This "Bowie on Bowie" seems to have flowed through his life in a shallow way.
"Interview with David Bowie" book shadow
The words condensed into a stream of water with conversations with different interviewers are the superficial overflow of David Bowie's consciousness and thoughts. The ripples are beautiful, inviting you to read on, expecting to discover the secrets underneath. Stones in the water, silver-scaled swimming fish, are some of the things that come up repeatedly, such as interpretations of classic characters, reflections on the dark ages. But the secrets of the water are still kept secret from you.
An interview as thick as a brick (560 pages), even after reading it, you can only read his life. David Bowie is an honest and talkative interviewee. He is willing to express himself. Through decades of interviews, he showed the shape of a large branch, but how many leaves are there? How they catch the wind, endure the bites of insects, and complete the cycle of breathing and water again and again is a secret.
The interviewer knows that this activity is a random adventure. Not only can both sides not guarantee the quality of the interview through subjective efforts, but even the quality itself has no universal standard. A ton of smooth nonsense can also build a pretty beautiful interview. When the two sides are hostile to each other, and the conversation is angry, it may contain a diamond for future generations to collect.
The book mainly contains written interviews with David Bowie
The collection includes 32 written interviews with David Bowie between 1969 and 2003. If a diligent reader reads it within a day or two, it will have the effect of watching a slide show. Frame by frame skimming quickly, but not as fast as the continuous effect of a movie. The resulting feeling of vertigo makes people feel the time. David Bowie is both a reference and a symbol of the passage of time.
From a fledgling brat to being seen as a monument by the world (he said, after I die, how can there be enough tombstones, I want a monument), Moses generally separates the red sea of people, and the interview with David Bowie's article has also changed from a long conversation that talks and challenges each other on both sides of the dialogue to a concise text that tries to summarize his life (change it is an obituary).
From the same person, we can see the great changes in the media and social environment. The growing respect for him and the convergence of views on the 1970s (nostalgia) reflect today's unimaginative and energetic dullness. Bowie thought the same. He believes that today's society is more fragmented and intolerant. If he had lived a few more years, he would have found that the trend was intensifying. Judging from the interview, it is very likely that David Bowie, who once led the trend and drew nutrients from various fields of thought, technology and culture like a sponge, could not help but be afraid of today's world. Will he want technological progress to be hindered and AI to slow down its evolution? Most likely it will.
David Bowie was a genius, but also a product of his own time. He also experienced the universal process of envisioning the future, full of confidence, then doubting, searching for answers, and discovering "a moment in a lifetime" in exploration. Bowie's mind is changeable and he is never willing to repeat old tricks. "If one method works, it's outdated."
Rao is so changeable, there is also a constant point of view that runs through the entire interview. That is, the "chameleon" changes body color according to the environment. The black-and-white fifties of the last century is a point of origin (for David Bowie, he was born in 1947). Beginning in the 1960s, the dreams of the Western world were shattered, and contradictions and chaos confused people's minds. "The world will not go back to the way it was, and we can't understand everything." In the midst of chaos, use creation to reflect chaos. He uses different lyrics to express the same sense of self-destruction. The possibility of the end of the world is seen as a manifestation of inner problems. When anxious ants crawl all over David Bowie, he uses "documentary" to frame and develop anxiety. If ants cannot be removed, let them become the flesh and blood of the work.
This is an ability that only the best creators have. In interviews, he always emphasizes that he is not a closed-hearted, self-proclaimed creator. Instead, he tries his best to observe society, capture the information of the times, and is more than happy to list to the interviewer the people and works that have influenced him: Jimi Hendricks, "Cream", "New! ", "Canned", and Iggy Pope, Lou Reed, who have a lot to do with him..."Music should be a basket of ideas... Instead of isolated hippies, always living in their own world. ”
David Bowie doesn't like the hippie set. Even if he doesn't mention it repeatedly, those who know him can guess. "Love and peace" is fine, what is boring is slogan-style preaching, unchanged dress and thought. He hates the chain of disdain in the music industry, and does not look at the "independent bands/musicians" who have grown to a certain extent and are stuck in small circles. What he didn't like, was country music. "Hillba ...", stopped in time. In the 21st century, beware of evil, and David Bowie needs to remind himself that he doesn't have to speak freely. Naturally, he will not like the middle class either. "Mainly aesthetic limitations, and a dragging middle-class consciousness."
Readers of this book would like to explore the secret of David Bowie's success as "David Bowie". Bowie didn't disappoint his readers, shaking off some stardust.
In the 1970s, he was deeply interested in various mysticisms. "I always felt like a vehicle for something else... I see things that are happening in the present moment and try to steer them to certain focal points so that they can fit together in the future. He later insisted that even any attempt to deviate (to introduce Nazi elements) was simply curiosity about the mysterious elements.
He was desperate to try different paths and put himself under different influences. Incorporate pantomime into stage performances, wedge the plot of the play into the scene, and record the music with drawings (draw pictures for musicians to help them understand the music). Bowie wanted to be a generalist, and had the amazing move of carrying the "library" with him on the road.
