Is There Life On Mars? If There Is They Must Surely Adopt His Style

I am quite sure that across the world right now Vevo is getting hit with millions of requests for Bowie video clips and this one, Life On Mars , which was one of my favourite songs, features a suit very reminiscent of that Tommy Nutter / Edward Sexton period which we emulated last year through Leng Bespoke . 

Of course, a lean David Bowie makes for a better silhouette but the principal of that sweeping lapel and tapering from the shoulders to the waist in that elegant curved V-ness is something which is from a period that is part glamour rock 'n' roll, part Savile Row, part of a period now passed, like a blink of an eye and it is done and gone. Tommy Nutter departed in 1992 due to complications from AIDS, his cutter and partner Edward Sexton is still going but how many years of work does he have left in him? 

Life will renew and new creative energy will come to life, even Bowie was aware of that in his final lyrics in Blackstar:

"Something happened on the day he died

Spirit rose a metre and stepped aside

Somebody else took his place, and bravely cried

I’m a blackstar, I’m a blackstar"

Regardless of whether new creativity comes to light, it is the marking of something in time, of a movement or a period which no longer exists, like listening to the jazz music of Sidney Bechet and thinking fondly of Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Stein wandering the streets of Paris during the Jazz Age.

David Bowie wasn't just a stand alone artist - he was emblematic of a period of time and space, of a geo-political landscape, of social change and upheaval but which, like most of what transpires in life, signifies in the end, nothing. It reminds me of Fellini's Toby Dammit and the reference to Macbeth:

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

Ultimately, I agree with this sentiment, that our lives are insignificant and meaningless in the scope of the Universe but I am happy to say that his life and his music has had a significant meaningfulness in my life, even if that is just to teach me that life has little to no meaning in such a beautiful and elegant manner. That has some meaning right?