Submitted by Harry Lewis on the 2016 winter session program in London, England sponsored by the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice..
On January 10th, I woke up bright and early for another day of class. As is my usual routine, while I waited for my roommate to finish up in the bathroom, I logged onto Facebook to see what I had missed in the world when I was sleeping. To my shock, I saw the headline “David Bowie Dead at 69”. I felt like the wind had gotten knocked out of me. Just two days before, I had downloaded my copy of his newest album, Blackstar, and was listening to it in quiet times on the Tube or in the hotel. And now, less than forty-eight hours later, he was gone. I’d never been in a city before when a native son or daughter died, and the experience was stunning. The city seemed quieter, subdued. Every now and again, you catch some casual chatter on the Underground, but everyone was absolutely silent. The London Evening Standard, the free paper distributed on the streets every weekday night, seemed to be in everybody’s hands, with Bowie’s face across the front. Every restaurant or public place was playing his music, even the independent musicians jamming down in the Tube stations. It felt as if London had lost one of its own.
I always take a few hours to explore after class, so once we were let out, I took the tube to Piccadilly Circus. On Hammond Street, a few blocks from the station there, Bowie had shot the cover of his famous 1972 album The Rise & Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Wandering around a bit, I began to hear a faint bit of music, which soon turned out to be Bowie’s. Following the growing sound, I came upon a massive crowd gathered in front of the building where a commemorative plaque was hung. Even though Bowie had likely only been there briefly to take the photograph, the entire front wall was covered with bouquets of flowers, handwritten notes, album covers, and photographs. Candles flickered quietly in the twilight while a group of about four dozen of us stood around in quiet contemplation. The woman next to me was older, her hair grey and streaked with white. The man to my right was in his forties and hadn’t shaved that day. A lady behind me was pushing a stroller and a little girl got out and placed some flowers in the growing pile. Every few minutes, someone new would step out of the crowd and add something or move in to take a photograph. Teenagers in punk outfits were crying.
From the loudspeakers, “Ziggy Stardust” began to play. As the light began to fade, the people around me started to softly join in with the lyrics. The old woman next to me closed her eyes and breathed out the lyrics as if in a trance. The unshaven man’s eyes glistened with tears as he looked to the sky and sang of Ziggy playing his guitar, an alien from outer space. I left after the song ended, but the party was just getting started down in Brixton, Bowie’s hometown, where a street party sing-along lasted until four in the morning and was attended by several hundred. I went to that site the next day, assuming it would be deserted after the previous night’s festivities, but I found it teeming with mourners, the flowers and letters so far out into the sidewalk you could barely pass.
The same scene would be repeated at Kings Cross Station a few days later, when actor Alan Rickman died of the same disease at the same age. Fans laid lilies at the “Platform Nine and 3/4” sign hanging on one of the walls in a tribute to his performance as Professor Snape in the Harry Potter films. It felt as though the UK had been sucker-punched twice in losing two global icons.
People asked me why I took time away from napping or going to museums to stand in front of a metal sign and pay respects to someone I didn’t know who was being buried half a world away. I didn’t really know either, at first. But going and standing next to someone twice as old as I am, and one or three times as old as I, in a shared grief over someone none of us ever met was one of the most powerful things I’ve ever experienced. David Bowie was a singer and a guitarist, but for England he was something more. Reading the letters at the impromptu memorials, I learned of people who felt ostracized for being different. They might have had a different sexuality, or weird clothing or just not fit in with the mainstream. For them, David made that all okay. Seeing the museums and monuments on my own time is one thing. But getting to know the real Britain, the one you can’t find in a tourist guide, that’s what study abroad is to me. And I got that – and so much more – from the death of a man I never knew.