic music video. David Bowie's singing abilities are very impressive. He understood that an important part of singing is the ability to play with the voice. He not only sings, he plays the different characters in the song. Each character has their own emotions and personality which is expressed in Bowie's voice. When you need to talk, when you need to shout and change your voice according to the emotion you need to emphasize. His ability to be not only a singer but an actor who plays different characters in songs is a wonderful ability that sets him apart. No wonder that in addition to being a musician, Bowie was also a film actor and played in many films. As befits him, he mostly plays fantastic characters that are not from this world, which added an additional aura of mystery to him (films such as "The Labyrinth", "The Man Who Fell to Earth". He even played the scientist Nikola Tesla in the excellent film - "The Prestige" by Chris Nolan) .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLJ8y7DDcrI_p8LixOD4nVgrr9P6f4n2Lv&v=CMThz7eQ6K0

ashes to ashes Another space rock creation starring Major Tom, but this time as a drug addict.
The third song in the Major Tom trilogy was created in the nineties. The band Pet shop boys took the song Hello space boy by Bowie and turned it into an excellent fusion of electronic rock. A rhythmic song with a bouncy clip that talks about the crisis we are living in today. A world where everything is open, but without meaning and value direction. A kind of future shock. He asks in the song "Do you like boys or girls?" It's confusing these days, but moon dust will cover you." And at the peak of the song he simply says "this chaos is killing me". And what is the result? There is no more love, no depth, no meaning - "so, goodbye love, yes goodbye love, hello child of space". The rhythmic and electronic music combined with the sawing guitars convey this chaos and distress.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=sjYHTCR0qBk

Hello spaceboy - the third in the Major Tom trilogy. This time about the shock of the future and the lack of value of our time
Besides Major Tom, David Bowie had many other space works, works like Life on Mars which presents a rock cabaret and asks if there is life on Mars, the masterful Rock and Roll suicide which presents a stuck rock star who is considering suicide, but at the peak of the song Bowie calls him to remember that there is love in him and that love Can save him if he gives her a chance. The music is wonderful, it starts quietly and gets stronger until the climax of the song where Bowie shouts (to himself?) to hold on and feel the love - "You are not alone, just give me your hand!". This sentence fits so many rock singers who did not know how to deal with success and committed suicide. Another wonderful piece from the same album (the rise and fall of Ziggy Stardust and the spiders from Mars) is called five years, which is based on a dream Bowie had. The song talks about the end of the world coming in five years and the music sounds like it's taken from a dream that turns into a nightmare. At the end of the song there is a powerful section where he shouts and repeats and shouts that we only have five years left, that's all that's left.
Life on mars implementation:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=v–IqqusnNQ

life on mars

Rock and roll suicide

From a live performance from the early seventies. Pay attention to David Bowie's outfit. He invented a new genre in rock called glam rock, glamorous rock. what is his gender Is he a man or a woman? Or maybe both?

five years

The man loved music and the passion for creativity pulsed in him until his death. Many of his texts talk about existential questions and how he actually didn't do anything important and as much as he doesn't, he doesn't manage to do anything really important. It seems that the thing that motivated his passion for creativity and doing is the feeling of inadvertence that exists in human life. You are born, live and die without leaving a mark, as if you never existed. However, you create more and more and bring something new out of yourself into the world every time. It seems that he also planned his last album Blackstar, released a few days before his death, as his last work of existential art for humanity. The timing is no accident, just as he made his life a work of art, Bowie made his death a work of art as well. The entire album is interspersed with lyrics that talk about death, meaning and beliefs. If you look at the music video for the song Lazarus from this album, you see hints of his impending death. Lazarus is a man who lives forever, but the whole clip is about a dying man who is about to die. David Bowie is seen there twice, once in bed, with his eyes covered with buttons replacing his eyes (in ancient times they used to cover the eyes of the dead with coins) and the second time David Bowie looks healthy in an outburst of passion writing more and more. Next to him is a skull looking at him (again a symbol of death) and under the hospital bed is a strange figure (angel of death?). Let's sing "Look up, I'm in heaven." I have scars that cannot be seen." At the end of the clip, the creative Bowie who wrote more and more enters a coffin and closes the door (coffin?). In retrospect it seems quite clear what the poet meant.

The music video for the song Lazarus is interspersed with many allusions to the imminent death of David Bowie

If David Bowie already turned his death into another statement and creation, you can try and delve into it. The theme song of the album - Black Star, is a long, mysterious and unclear rock piece. Provide hallucinations of someone taking strong painkillers against cancer, provide a statement about life, meaning, and certain death. The song and the clip complement each other and are embedded with many symbols. In the clip you actually see two stories that merge. In the first story it seems that a human astronaut arrived on another planet and died there a long time ago. Pay attention to the bejeweled skull of the astronaut at the beginning of the clip and in the continuation and note that the woman who takes the skull out of the astronaut's suit is not human, she has a tail. As far as I understand, whenever there is a solar eclipse (looks like a black star) this group of women do some sort of ritual. Probably one of them in the distant past saw the astronaut fall to their planet and since then he is the angel who fell to them and that is why they worship him during the ceremony (in Christianity a fallen angel is a nickname for Satan, the angel who refused). Is the astronaut David Bowie? And maybe this was Major Tom's last mission? The ceremony looks like ancient shamanic and pagan rituals from the days before the great religions (ecstatic dances, priestesses, worship of nature. Rituals that Christianity would later define as satanic and forbidden). In the second story we see people executed by crucifixion. Towards the end of the clip, a scary creature comes to them, it is death that has come to take them. They stick out their tongues at him and seem to despise him, but can't really stop him (just like the cancer that killed David Bowie). The clip actually ends with their death and at the end of the pagan ceremony that worships the astronaut - the fallen angel. The allusions to his approaching death are clear. You cannot deny death, after it there is nothing (the clip ends).

