Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

Sylvia Plath, ‘Lady Lazarus’

David Bowie was never tormented by demons of the kind that plagued Sylvia Plath. On the contrary, the spirits that presided over his destiny belonged to the higher orders of angels (‘I was always the lucky one’, as he put it in an  interview with Melody Maker, 29 October 1977). And yet, in his mouth, Sylvia’s lines from ‘Lady Lazarus’ would slip ‘trippingly on the tongue’. Indeed, just as the evidence of organizational culture is how people behave when no-one is watching, so the way we live our death is evidence of the way we have lived our life: It is a sign of our ethics, of the stance we have adopted in the face of what life throws at us.

Ethics, for me, is above all a question of how we position ourselves in relation to risk. Do we prefer the in-crowd to outsiders? Do we seek safety in numbers or are we ready to risk isolation? Do we adopt others’ standards or do we assume our own? On one side, the comfort of conformism at the price of individuality; on the other, individuality at the risk of radical isolation. An over-simplification? Of course. Yet I, for one, in my engagements with others (artists and ordinary people), find it easy to determine their ethics by this touchstone. Now, lest the reader misconstrue my remarks, let me state unequivocally that my notion of ethics in art has nothing to do with the ‘content’ or ‘effects’ of an artwork, but rather with the ‘ethos’ of the artist and his or her relation to their work.

Of all the great rock stars (a role he could never, of course, be reduced to), David Bowie was the one who had the clearest, most consistent and most fully-realized conception of himself as an artist. (Jim Morrison was another for whom ‘rock star’ was strictly secondary to ‘artist’; same goes, but in a register other than ‘rock star’, for Marianne Faithfull and Patti Smith).

Here are ten ways Bowie articulated this in the 1970s (I could easily cite dozens more for each subsequent decade in which he spoke publicly):

1. I think I’ve always known when to stop doing something. I’ve never been of the opinion that’s it’s necessarily a wise thing to keep on a successful streak if you’re just duplicating all the time. (Melody Maker interview, 14 September 1974)

2. I still haven’t become overground. I’m just the largest-selling of the underground. (Melody Maker interview, 28 February 1976)

3. My role as an artist in rock is rather different to most. I encapsulate things very quickly. And generally my policy has been that as soon as a system or process works, it’s out of date. I move on to another area. Another piece of time. (Melody Maker interview, 29 October 1977)

4. I can’t tolerate people who want to form, or be part of, movements. It should always come back to individuals. (Melody Maker interview, 29 October 1977)

5. I hardly ever listen to anything that’s currently in vogue or popular. (ZigZag interview, January 1978)

6. I was entering an area of middle-of-the-road popularity which I didn’t like, with that disco-soul phase, and it was all getting too successful in the wrong way. I want and need creative, artistic success. I don’t want, need or strive for numbers. I want quality, not a rock and roll career. (Melody Maker interview, 18 February 1978)

7. I’ve got to have the element that surprises me else I’m not on the panic level button, which I’ve got to have to make it live. If it becomes too sheltered and precious, it shows like hell and looks self-satisfied. (Melody Maker interview, 18 February 1978)

8. It’s hard to remain artistically illegitimate; it’s so easy to become legitimate and Establishment. That became a cause: ‘How can I avoid the next?’. I’d hate to become part of the accepted cultural set-up. You know, ‘That’s it, nicely in place’. That’s not what an artist wants to do. (Melody Maker interview, 18 February 1978)

9. The only way to remain a vibrant part of what is happening is to keep working anew all the time. For me it always will be change. I can’t envisage any period of creative stability and resting on any laurels. (Melody Maker interview, 18 February 1978)

10. I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in politics. Never have had, and probably never will. May I live and die an artist! (Melody Maker interview, 18 February 1978)

Till the end, David Bowie was an individual, sovereign in upholding the ethics of art. Today, when the least manifestation of craft is labelled a work of art, when hyperconsumerism relentlessly pushes customized pills of mass conformism, Blackstar reminds us that art is exigent, that its magic spark is necessarily a function of disjunction (unplugging oneself from the Matrix, if you will).

Like Miles Davis, Bowie was a great conceptualist, one whose individuality impelled him to strike out in new directions. Again like Miles, he was a great collaborator, with a knack for drawing out the best from his partners in order to realize his vision. To get a sense of how this worked in the making of Blackstar, one only has to read the commentary on the songs in Nicholas Pegg’s new edition of his book, The Complete David Bowie, where the musicians offer us a wealth of observations on their experience of working with Bowie.

Like all those who suffer fame, much of Bowie’s greatest work is unfamiliar to many in whom his name nevertheless resonates. Heathen, Black Tie White Noise, Earthling, 1. Outside—in offering us a demonstration of the artist’s ethics, album after album offers us a chapter of his adventures in life-lived-creatively. Trusting only in his artistry, faithful to no Muse but his own, in each album (with rare exceptions) Bowie stretches out a tightrope and walks it. The outcome, almost always, is stimulating and vital. Blackstar, then, is but the crowning achievement of an entire oeuvre characterized by an ethics of risk.

‘My philosophy — It’s in two chapters. These chapters do not follow each other. First one, then the other; or then one and first the other. For in truth they are, and can only be, simultaneous. One is called: Experiences. The other is called: Exercises. I myself am my method.’

Paul Valéry, Cahiers 1  (Paris: Gallimard, ‘Bibliothèque de la Pléiade’, 1973, p. 333 and p. 125 [my translation]).

Romanticism demonstrates, in fact, that rebellion is part and parcel of dandyism: one of its objectives is appearances. In its conventional forms, dandyism admits a nostalgia for ethics. It is only honour degraded as a point of honour. But at the same time it inaugurates an aesthetic which is still valid in our world, an aesthetic of solitary creators, who are obstinate rivals of a God they condemn. From romanticism onward, the artist’s task will not only be to create a world, or to exalt beauty for its own sake, but also to define an attitude. Thus the artist becomes a model and offers himself as an example: art is his ethic.

Albert Camus, The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt, tr. Anthony Bower (New York: Vintage International, 1991, p. 53)

David Bowie photo credits: Steve Shapiro, 1975; Mick Rock, 1972