Bowie;’Did I die so that pollies and radio announcers could wallow in the bathos of their own fart derived sense of self’?’
Dear reader, we usually don’t like publishing disrespectful letters, but we recently received this one from a Mr Choken-Vomitron Destiny. And although not quite cogent, gives an insight into how some members of the listening community may feel about the recent demise of David Bowie. In the interests of journalistic integrity we have kept the transcript in its original form and must apologise to readers and children for the profane and bellicose language.
‘Dear PCbyCP I write to you after listening to a week of ABC Bowie Broadcast.
Christ what if Macartney died! Or even worse Andrew fucking Lloyd Webber.
John Lennon was so lucky!! It’s the Phil Hughes death industry at work again.
And leading the triumphalist, maudlin, pack are the cheerleaders within our national broadcaster. And why I ask? Bowie stopped being creative in 1980. You do the math. It’s now thirty six years ago, since then. Macartney, (arguably) last did good stuff during the White Album, that’s 68. Do the math, that’s 48 years ago. Ever since, Pure shite. All this should’ve happened in 1983. We should’ve been mourning the death of Bowie’s creative nerve then. It happens in the arts. ‘Let’s Dance’(1983), played ad-nauseam cos of the “ Australian connection’ was pure shite!!.. What is it with these people? I can’t talk. Haven’t had a number one hit nor written anything, and been a complete and utter nonentity. In music terms I’m a self described non person. An abject non person. A failure. A compete Zero. But if I Had… If I had’ve done something as brilliant as ‘Young Americans’, I’d say; ‘That’s a bloody good day’s work, cant better that, and like Nick Drake, go off and kill myself’. That’s what Mozart said as he was composing his last movement, “ Fick mir todt, Ich habe genug”, (Fuck me dead, i’ve had enough) and he karked it, simple. Pure as art can be. Or what Hendrix said as he was choking on his vomit. What Jim Morrison did when he forgot to pull the plug, and what Ian Curtis did when he thought about critics praise for Joy Division. Kill yourself now and avoid the rush.
But it’s just not on being a ‘late-deader’. You can’t become a rock god if you die years after. Jeff Buckley knew how to do it, took a plunge in the Mississippi and ol man river called in his debts. It’s pop. Pure and simple, it’s only meant to last a moment. These days with facebook, twitter and the whole metadata fundament of easy access, information overload, ‘look what I had for breakfast’ pseudo-celebrity shite, it’s all just so much hyperbolic drivel under the bridge.
And we have our memories, if we’re really egregious it’s ‘hits and memories’, and you get played to death. Yet the ABC is interviewing a public art artist about his Bowie street mural. A MURAL!!
This is not music. I HATE, detest and loathe murals. (excepting some of the very attractive ones in the city). Murals are public art. Public art, as Masaccio said to Alberti ‘is fucking crap’. Graffiti is vibrant and in your face. It’s Now!!! It’s exhilarating just like Pop Music.
Long-term Princess Di mourners ‘confused’ at the Bowie Mural in Brixton
Public art is dead, morose and pure shit. Public Art is like canning a fart derived from the great madras curry you had at an exotic trendoid restaurant, and every year, you open the lid and savour the thing that was. Pure self indulgent twaddle. That’s why we have records, so we can wallow in self absorption any tick of the clock. Which gets me off to the ABC. Cos radio national has junked thoughtful insightful challenging programs for talkback, the ‘spirit of things’ and pure shite. They’ve gone into a Bowie induced hiatus, playing his stuff, getting reverential, and doing what I HATE even more, the trite, drawn out funeral parade, of “ and what did Bowie do for you”? To whit Bowie is unable to answer; ‘Did I die so that pollies and radio announcers could wallow in the bathos of their own fart derived sense of self importance’.
Bowie on the ABC has been made ‘Anzac’.