David Bowie's last rock work - Blasck star

The words in the song tell about a ritual execution by women. After her one of the women stands up and says "How many people lie instead of walking the straight path? (Probably meaning that we tell ourselves stories instead of accepting the finality of death). According to the song, this woman takes the place of the executed prophet and begins to "cry bravely" (probably because she is the only one who understands that death is final and absolute). Immediately after she cries, she turns to the other women of the ceremony and essentially becomes the next prophetess. It seems that David Bowie is toying with the idea that maybe after his death he will become an icon of the "strange" and the different (he is the astronaut in the song, the man who fell to earth) and from there maybe a new kind of spirituality of the strange will develop and one that tells no illusions about death. The whole song is full of motifs of the other, the strange and the abnormal, starting with the forbidden rituals, through descriptions of the new prophetess about how "we were born upside down" to the black star itself, which is defined in the song only by what it is not. He says "I'm not a rock star, I'm not a pop star, I'm not a movie star, I'm not a porn star, I'm not a glamorous star... I'm a black star". In my opinion, he is trying to tell the listeners that what is common to everything he has done in his life, the music, the cinema, the sexual gossip about him, is the attempt to break the routine and break into different and different realms. Break the boundaries to kiss infinity.

David Bowie lived and died like someone larger than life, an alien, someone not quite from here who came to visit and now went on his way. Someone who himself has touched infinity. He reminds us of the vast possibilities we have as human beings, reminds us that everything is possible and most of the limits are imaginary limitations we put on ourselves. The mold-breaking creativity of his songs, the experience of vast space, his eyes of different colors, fantastic and alien characters he played in movies, characters he played on stage, an asexual character half man half woman, all these broke the rules and reminded us of our infinity and power that awaits to be revealed beyond the imagined order we invented for ourselves, if we only dare to break it. Isn't this the ultimate goal of art? Break the molds and show us the power and infinity? In a short life ruled by death and by the fragility of our bodies, isn't this the meaning we are looking for? Whether with the help of art, whether with the help of science or philosophy, to try to touch the eternal, to connect to the experience of infinity? To reveal another secret of nature, to discover an eternal law of nature, to create more and more new creations that did not exist before and have now come to fruition. Art, as well as science, can show us the way how to break through the fragility and vagueness of our lives towards infinite possibilities that lie somewhere. Here is one artist who combined these elements into one great life creation!

A beautiful painting by an Israeli artist named Leigh Lahav (OnlyLeigh is welcome to enter her Facebook page). "Who are you?" asked the little prince, "I fell to earth once" the man answered "but I'm back now".

Another great artist has left us. What will? What will happen when this entire generation of geniuses from the sixties and seventies pass away? McCartney, Waters, Gilmore, Plant and many others who invented rock music and turned popular music into another form of art. Of course there will always be more sparks, more great artists, but it seems that there was an especially large concentration of them then in the sixties and seventies. When they are gone, only sparks are left. This situation is not good, but it is not accidental either. There are moments in human culture where culture remembers human abilities. This is what happened during the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution, and this is what happened during the sixties. Every time there are these reminders, a culture is created that encourages creation and that encourages the person to go to the end with his abilities. The results can be seen in the tremendous leap that there is during these periods in art, science, philosophy and social and political changes that try to ensure that every person can go to the end with his goods. Humanity goes through a shake-up during this period, develops a little more and returns to normal. This cultural atmosphere calls everyone to shine and in the sixties when rock music was created, the artists were happy to join the celebration, to flourish and develop more and more this new art. For this reason in the sixties and seventies we find so many great talents who managed to realize themselves. Unfortunately, quite quickly this cultural atmosphere passed from the world again, and humanity entered the coma of routine. It seems that until today humanity has not really remembered the capabilities of man and a culture has not yet been created that encourages everyone to go to the end of their capabilities. In the midst of all this, David Bowie shined with his rocking diversity and didn't let us forget the infinity experience.

David Bowie passed away, but his music, his films and his way of life stayed with us and will stay with us. Our ideas and creations live on long after we are gone, lighting the way for future generations. Perhaps the time has come for humanity to change again, shake again and remember man's abilities and let man bloom again at the height of his glory? Create and experience infinity and delight with the immortal works of David Bowie.

Hello spaceman! Thank you for dropping by for a short visit and rocking our world a little.

I dedicated the list of works to David Bowie- space rock that I made on YouTube. Invited and invited Hear and jump into the depths of space!