bowie

When I heard about the death of David Bowie, I must of cried for the whole morning. I didn't quite understand why I was crying because it was a person I never met. However I always thought of him when things didn't go right, if I was told my style was too different. 

I developed a mantra in my head 'be like Bowie'. 

Elizabeth Gilbert summed up what I want to say:

'For the last 18 months (we learn only today) David Bowie has known that he was dying. He kept that information private, while spending his final months doing what he'd done his whole life — making outrageously original, beautiful, complicated art. He made a gorgeous album. He created a show, playing right now in New York. And then he released this, his final video, just a few days before he died — on his 69th birthday. 

"Look up here," he sings, "I'm in heaven." 

Can you imagine, to be making art like this (fearless art that both comforts and challenges) right up to the moment of your death? How do you do that? How do you BE that? To work with your death so imaginatively, in order to perfectly time out the last beats of your life? What a magnificent creature of creation, right to the end. 

I am sad today, but mostly I am overwhelmed by awe. This is what it means to be a great artist. 

From the beginning, this was a man who showed us how to do life differently than anyone had ever done it before, and now look how he has done death. 

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

Inspiration, to me, is THIS.

Goodbye to the master, and onward for the rest of us.'

Alexander Calder