Nowadays, the only times I audibly gasp is upon discovering that a celebrity has died. This is an involuntarily reaction, not at all affected. I remember gasping loudly (and in front of my then-boss) when I read in the papers that Elizabeth Taylor had died; I did it again when I was in Times Square and every screen suddenly lit up with the news of Michael Jackson’s death. When Whitney Houston died I had to sit down.
And so it happened again this week. I was going through my morning ritual of coffee and drowsy Internet-browsing when the words “David Bowie dies at 69” swam into view. I choked and choked-up simultaneously, which is how you gasp while sipping a hot beverage. I feel Bowie’s loss acutely, as do so many people around the world at this moment. Has there ever been a cooler name than Ziggy Stardust? Or a better dresser than the Thin White Duke? No. No there has not. My first memory of Bowie was in the amazing, seminal and mind-altering Jim Henson movie ‘Labyrinth’ (starring a pert young Jennifer Connelly) in which he played a glorious punky King of the Goblins. Now I have always been drawn to eccentric villains in movies (I felt legitimately angry when Jaffar was defeated in Aladdin), and the Bowie of Labyrinth was the greatest of them all: with his massive backcombed hairdo, clingy tights and juggling crystals, he seemed to personify everything that was good about the 80s. That he was married to the long-necked African supermodel Iman put him in an additionally brilliant bracket, an alien-gods-of-good-looks-power-couple parenthesis, and only further endeared him to me.
An interest in his music developed shortly afterwards, when I hit my terrible teens. It always surprised me how many of his songs were already classic hits by the time I stumbled upon them. A few years ago I had the privilege of seeing a retrospective of Bowie’s work at the V & A in London, and I still remember furiously scrawling in my diary on the steps afterwards that it was the best show I had seen ever. It remains so. I spent five hours in that retrospective, and even then would have gone back had there been more tickets to buy. His freewheeling career was a lesson in hydra-headed hipness: writer, artist, singer, fashion designer, sexual revolutionary, rock star, actor, activist and legend, all at once, none at the expense of the other. At the entrance to the show everybody was given a set of earphones, and the curators had set the show up beautifully so that when you came near a page from his diary or a pair of his glasses, a voiceover or a song would play, usually related to the object. You meandered from his teenage years of angst to his rise as a gender-bending pop sensation and through his meteoric influence into other fields. Eventually you came into a massive hall with every famous Bowie outfit ever (and if you’re a fan you know there are dozens) all on posed mannequins and surrounded by a light show so spectacular you thought you were in one of his concerts.
His freewheeling career was a lesson in hydra-headed hipness
I went to Lafayette Street in Manhattan the day I heard of his death, to where Bowie lived with his family. I wasn’t alone: a silent crowd had gathered, not to see celebrities going in and out of the buildings, but to lay wreaths and light candles in the name of someone who had brought light to their lives. A lot of people had Bowie’s iconic red lightning bolt drawn across their faces, but the mood was anything but festive.
To counter the ensuing melancholia a friend suggested we go see a Broadway play. I was free one night and we got discount tickets to The Color Purple: The Musical. I won’t be surprised if you thought that a musical based on a famously depressing book (and movie) about racism and the state of black families in Georgia at the turn of the century isn’t exactly feel-good material. But it was. The play starred Jennifer Hudson (of Dreamgirls fame) among others, and she was singing live so that’s something off my bucket list. Her fame notwithstanding, I was underwhelmed by her performance, probably because the rest of the cast was so very good. The best part for me was being in an audience of mostly black women who had turned up on a weeknight to see this play. They were so chatty and lively, singing out themselves or else just raising their hands as if to say “Preach, sister! Preach!” whenever the lead hit a high-note. It was like being in a black church on a Sunday, which I’ve attended several times and found to be one of the most joyous religious experiences in the world.
Drawing by Solyi Kim
The woman to my right, Mabel, had come all the way from Altanta to see the show. Mabel was alone and wielding a walking-stick. We got to chatting during the intermission when her cane hit me in the crotch (long story). She spoke about how she had loved the book, had met its author Alice Walker many years before and had promised herself that she would see the play when it opened. We were talking about whether the characters were relatable when, in the middle of our conversation she casually said, “My great grand-daddy was born a slave, you know. This here is the story of many, many folks.” I’d never heard that before. It shocked me back to the reality that this was more than a play; it was the remembrance and assertion of a suppressed and painful past.
I gasped audibly at the end of the second act, when the protagonist broke out in a triumphant song of strength. Mabel looked at me and smiled, and I knew then that a gasp sometimes means more than words can ever say.
