In Memoriam
by Stephanie Smelyansky
On January 10, 2016, a part of me died and I didn’t even know it. On January 11th, when I found out, I spent the day crying and mourning, wandering between my bed and the kitchen, only getting up to flip the record on the record player or to gulp down some water.
I think it was fate that just a week earlier my two best friends, Mia and Ellie, gave me a gold lightning bolt necklace and Pinups on vinyl for the holidays. These things would increase in value and rarity now that their creator was gone.
I didn’t worship David Bowie; he was never my god or my idol. Like all humans, he wasn’t perfect, and at times he was reprehensible. But he was still a part of me in a way that mattered. His music is ingrained in my life story, his lyrics in my journals, his face on my walls, and his memory in my friendships.
I learned about David Bowie pretty late in my musical education (having Eastern European immigrant parents doesn’t really help with navigating the rock music scene). My sophomore year of high school, I travelled to London, just in time for the Bowie biopic exhibit at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Posters of his iconic “Aladdin Sane” get-up littered the streets, his face plastered on store-fronts and book covers. At the time, his androgyny was so prominent that I wasn’t sure if he was a man or a woman, but I was mystified, so I looked him up and listened to “Let’s Dance” for the first time. It wasn’t actually the first time I had listened to that song, but it was the first time I had a face and a name to attach to its sound. But as my travels picked up and I continued to move from place to place, the image of Aladdin Sane faded from my mind and my brief fascination with David Bowie crept away.
Yet about a year later, David Bowie decided to creep back into my life when I saw a David Bowie poster in my local Urban Outfitters. And I remembered London, “Let’s Dance,” and being sur- prised that I actually knew who this guy from the 70s was, since older pop culture references evaded me (again, a side effect of having non-American parents #ironcurtain). This time, I decided that my superficial knowledge of one song and a name wouldn’t suffice—that I had to know who this person was, because clearly he was important enough to be market- able to pseudo-hipsters. I spent the rest of that day on YouTube, mesmerized by the lyrics to “Oh You Pretty Things” and the costumes in the “Life on Mars” music video. I can’t say I was an addict yet‚— that would come later—but on that day, David Bowie cemented himself in my musical narrative.
That same summer, the one between my junior and senior years of high school, I had the internship of a lifetime. (No, I’m not that stiff that I define my summers in terms of whatever ostenta- tious job I manage to find for myself.) I was interning at a genetics lab studying virgin birth, which really does exist and is probably one of the weirdest things anyone has ever legitimately studied. While I loved my job, the best part about it was that it introduced me to Ellie and Mia. We met at HR orientation, and it was love at first sight. By the time we walked into our lab, our boss thought we had known each other for years, when really it had only been about an hour.
That December, the David Bowie Is
exhibit came to Chicago, and Ellie,
Mia, and I went together. In our relatively
new friendship, I felt the need to be cool n front of my really cool friends, and I mobilized us to go to the exhibit. We all
kind of knew who David Bowie was and we could vaguely hum a tune or two.
Looking back, I think all of us were a bit
embarrassed by our incomplete knowledge of Bowie, so in the days leading up to our trip, we all Googled/Spotified/YouTubed voraciously. By the time we
arrived at the museum, each of us could
name our top five favorite albums, defend
our choices, and sing all the words off
Ziggy Stardust.
By the time we left the museum, we were all shaky and tearing up. In our conception of time, three hours isn’t a lot—but then again, a lot can happen in three hours.
The saxophone in the third hall is still imprinted on my mind. The reed
from one of Bowie’s performances was
positioned in the ligature wedged over the mouthpiece. Its edges were chipped
and fragmented, obviously worn from
good use, and tinted in purple-red
lipstick that only David Bowie would dare
to wear on stage. His patchy tweed suit
stood on a headless mannequin behind it. I pictured the missing orange mane and
blue eyeshadow that completed the look
and the man. Bowie didn’t just write
songs or play instruments; he inhabited
characters, melodies, and scenes with a character that was distinctly his own,
and this was palpable even in the absence
of his physical self.
Ellie and Mia were just as touched. I’m not going to elaborate on what they found particularly powerful because to be honest, I don’t know what it was— we felt it in each other. We split up at one point during the exhibit and went about it at our own pace, recollecting our thoughts at the end. We had come to the exhibit intending to explore it together, and we quickly learned that it wouldn’t be possible. As much as we all love each other, we had to feed our love for David Bowie in a quasi-solitude to really under- stand our fascination with him.
As we left the museum, we found it difficult to talk. We were still processing the sensory overload that is 20+ avant-garde albums and years of Bowie para- phernalia. I still can’t process it; there are certain albums that I find difficult to listen to because of how intense they are (I’m looking at you, Low). But we didn’t need to process it out loud; we recognized and understood that we all had a unique connection to his music—that we were individuals within a group.
From that afternoon on, David Bowie became a marker of our friendship. Our love for him was already unique by virtue of our age, as the only 19-year-olds we knew who listened to David Bowie. This isolation in our love for old glam rock allowed us to connect with each other on a musical level. Half of our inside jokes were Bowie references, we listened to Hunky Dory whenever we hung out (true story, Ellie and I always do Pinterest crafts to that album), and we’d drop little hints of Bowie whenever we met up, whetheritbeintheformofagiftora letter with a song lyric.
So what’s the point of this?
Time. It all has to do with time. Being in the right place at the right time. Remembering the ways in which time has passed, and immortalizing people of those times.
So much can happen in such a short time. In the year since I’ve started college, I’ve become a radically different person. I’m more confident, more introspective, and infinitely more mature than I’ve ever been. In that same year, I’ve seen David Bowie, Prince, and Alan Rickman die. I’ve seen Donald Trump have a chance at being president, and Trudeau get elected up North. These might seem like small, meaningless events, but people, especially famous people, shape a wider cultural narrative, and I’m finally at an age where I can feel how that cultural narrative changes and moves with time.
David Bowie is one of the most prolific musicians in recent history, yet how many teens are actually familiar with him today? And now that he’s dead, how many people will know who he is 10 years from now? We say that a rockstar is immortal, that they will always be remembered. But is a Wikipedia page and an Encyclopedia Britannica entry immortalization? Without the living, breathing person, all of our little totems to these people are just our attempt at preserving someone who was culturally relevant to us. David Bowie is timeless to me, but he might not be timeless for generations of kids to come.
David Bowie’s monument will be his music, especially Blackstar. But my monument to David Bowie will be Ellie and Mia. They’re the only people who will pick up on all my “Modern Love” references, appreciate the posters on my wall, and value the gold lightning bolt hanging on my neck. So at least David Bowie’s immortality will survive as long as we do.