Transcription
It was most peculiar. Out of nowhere, he suddenly said, "Religion is over and it lies in the arts." That the information, the spiritual life will be in the vessel of the visual and the musical arts.
I think it's terribly dangerous for an artist to fulfill other people's expectations. I think they produce they generally produce their worst work when they do that.
Maybe we have to exist and live on the idea that we have one day at a time. If we could do that, we may be serving some really some great thing.
I think the potential of what the internet is going to do to society, both good and bad, is unimaginable.
David Bowie is known as one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, leaving a phenomenal impact on popular music throughout his life. Although there is more to this man than meets the eye, there's an intellectual and spiritual side to him that often gets overlooked when it comes to his reputation. Although I believe this is one of the major reasons for his success, as well as his unique artistic approach to never play to the gallery.
Never play to the gallery, I think. But you never learn that until much later on, I think. But never work for other people in what you do. Always remember that the reason that you initially started working was that there was something inside yourself that you felt that if you could manifest it in some way, you would understand more about yourself and how you coexist with the rest of society. I think it's terribly dangerous for an artist to fulfill other people's expectations. I think they produce they generally produce their worst work when they do that. But I've gotten used to the fact that uh you just can't please all the people all the time and I've got no great desire to be loved in a major way by faceless anonymous crowds. It doesn't really it's not part of something that I want. And if the other thing I would say is that if you feel safe in the area that you're working in, you're not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you're capable of being in. Go a little bit out of your depth. And when you don't feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you're just about in the right place to do something exciting.
Another intriguing view David shares is the idea of artistic views being some kind of a dysfunctionality. Rather than living a steady and sustainable lifestyle, being an artist is to take a step into the unknown, eliminating the stereotypical rules of society. I have often wondered if if actually that being an artist of in any way any nature is a a kind of a sign of a certain kind of dysfunction a social dysfunctionalism anyway it's an extraordinary thing to want to do to express yourself in such in such rarified terms uh I think it's a loony kind of thing to want to do I think the the ser and rational approach to life is to surv survive steadfastly and create a protective home and create a warm loving environment for one's family and and get food for them. That's about it. That's actually anything else is extra. All culture is extra. Culture is uh you know that's uh I guess it's a freebie. It's something that we we don't we only need to eat. We don't need particular color plates or particular height chairs or anything. I mean, anything will do, but we insist on making 1,000 different kinds of chairs and 15 different kinds of plates. It's it's unnecessary and it's a sign of the irrational part of man. I think
One of the David Bowie quotes that I find most fascinating is "Religion is for people who fear hell. Spirituality is for people who have been there." This seems to be a reflection of his spiritual knowledge as well as the studies he did on Buddhism early on. When I was when I was about 18, um I I studied Tibetan Buddhism for about 2 or 3 years and I had a teacher called Chimmy Young Rimposhi who had just come over from Tibet and led his own followers over. Majority of them sadly were shot by the Chinese as they made their exit from Tibet down into India. He started off I think something like 2,000 followers and ended up with 50 or 60 cuz the helicopters would come out there and shoot them off. Um but he fortunately came through and he really sort of tried to guide me into an uh some kind of informed opinion about Buddhism. I wouldn't say that I was a very good Buddhist. Actually he eventually told me to exert myself in music and not run off and get my hair cut off and become a llama. But the one thing that he left me with was a sense of transiencece and change uh which actually became fundamentals to my life my approach to it and not holding on to anything not considering that there is anything that will last through one's entire eternal life living or dead and it makes letting go very easy material things or physical things and looking for the source of one's own being becomes much more important and I guess That's been sort of my my own personal journey is is trying to sort out where my spiritual bounty lies, where my thread to a universal order lies. And that that becomes that can become a life search. And I think that's as a writer probably what I involve myself in more than anything else. It was a Zen a Zen teacher at a temple that I I like a lot in in Kyoto. It was most peculiar. Out of nowhere, he suddenly said, "Religion is over. and it lies in the arts that the information and spiritual life will be in the vessel of the visual and the musical arts which I thought was quite a stunning comment from this 70-year-old Zen master. I can't remember who the philosopher was but in the early part of the century he said that we have to kill God to reinvent it. And I think that is very much playing itself out in the later part of this century. I think we have to find the focus of of where our religious strength lies in an entirely different area from the the archaic and almost medieval forms that we're sort of expected to supplant ourselves to. There's a term that the Gnostics use which is called the god beyond god. And I think that there's a sense of once trying to find um some merit in the chaos that that we perceive as our existence. And for someone like myself who comes from Judeo-Christian upbringing, there's something that Pauls with the idea of having a a god who's a a judge and a father and arbiter of morals and whatever. It just doesn't it seems too symbolic. It's too easy. And I think um that the idea that uh the early gnostics had which is that there is in fact the deep the depth of the god beyond the god but something beyond that which one can't call a singular entity. It's something that just pervades everything. And I still think that that's probably one of the major searches that I've probably made in my life. Not sure how close I ever got, but I know that it does occur to most of us, I think, who work in in in the arts or in writing or expressing oneself. When you're expressing oneself, you're also trying to express one's existence, you know, so it's wrapped up in the same thing.