He wanted to be a Buddhist monk as a teenager, which was considered inappropriate. The road of music has been decided to go since childhood, and when he reached middle age, he felt confused about how to go next. He realized that his work was entirely intuitive, very different from the narrative work of Lou Reed's spectator. He uses symbolism to create a creative technique that relies on instinct, and is good at taking the words and fragments of information at hand to put together songs that appear spontaneously.
Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sahn, Duke Skinny White, and the doppelgangers created by David Bowie all come from a period of youth, "also a period of great emotional instability." There are various theories about the act of artists creating avatars (not to mention novelists who make up fictional characters). David Bowie's statement carries dangerous hints of multiple personalities. The beautiful artwork "Zigi" stems from his youthful energy. Then "this bastard possessed me and refused to leave for several years", which affected the physical and mental health of the creator himself. Until things start to get dangerous, he returns to Europe, says goodbye to his mesmerizing doppelganger, and plunges into the arms of German electronica.
The sad loneliness of Berlin made it difficult for him to sing the lyrics "Let's think of peace and love". The futurism shown in the "Berlin Trilogy" - "Heroes", "Low" and "The Tenant" is understood by many as a cold sense of technology. Bowie had a different opinion. He argues that "I can't describe my work in words that express emotion in general, such as love, such as anger," but it is not cold either. "It's an alternative emotion that is hidden deep in people's minds and rarely expressed."
The 1980s were at a low ebb. The interviews during that period were full of David Bowie's pride and sentiment for the four-piece band "Canning Machine". However, the band did not succeed, and both reviews and sales were miserable. In subsequent interviews, David Bowie continues to look back on this period. He admits that the 1980s were indeed his trough, losing faith in music and foolishly creating several albums that catered to popular tastes. But he insists it was the band that set him free and established himself in quicksand. As for the specific reason, it is strange that he said it so many times and never had a clear answer.
Perhaps it was a warm feeling that grew as a member of a group rather than a leader that helped him. In his early years, David Bowie actively avoided interpersonal interaction. While dressing himself up as visual lightning, his life is also like lightning, piercing the dark clouds. Later, he realized that the tour did not have to be like a disaster scene, and he could also establish a comfortable environment with familiar people to make things less tribulating; You can have friends, have a meal with friends, make a phone call. The ordinary things of ordinary people are the normal needs of human beings.
He began to create out of rational thinking, more and more like an ordinary human being. Bowie's views on drugs have been annoying over and over again. The painstaking exhortation made him like a kind father of the drug rehabilitation society, a person who had suffered from the pain of losing his footing.
Interviews with him also increasingly resemble preparations for his departure. There is an unwritten rule in this line that even if a person is still alive, as long as he no longer leads the fashion, and withdraws from the top of the mountain, for the public, it is equivalent to having half of his feet in the grave.
David Bowie in the 1990s and 2000s was back in shape. The interviewers politely showed their interest in his new work and did not hesitate to praise. In his bones, he is still obsessed with his hipster period. Bowie and the interviewers draw a brief trajectory of his life... It's boring, but thanks to David Bowie, he is always active and loves to read and think. In the later articles, he wanders like a squid in the frame, spewing out clouds of black fog of thinking.
Some of these black fogs are wise, and some are conspiracy theories. If I were an interviewer, even with the god-like David Bowie sitting across from me, I would occasionally want to press the fast forward button, skip the blowing part of the sky, and enter the heart of the myth. But I know it's a luxury. The interviewer always fantasized about digging up secrets that the interviewee himself was unaware of within an hour. We want diamonds and always get dust.
David Bowie and Bob Dylan are very different in too many ways. There is no difference in the attitude towards death. Dylan believes that because there is death, life is meaningful. Bowie also found it ridiculous to pursue immortality. When he was young, he felt that people should not ignore their self-esteem, dragging their decaying bodies desperately trying to live to 90 years old. After the new millennium, he said, "God is dead, philosophically, we are completely at a loss".
In that interview, he once again referred to "chaos," as he did when he was younger. The pessimism of the period of "Low" and "Hero" prompted him to take comfort in desperate situations with pity. At the time, he felt that "even if you bother to write all this or just think about it, it is a kind of resistance."
Where time has changed him, David Bowie once found chaos terrible, but adapted to the idea that life is chaos. In 1992, he married Iman and found happiness. Chaos is still the form of the world in his eyes, and there is nothing new, nothing new is needed. "We can only do the best we have, if we can be happy because of it... There is no architecture, no plan, and we have not evolved. ”
If you look at David Bowie as a beacon, you may be disappointed by such statements. That exciting person, instead of offering new excitement, points out that we don't need something new. He became a wise man of insight, because he had a wife and daughter, and he was more nostalgic than ever in the ordinary life of the world.
The routines of the movie repeatedly tell us that once imaginative people have a real attachment to the world, they are about to quit. In the last decade of his life, David Bowie did not give another interview because he felt that there was no need to transmit ideas in this way. Although, there must be a lot more he wants to understand. He decided that all this could be done in silence and creation, without having to go through the mouth of the mass media. He talks to himself, creates a dark picture, and then destroys it (all this can only be done in art). "I really felt that I had to make music."
Inhale, exhale, and breathe naturally until the moment when black falls forever. Because every path was tried, in the end, Bowie said he wouldn't do anything he hadn't done before.
Live life to the fullest, so you no longer fear death. An interview book that unexpectedly gave me such strength.