Simon Critchley - Bowie

A figure of quite startling brilliance.

JONATHAN LETHEM

The most powerful and provocative philosopher now writing.

CORNEL WEST

A truly inspiring voice.

POPMATTERS

Simon Critchley first encountered David Bowie in the early seventies, when the singer appeared on Britains most-watched music show, Top of the Pops. His performance of Starman mesmerized Critchley: it was so sexual, so knowing, so strange. Two days later Critchleys mum bought a copy of the single; she liked both the song and the performers bright orange hair (she had previously been a hairdresser). The seed of a lifelong love affair was thus planted in the mind of her son, aged 12.

In this concise and engaging excursion through the songs of one of the worlds greatest pop stars, Critchley, whose writings on philosophy have garnered widespread praise, melds personal narratives of how Bowie lit up his dull life in southern Englands suburbs with philosophical forays into the way concepts of authenticity and identity are turned inside out in Bowies work. The result is nearly as provocative and mind-expanding as the artist it portrays.

2014 Simon Critchley

Simon Critchley hereby asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Illustrations by Eric Hanson

Published by OR Books, New York and London Visit our website at www.orbooks.com

First printing 2014

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher, except brief passages for review purposes.

Cataloging-in-Publication data is available from the Library of Congress.

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

ISBN 978-1-939293-54-1 paperback

ISBN 978-1-939293-55-8 e-book

Cover and text design by Bathcat Ltd. E-book conversion by Lapiz Digital, Chennai, India.

LET ME BEGIN WITH A RATHER EMBARRASSING confession: no person has given me greater pleasure throughout my life than David Bowie. Of course, maybe this says a lot about the quality of my life. Dont get me wrong. There have been nice moments, some even involving other people. But in terms of constant, sustained joy over the decades, nothing comes close to the pleasure Bowie has given me.

It all began, as it did for many other ordinary English boys and girls, with Bowies performance of Starman on BBCs iconic Top of the Pops on July 6, 1972, which was viewed by more than a quarter of the British population. My jaw dropped as I watched this orange-haired creature in a catsuit limp-wristedly put his arm around Mick Ronsons shoulder. It wasnt so much the quality of the song that struck me; it was the shock of Bowies look. It was overwhelming. He seemed so sexual, so knowing, so sly and so strange. At once cocky and vulnerable. His face seemed full of sly understandinga door to a world of unknown pleasures.

Some days later, my mother Sheila bought a copy of Starman, just because she liked the song and Bowies hair (shed been a hairdresser in Liverpool before coming south and used to insist dogmatically that Bowie was wearing a wig from the late 1980s onward). I remember the slightly menacing black and white portrait photo of Bowie on the cover, shot from below, and the orange RCA Victor label on the seven-inch single.

For some reason, when I was alone with our tiny mono record player in what we called the dining room (though we didnt eat therewhy would we?there was no TV), I immediately flipped the single over to listen to the B side. I remember very clearly the physical reaction I felt listening to Suffragette City. The sheer bodily excitement of that noise was almost too much to bear. I guess it sounded like sex. Not that I knew what sex was. I was a virgin. Id never even kissed anyone and had never wanted to. As Mick Ronsons guitar collided with my internal organs, I felt something strong and strange in my body that Id never experienced before. Where was suffragette city? How did I get there?

I was twelve years old. My life had begun.

THERE IS A VIEW THAT SOME PEOPLE CALL narrative identity. This is the idea that ones life is a kind of story, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Usually there is some early, defining, traumatic experience and a crisis or crises in the middle (sex, drugs, any form of addiction will serve) from which one miraculously recovers. Such life stories usually culminate in redemption before ending with peace on earth and goodwill to all men. The unity of ones life consists in the coherence of the story one can tell about oneself. People do this all the time. Its the lie that stands behind the idea of the memoir. Such is the raison dtre of a big chunk of what remains of the publishing industry, which is fed by the ghastly gutter world of creative writing courses. Against this and with Simone Weil, I believe in decreative writing that moves through spirals of ever-ascending negations before reaching nothing.

I also think that identity is a very fragile affair. It is at best a sequence of episodic blips rather than some grand narrative unity. As David Hume established long ago, our inner life is made up of disconnected bundles of perceptions that lie around like so much dirty laundry in the rooms of our memory. This is perhaps the reason why Brion Gysins cut-up technique, where text is seemingly randomly spliced with scissorsand which Bowie famously borrowed from William Burroughsgets so much closer to reality than any version of naturalism.

The episodes that give my life some structure are surprisingly often provided by David Bowies words and music. He ties my life together like no one else I know. Sure, there are other memories and other stories that one might tell, and in my case this is complicated by the amnesia that followed a serious industrial accident when I was eighteen years old. I forgot a lot after my hand got stuck in a machine. But Bowie has been my sound track. My constant, clandestine companion. In good times and bad. Mine and his.

Whats striking is that I dont think I am alone in this view. There is a world of people for whom Bowie was the being who permitted a powerful emotional connection and freed them to become some other kind of self, something freer, more queer, more honest, more open, and more exciting. Looking back, Bowie has become a kind of touchstone for that past, its glories and its glorious failures, but also for some kind of constancy in the present and for the possibility of a future, even the demand for a better future.

I dont mean this to sound hubristic. Look, Ive never met the guyBowie, I meanand I doubt I ever will (and, to be honest, I dont really want to. Id be terrified. What would I say? Thank you for the music? Thats so ABBA). But I feel an extraordinary intimacy with Bowie, although I know this is a total fantasy. I also know that this is a shared fantasy, common to huge numbers of loyal fans for whom Bowie is not some rock star or a series of flat media clichs about bisexuality and bars in Berlin. He is someone who has made life a little less ordinary for an awfully long time.