David Bowie and the Resurrection of Lazarus

A couple of months ago—November 19th, to be exact—when I saw the video for David Bowie’s eponymous single from his new album “Black Star,” I remember being shocked and thrilled and puzzled. The video and its music were inexplicably creepy and dark in a sort of American Horror Story way. I emailed a couple of friends and fellow Bowie fans to remark on how amazing it was that the artist—nearly 70 years old now—was still capable of surprising us and making such interesting, challenging, unconventional works.

“Bowie hasn't lost his edge, he keeps reinventing his image and his characters,” I remarked. “This one has a dark passenger. I think there might be a Major Tom riff in there too, with the space suit containing the bejeweled but long-dead skull.”

Yesterday, with the sad and shocking news of David Bowie’s death—and the release of his new video, “Lazarus,” on his 69th birthday, just two days before his death—the dark and unsettling aspects of "Black Star" that puzzled me when I first saw it suddenly made a whole lot of sense. For a year and a half, David Bowie had been struggling with cancer—something he kept private from the world—and knew he was dying. His last album was a carefully planned meditation on death—and life—in all its mystery, glory, pain, pleasure, and wretchedness.

In the new video for “Lazarus,” Bowie’s ailing character—blindfolded, with buttons where his sightless eyes should be—lies in a hospital bed, singing:

Look up here, I’m in Heaven

and

This way or no way
You know, I’ll be free
Just like that bluebird
Now ain’t that just like me

For half a century, David Bowie constantly reinvented himself, his music and his career by creating and inhabiting characters and stage personas, and using these characters to comment on the absurdities and challenges of human life and society. Ziggy Stardust. Aladdin Sane. The Thin White Duke. The Man Who Fell to Earth. Pierrot the sad clown. Jareth the Goblin King from the film Labyrinth. The nameless, suit-wearing hipster who toured the world filling stadiums and brought us a series of funk-inspired pop hits throughout the last two decades of the 20th century.

Bowie’s characters were rarely, if ever, easy pills to swallow. They were fiercely crafted commentaries on addiction, fame, greed, fashion, vanity, sexuality and gender, the absurdity of human behavior, and the suffocating nature of society’s norms. Bowie’s characters were much more than the passing fashion statements of a pop star (though he also remained a fashion icon for half a century, as well). They were carefully constructed, always defiantly weird and unconventional and creative, and he embodied them so deeply that David Bowie the man sometimes became indistinguishable from his character.

One of the most common themes I heard yesterday from friends around the world—aside from the profound grief they felt at his loss—was how David Bowie had always made them feel it was "okay to be weird," okay to be yourself, okay not to fit into society’s cookie-cutter molds. Another common theme expressed by many friends yesterday was the feeling of shock at being suddenly reminded that David Bowie was, in fact, a mortal human being just like us—not some kind of god or space oddity.

And now, as his parting gift, he leaves us with Lazarus. Lazarus is Bowie’s final character, and a fitting one to articulate the supreme questions of life and death that we now know he was wrestling with in his last year. Lazarus is an unsettling vision, a man at the mercy of ultimate forces beyond his control, helpless and blindfolded, surrounded by symbols of death and reminders of the ephemerality of all his creations. But Lazarus is also a character who—to borrow a famous line from Dylan Thomas—refuses to go quietly into that good night, but rages against the dying of the light. Lazarus twitches and levitates above his hospital bed; in his lyrics and his vocal performance, he alternates between anger, fear, gratitude, peace, and transcendence. Lazarus sees his life and his creations slipping from his hands, and refuses to stop creating. In the video, as Lazarus lies in his hospital bed, another version of Bowie—Bowie the performer, Bowie the ambitious artist—emerges like a wraith from a dark wardrobe closet, frantically scribbles his inspirations onto paper, delighting in his own creations, and then retreats with a puzzled expression back into the darkened wardrobe at the end of the video.