Bowie's philosophical knowledge adds up to a fascinating interpretation of the 20th century as well as a unique perspective on the purpose of life.
The late 19th century there was a people were so arandized with their own sense of science and and uh um the aftermath of the enlightenment and how man himself could improve the world. Um then of course it led to things like Nichi saying God is dead and it led to Einstein's discovery that that time and space aren't what we thought they were and Freud and understanding of another kind of human inside the human. All these things culminated in the idea that everything we've kn known before was wrong. Everything. So we start out the 20th century with this clean slate. We are now the gods. And the greatest thing that we could do as God during that century was create the bomb. That was what we were good at doing. And I think that in itself in the 50s and 60s, the repercussions of what we had done by standing in for this idea of morality ourselves, creating it all ourselves, so destroyed our fix on what we should be doing in life that we're still living through that chaos right now. We have no spiritual lives to speak of. There's quasi new religions, but there is no direct sense of what our purpose is anymore. Now, that may be a good thing because it may it may show itself to be that we in fact do don't have a purpose. Are we are we big enough or mature enough to exist like that? Are we mature enough to accept that there's no plan? There's no going somewhere. There's no uh gift of immortality at the end of this if we evolve. If we evolve far enough, we may never have to die. I mean, that seems to be the reach from the past. Well, maybe we can't live like that. Maybe we have to exist and live on the idea that we have one day at a time to live. And can we do that? Because if we could do that, we may be serving some really some great thing.
In 1999, David made a highly accurate prediction of the internet's impact on society and popular culture, both in a positive and a negative way. up until at least the mid70s really felt that we were still living under the uh in the guise of a single and absolute created society where there were known truths and known lies and there was no kind of duplicity or pluralism about the things that we believed in that started to break down rapidly in the ' 70s and the idea of a duality in the way that we live there are always two three four five sides to every question that this singularity disappeared and uh that I believe has produced such a medium as the internet which absolutely establishes and shows us that we are living in total fragmentation.
You don't think that some of the claims being made for it are hugely exaggerated. I mean when the telephone was invented people made amazing claims.
I know the president for example the president at the time when it was first invented he was outrageous. He said he foresaw the day in the future when every town in America would have a telephone. Now that what how dare he claim like that? Absolute No, you see, I don't I don't I don't agree. I don't agree. I think the internet I don't think we've even seen the tip of the iceberg. I think the potential of what the internet is going to do to society, both good and bad, is unimaginable. I think we're actually on the cusp of something exhilarating and terrifying.
It's just a tool though, isn't it?
No, it's not. No. No. It's an alien life form.
But that's it's a simply a different delivery system there. You're arguing about something more profound.
Oh, yeah. I'm talking about the the the actual context and the state of content is going to be so different to anything that we can really envisionage at the moment where the interplay between the user and the provider will be so in sympatico or it's going to crush our ideas of what mediums are all about and but it's happening in every form it's happening in visual art the breakthroughs at the early part of the century with people like Duchamp who were so precient in what they were doing and putting down the idea here that the piece of work is not finished until the audience come to it and add their own interpretation. And what the piece of art is about is the gray space in the middle. That gray space in the middle is what the 21st century is going to be about.
Rest in peace, David. Your music and intellect will remain far after your passing.