Bowie, ‘Blackstar,’ and a Thank You

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Saying more and meaning less
Saying no but meaning yes
This is all I ever meant
That’s the message that I sent.—David Bowie, “I Can’t Give Everything Away”

“Something happened the day he died,” sings one character in David Bowie’s longest single, “Blackstar,” which was released as a video in November 2015. At the moment he sings that line in the video, Bowie is a preacher holding aloft a religious book with a black star on its cover. He holds his hands prayerfully and sings earnestly, in the earnest way that signals that lies, or at least complicated truths, are about to be spoken.

Until today, the video and song were simply complex, a piling-on of images and references (the album is also called “Blackstar,” but the album cover only has a black star on it, not the word itself, along with portions of diamond shapes that spell out “BOWIE”), each of which was winking at the other and at past Bowie images and references. (Is the bejeweled skull in the video Major Tom?)

Reviewers and David Bowie experts were just starting to tuck into the multi-layered music and video meal that he had laid out this winter with two videos totaling 15 minutes and a seven-song album released on his birthday, which was Friday. But today is the day David Bowie died, though, or the day the news came out, and for a day at least, every one of the many available interpretations his music and recent work may fire up in one’s mind is filtered through that sad fact. We now know that he recorded the album and the videos knowing that this work was to be his epitaph and not a signal of future directions that his musical interests might take him.

Bowie was an artist for whom public image was one more tool in his expansive repertoire. A personal exit as artistic statement? In a life of many triumphs, this is one more, one last triumph. It is a selfish thing to say that one wishes an artist who produced so much—more than 25 albums, hundreds of songs, memorable acting performances on Broadway and in films and in his videos, an early Internet presence—would not leave us wanting more. But there you have it. I do. Sixty-nine is too young.
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Mark Aldrich and Me

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”—Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

To the best of my knowledge, there are no murderers in the part of the family tree that leads directly to me. I have done my best to maintain this streak of successfully not murdering anyone, but if I am ever accused, I will not be the first person named Mark Aldrich to be charged with murder.
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One Year After He Was Flogged, Raif Badawi Remains a Prisoner

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

One year ago today, a young writer was publicly whipped by his government for his writings. His words “insulted” his nation’s official religion, his government decreed. The worst part, of course, was that he published his words and that others in his nation read those words and even shared his opinions.

Today is the 1325th day he has spent in prison. After he was arrested, after a long trial, he was found guilty of having ideas that his country does not favor, even finds to be a threat. The authorities declared that his website “propagates liberal thought,” and the search for a punishment that it deemed proper took over a year to calculate. He spent that year in prison.

Raif Badawi’s writings include statements like this: “States which are based on religion confine their people in the circle of faith and fear,” so the Saudi Arabian judicial system decided to live up to that observation.
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