This too, Lazarus tells us, is part of the experience, part of the performance. It may not be pretty, it may even be frightening and creepy at times, but it’s an essential part of the dance of life and death. We mustn’t look away from it. In fact, if we look at it carefully, it may even reveal treasures that we didn’t know were there. “Look up here,” he foretold, “I’m in Heaven.”

Those who know the story of Lazarus from the Bible know that Lazarus was raised from the dead by Jesus four days after his burial. We now know that David Bowie’s entire last album was carefully planned and its release apparently timed to coincide with his 69th birthday and his death two days later. In playing out the theme of Lazarus and his resurrection, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if David Bowie has more messages in store for us in the coming months.

Thank you, David Bowie. It was a fantastic gift to have you on this planet. You will be greatly missed and never forgotten.

One of the last known photographs of David Bowie, released on January 8th—his 69th birthday and the day he released his 25th studio album, Black Star—and taken by his longtime photographer Jimmy King. Bowie passed on January 10th after an 18-month battle with cancer.

Paper Bags

A birthday poem written by the old bag labeled Dennis Hunter.

This being human is a paper shopping bag.
Inside the bag is a parcel we carry from womb to tomb.
Most of our lives are spent staring at the bag,
identifying with the label it represents: “me.”
We build our lives around a brand, a fiction,
proudly sporting it through the world
and comparing it to other people’s brands.
We all want to have the best brand, to be seen
carrying the shopping bag with the finest label.
We have forgotten the purpose of a shopping bag,
and confused the bag and the brand with what's inside.
Stop for a moment, dissociate yourself from this bag of bones
and all the labels and brands it represents, and look inside.
Try to remember why you picked up a shopping bag
in the first place, and what it contains.
It’s raining now, and your paper bag is wet.
Already its fibers are weakening; soon it will break
and spill its contents into the street.
Don’t wait until then to open the parcel and see what's inside.
Open it now!
You’ve forgotten you ever went shopping in the first place,
and here you are, crying out against the rain,
holding a disintegrating bag from the great Store.

But this is where the metaphor breaks down…

The parcel in your bag is not something you bought,
for you cannot acquire or own what you are.
The parcel is you, and you never left the Store with it.
You only carried it around for a little while
in a shopping bag made of space, time and flesh,
from one part of the Store to another:
this laughable parade of paper bags and colorful logos.
You can neither purchase nor shoplift yourself.
Nothing ever leaves the Store, but everything returns to it.
Remember this, and be free from the illusion
of imprisonment inside a crumbling bag of bones, skin and personality.
Forget your brand, remember this, and embrace the deathless state.
The great Store, and everything in it, is you.

The Blue Balloon

Recently a dear friend, Valerie Gladstone, passed away due to cancer. My husband Adrian and I bonded with Valerie over many things: yoga and meditation, Buddhism, spirituality, writing, music and movies, and gossip-filled brunches. Valerie's physical form was compact, but her presence was large and radiant and loving and gentle -- but, if provoked, could also be sharp. I recall such a moment transpiring one afternoon when Valerie took us to see the amazing Spanish singer Buika at Central Park Summer Stage. Valerie was a respected writer and well-connected in the music, dance and arts communities, so she got us VIP seats in the press section. A young man nearby, probably inebriated or high, was shouting over the music and stomping his feet and clapping his hands in a sad and misguided pantomime of flamenco dance. Valerie, a professional critic and a personal acquaintance of Buika, was not willing to suffer this fool gladly, and she promptly marched up to him and informed him that he was distracting everyone around him from the performance and asked him to stop—which he did. Only Valerie had the courage to do what everyone else in the vicinity secretly wanted to do.

Adrian and I felt fortunate not only to share friendship and laughter with Valerie when she was in good health, but to also be there with her at numerous points during the last weeks of her life. As her cancer progressed rapidly, we visited her several times in the hospital and then the hospice. I went to see Valerie about 24 hours before she passed, and at that point I shared with her some guidance drawn from the Buddhist tradition on how to have a peaceful transition. Later, when we learned that she had passed the next day, the news came that her transition had, indeed, been remarkably peaceful.

