Mark Edwards - The Tao of Bowie: 10 Lessons from David Bowies Life to Help You Live Yours

Mark Edwards has two parallel careers as a journalist and as a trainer/life coach.

As a journalist he began his career writing on magazines, including The Face, Arena, GQ, Esquire and Blitz. For the past 25 years his work has appeared virtually every week in the Sunday Times, and for 12 of those years he was the papers chief pop music critic.

As a coach and trainer, he works with individuals to help them live with more purpose and meaning, and with some of the countrys most successful companies, helping them to support and develop future leaders. All his work is informed by mindfulness and the Buddhist insights that underpin it.

These two parallel careers are fused together in The Tao of Bowie.

First published in Great Britain in 2021 by Allen & Unwin

Copyright Mark Edwards, 2021

The moral right of Mark Edwards to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Every effort has been made to trace or contact all copyright holders. The publishers will be pleased to make good any omissions or rectify any mistakes brought to their attention at the earliest opportunity.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Hardback ISBN: 978 1 91163 086 9

E-book ISBN: 978 1 76087 451 3

Designed and typeset by www.benstudios.co.uk

Printed in Great Britain

Allen & Unwin

An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd

Ormond House

2627 Boswell Street

London

WC1N 3JZ

www.allenandunwin.com/uk

The Tao of Bowie is partly a book about David Bowie. But its mainly a book about you.

It has a simple concept: that David Bowies lifetime journey of self-discovery can be used as a template for yours; that the powerful ideas that fascinated Bowie and helped to shape his work, his career and his life can help you towards a life of greater happiness and purpose; and that, by following the exercises in this book, you can pursue your own journey to self-discovery using Bowie as an accessible gateway to some of the worlds wisest teachings.

Bowie was one of the most remarkable cultural figures of the past century. But behind the confident, charismatic artist we all knew was a human being who started out as a young man feeling lost and isolated, unsure of his place in the world, unable to love or be loved. And yet he grew and developed to a point where he found happiness, let love into his life, and was even able to face his final illness with the equanimity and bravery that allowed him to create a final masterwork about his own death, the Blackstar album.

This is the Bowie we will examine in this book. Not the beautiful, charismatic, talented global superstar, but the shy young man battling lifes challenges lonely, adrift and desperate for help, support and advice.

If you sometimes find life difficult, if you struggle to find your place in the world, to understand why youre here or to identify your purpose, then Bowies story is your story. And you can learn from his example.

How did Bowie turn his life around? How did he grow and mature? How did he transcend the near-fatal challenges of his early adulthood to emerge stronger and happier?

We can answer these questions because Bowie was always very open about the ideas and philosophies that he used as the basis of his personal growth the pick n mix spiritual code that became his North Star, guiding him through his life.

If you would like to make more sense of your life, Bowie has, in fact, done a lot of the heavy lifting for you already by cherry-picking an extraordinary collection of ideas from the worlds greatest spiritual leaders, philosophers, scientists, psychologists and artists. So much so that following his path can make your own journey of self-discovery that bit easier.

In The Tao of Bowie you will find these ideas condensed into ten powerful life lessons, each of which can help you move further along your own journey of self-discovery.

Bowies fans know that he was a cultural magpie: borrowing ideas from mime and kabuki theatre, championing little-known singers and bands, beginning concerts with surrealist films, mixing French chansons and English music hall with heavy rock. He was also a spiritual magpie, immersing himself in many different wisdom traditions from many different countries, eras and disciplines in search of the help and guidance he needed to make sense of his life.

Bowie studied Tibetan Buddhism before he became famous. Indeed, he very nearly became a Buddhist monk. And the questions that drove him to explore Buddhism also drove him to investigate other Eastern religions including Taoism and Zen, the philosophy of Nietzsche, the psychological theories of Carl Jung, the secrets of the Gnostic gospels and Kabbalah, the absurdist and existential writings of Albert Camus, the controversial yet influential theories of Julian Jaynes, author of The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. And many more. These are the primary sources for Bowies philosophy of life. The Tao of Bowie examines these ideas, explores how they impacted Bowies life and then explains how they can help you.

This isnt a gimmick. We know that the journey of self-discovery was vital to Bowie. He was consistently clear throughout his life that his songwriting was principally a means for him to carve out his own spiritual path to ask (and try to answer) his questions about life.

In 2002, three decades after he nearly became a Buddhist monk, Bowie told journalist Anthony DeCurtis:

I honestly believe that my initial questions havent changed at all. There are fewer of them these days, but theyre really important ones. Questioning my spiritual life has always been germane to what I was writing. Always.

Its because Im not quite an atheist and it worries me. Theres that little bit that holds on. Well, Im almost an atheist. Give me a couple of months. Im almost there. Its either my saving grace or a major problem that Im going to have to confront.

Almost an atheist. Thats perhaps where a lot of us find ourselves in the modern world. We reject the idea of God as a big bloke with a white beard living in the clouds, but we cant quite ever get to the point where we absolutely, definitely dont believe in anything at all. Like Bowie, we wrestle with the big questions: