DID YOU SAY A PAPERBACK? HA-HA-HA.
So in the true tradition of The End is the Beginning is the End (and vise versa), this 'News' blog begins in earnest with the milestone to end all milestones, the news of Bowie's death on January 10th, 2016. As Bowie has meticulously presaged his death as a work of art, it provides the impetus (and courage) to allow the premise that life, too, can be the ultimate expression as art. This book is precisely this exercise; the notion of 'life as art' is in fact the functioning nature of its God proof.
This book has been a work in progress since March 2010. It received its copyright December 31st, 2014. There will be no elucidation as to what obstacles came between then and now, other than to say they were not quite life threatening and what anyone would consider 'sufficient' cause for delay.
Since this book was posted to Bowie's #imablackstar website multiple times before the 'news' hit, (and hinted as forthcoming multiple times before that), and said book was released expressly dedicated to the great man for his 69th birthday (it would have been the day of if not for the time iBooks took to process it), there is no choice but to proceed with the dedication, dedicating it instead to everyone who is in mourning and happens to dwell on his passing through dedication on and to this site, -and may so happen to hit upon this link on #imablackstar.
It has, in the face of this effort at attempted 'timeliness' felt far too devastating to proceed, and was perhaps better served by a digital moment of silence, -for we all know, now, who the last character in the Blackstar video that was supposed to be Bowie (or a Bowie alt persona) actually was.
As per his Director's giveaway in the above (along with the third character -there's debate about that -hyperlinking is not an endorsement), that Bowie's huckster priest persona (I thought they were one and the same) was offering the book as Word, and given the lyrical impetus of 'Blackstar' itself , there is literally no choice but to proceed, as it is now understood what it all means.
As mentioned from the outset, David Bowie figured most prominenty in ths book. He made first mention in it as far back as 1983. It touches upon the Glass Spider Tour, Tin Machine, the Outside Tour with Nine Inch Nails (-first time I ever saw him), Earthling, and dives off the deep end for Heathen and Reality, which were among the most pivotal moments in this collectivism, if you will, of this book as art as life as Word. David Bowie owned Chapter 27. This knowledge imparted the entreaty for his birthday, "Want to know more about it; -replace your buttons with eyes?"
I've had a fearful premonition ever since Heathen, and now it's happened with an impeccable clockwork that's threatened to wrench this constellation apart.
It is in that spirit of best wishes on departure it is declared, "Long live David Bowie." In keeping with the courage of faith in eternity that prompts Michael's words, and the sensibility imparted by intrepid exploration that articulation is a 'known' on all planes, the understanding that can prompt one individual to answer a depiction of a book with her actual book, (knowing full well it will provide such a vast vantage of perspective as to be capable of imparting sight), that understanding will be shared, freely here, now, in full. The book will now serve as a memorium, as it can no longer be offered in inquiry, with the foregone conclusion that where Bowie might have determined himself to have perhaps stood on this constellation if he could have ever examined it (rejection included) -will now never be known. Nevertheless, I am offering the book here for free to anyone who wants it, as I feel in all sincerity that was what was imparted with departure:
"Something happened on the day he died
Spirit rose a metre then stepped aside
Somebody else took his place, and bravely cried
(I’m a blackstar, I’m a star's star, I’m a blackstar)"
This was the sole book to appear on the day before he died, dedicated to him. It is still dedicated to him, and will remain so forevermore. "Blackstar" is already incorporate as its final end, and always will be, its last and only epitaph. You will witness, firsthand, it being written.
I will, over the coming days if permitted, offer a full explanation for both the videos and lyrics for 'Blackstar', as the book in the prior analysis of the aforementioned albums was already anchored in such. Thus contextualized they are far more literal than anyone would dare to suppose, for those are the realms we'll be treading, the portal of entry granted by death as art into life as art.
-As mentioned in correspondence to other particulars (sent to Bono, December 23rd, '15, along with the finished book): "Bowie has played out the precise elements that were his pivotal play in the feedback loop in the book, perhaps the greatest play in proving it to Billy."
"Bowie's themes haven't played out in the short run, they are long, -very long. They are recycled, with elements from both Heathen and Reality. Since they're already the purview of Chapter 27 you may as well read it, then you'll understand the significance in full. He was expressing those themes with the same sense of desperation then. He has only honed his target since. It would be nice (a boon or blessing) if you could take such signals from someone you respect, if you could register they might dually apply? Maybe you don't recognize what forcing me to bypass you has in its potential consequences, but it certainly ups the ante I won't be 'seen'. I wish that had some prospect of culturing a sense of culpability in your sensibilities the way it does in mine, in terms of what it might mean to [Bowie] to remain blind." [Bear in mind Bono line-dropped the phrase word for word under which she left her contact information for the concert delivery to him in 2011; it's the title to track 10 on Songs of Innocence.]
"We have her encountering the dead space man to start and [more or less] canonizing him. Sadly for me this points to a sense of culpability, i.e., Bowie's mortality and the what-ifs and whether he never encounters this book before he's dead (the headless skeleton gravitating towards the eclipse). I feel this more strongly with David Bowie than any other artist walking."
The eclipse is the female protagonist's calling card/advent as of Chapter 11, that occurs with her advent in real time in the real world in Chapter 22 (when Bono was made aware of these circumstances in 1999). The dark star was her symbol as of the same, which solidified its aspect in 1995 (Chapter 14). Bono already knew this, moreover he got the book when it had embarked on Chapter 22 July 5th, 2011. He may or may not have been peddling this incorporated context without acknowledgement ever since '99 (another Chapter - 24). That said, the dark star is first and foremost Bowie's declaration of himself and the imminence he was facing, obviously. It is, however, just as obviously contextualized (by Bowie himself) that he fully expected its appearance upon the advent of his death, -and not merely as death. It was the book he held up in his hand. It was the woman in trauma in the shadows at and under his deathbed who could never be reached even though she reached out. That is the vantage of this response.
"I can't answer why, but I can tell you how"
It is offered in the comfort it provides in all the thresholds it has gained historically, knowledge of our capacities of transcending this material existence, of starscapes already travelled, that the Starman exists bursting with all that is mindblowing and all we can anticipate in the great beyond. In the context of death as art as a portal to life as art, where what we have witnessed transformed instantly (for those who did not know he was dying) into the literal, this is that book.
"Meet the Mother of Invention."
You're about to discover just how very far that can go, a boast that can only be aired in the knowledge of being fully integral, that we will end precisely where we've begun. This is an offering made in supreme gratitude. Respect, out.