Today Adrian and I went to assist in moving to their new home Valerie's two beautiful Abyssinian cats, who had been her cherished companions. Before we departed Valerie's old apartment with the cats, Adrian was very struck by a small metal statue of Nataraja, the dancing form of Shiva. The woman who was looking after the apartment encouraged him to take it as a memento, something to keep in our home to remind us of Valerie.

With cats safely transported and curiously exploring their new, happy home, we headed downtown to meet our friend Stuart for brunch. Afterwards, we strolled back to Stuart's apartment to pass a bit of time before going to see a movie. As we approached the corner of 28th Street and 3rd Avenue, I spotted a single, blue balloon that was drifting slowly up 3rd Avenue, about five or six stories above the street. I stopped Adrian and Stuart and drew their attention to it.

The last time that Adrian and I saw Valerie before she went into the hospital, we met for brunch on the Upper East Side, and then afterwards we strolled down 3rd Avenue. There was a street festival happening on 3rd Avenue that day, and the street was decked with colorful arrays of balloons stretching across the intersections. Adrian and I are both into contemplative photography, and we kept stopping to take photos of the balloons and the interesting way they were framed against the sky and the tall city buildings. We also stopped to take a sidewalk photo with Valerie—which would prove to be our last.

Cut back to today, on the corner of 28th Street. As we watched the blue balloon make its way up 3rd Avenue overhead, it stopped above the intersection where we were standing and began to descend. It came down to street level and went right into the rush of traffic going up 3rd Avenue. We kept expecting one of the numerous buses or automobiles speeding by to catch hold of the balloon and pop it, but we watched in amusement as it danced between, around, in front of, beside, and behind each of them as they passed. When the traffic light switched and it was our turn to cross the intersection, we watched the balloon ascend again and cross over 3rd Avenue to the sidewalk ahead of us. As we arrived on the other side of 3rd Avenue, the balloon again descended toward the ground, reversed direction to head south, and rolled gently to a stop on the sidewalk directly in front of my feet.

The Girl with the Skull Earring

In a dream I had recently, I was sitting in a restaurant next to a girl who was wearing a beautiful outfit, with one dangling skull earring. Some of the dream details are fuzzy, but I think I was dressed in my old monk's robes, because I was somehow singled out as being very distinctly and visibly "Buddhist." At any rate, the whole atmosphere of the dream seemed charged with Buddhist spirituality, because His Holiness the 17th Karmapa was teaching nearby. When I have dreams with a teacher like the Karmapa in them, I tend to pay attention and look for messages. And boy, did I get one this time.

Two waitresses approached the girl and told her how nice her outfit was, but gently reprimanded her for wearing the skull earring. They said the skull was a morbid symbol of death and that one shouldn't wear such symbols because they attract evil spirits, or bad luck, or something equally superstitious. At that point in the dream, I chimed in, and delivered a speech that went like this (paraphrased from memory):

"Actually, the Buddhist view would be quite the opposite. In Buddhism we are encouraged to deeply contemplate death and impermanence, and Buddhist iconography often features skulls and corpses and other stark reminders that death is woven into the fabric of life itself. Most of the time we don't think about death, and so we go around acting like we have all the time in the world. But the reality is that our bodies are impermanent, and we are subject to old age, sickness and death. In fact, we might never even make it to old age. We might become gravely ill next year or get hit by a bus today after we leave this restaurant. Death is really the only thing in life that is absolutely inevitable, and it can strike at any time, without warning — so it's best if we keep that always in mind. It not only helps us be better prepared when it's our time to go, but also helps us put our life in better perspective. A lot of the things that we ordinarily think are very important in life, mundane things that we devote so much of our time to pursuing, appear insignificant when we remember that our time in this life is short and that death could come at any moment."