Just over a year ago I lost someone very close to me and it hit me real hard, harder than I ever thought it would, I had gone
over the day in my head before, but nothing had prepared me for the waterfall of emotions that hit me that day. Now this wasn’t a family member or a friend, it was a rock star, it was David Bowie.
Bowie had become my hero in 83 when I was 12 years old, Lets dance was at number 1 and the exotic guitar sound and his soulful voice just grabbed me, I discovered an incredible back catalogue of music, a man with a different perspective to anyone else and a little bit weird if I’m honest. None of my school friends really got what I got about Bowie, which I quite enjoyed deep down, he was my passion, my obsession, my icon.
There were many great moments for me, seeing him many times in concert, visiting the V&A exhibition, and not that long ago hearing the long, long, long awaited album “the next day” and being blown away by how good it was, I along with many fans wondered if another tour was on the cards, there were rumours it was about to happen, and I wondered how much a ticket would be, how much could I afford. Sadly the day never came, and we all know what happened next. I visited landmarks in London, listened constantly to his music, the only thing I couldn’t do was listen to his final album “blackstar”. Music is open to interpretation, and to me it was his goodbye, beautifully written, with some heart breaking lyrics to boot.
Bowie had also written a musical which was on it’s way to London, and I had balked at the price, but thanks to father christmas and my wife, I was to see Lazarus. This felt like my chance to say goodbye to my hero. And this is the reason for my blog, every day for the last 3 years I had been an avid user of twitter, I have 3 accounts, 1 for music, football, comedy and social use, 1 account for dodgy sports streams and an account for multiple sclerosis, my “inconvenient” illness. Anyway like many people I found words like Trump, Morgan, Gervais, Hopkins Farage would pop up in my timeline too often even though I had blocked them all and it always left a bad taste in my brain, now I had 2 choices. 1. Ask everybody on twitter to reframe from using the above words or 2. Have a break from twitter, and option 2 seemed the way to go.
So after a week here is what happened. I put Bowie’s final album on, listened intently, played it again and again and again, then I just carried on immersing myself in all kinds of music, my karma was good, my thoughts were my own, i started reading newspapers again, not having 50 other peoples opinion spinning in my head at the same time. The day of the concert I plugged in my headphones and headed to the big smoke, Bowie in my ears all the way up there, I was so in the zone I was giddy, I met a couple of lovely women whilst queuing and we swapped our stories about our mutual hero, then I chatted to a nice family after taking my seat, the musical came and went too quickly, tears were shed, my goodbye was said internally at the end and I slowly headed for the doors, I needed a drink so I headed straight for the theatre bar, 2 men were already there propping it up dissecting what they had just seen, but for me to just have been there was plenty and my break from 140 character opinions was so refreshing, I decided to keep on walking and head to a different bar and sit with what I had just seen alone.
I did spend a few minutes in a trance, but then got in a debate with a couple of blokes about why Tottenham won’t win anything this season, but hey that’s my opinion!
What have I learnt about social media? I have thought long and hard about it and have felt a small change during my break but truthfully I’m not exactly sure, but I do know Piers Morgan is a cunt.
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