Portraits of space in David Bowie

Abstract

David Bowie kept himself aside from religion, which he regarded with skepticism. In his lyrics it is hard to find any kind of “longing for some everafter” – or, as we could say, for any explicit signs of transcendence. The notion of (cosmic) «space» allowed him to criticize what he thought to be alienating desires of fuga mundi, which avoided the crucial existencial and anthropological question: how to live in a chaotic and absurd world? With clear nietzschean influences, Bowie presents lucid fiction as the human way of inhabiting the world. “Mask”, “mirror”, “stage” and “closet” are amongst the symbols of his anthropological reflexion, and they appear to be a form of self-transcendence – self-aware and open to others.