Si­mon Lee

There I was ma­co­ing my own busi­ness, re­treat­ing from re­treat in Grande Riv­iere. For two nights I'd lain lis­ten­ing to the er­rat­ic boom­box of At­lantic break­ers wal­lop­ing the beach in front of my tem­po­rary boudoir.

Blink­ing my way on­to the gallery I re­sumed my vig­il of the waves, ozone stir­ring cof­fee crav­ings. Ba­by Ben was still dream­ing of his new-found friend for life, Stark the dog, who'd man­aged with four feet and one tail what no two foot­er has been able to ac­com­plish–elic­it his first word–Star.

His sis­ter was (thank­ful­ly) still sleep­ing off the af­ter ef­fects of guz­zling down too much choco­late and hasti­ly re­gur­gi­tat­ing it, most­ly over yours tru­ly.

Amid such bliss a lit­tle sour­ness is bound to drop but when it did I felt as though I'd been tum­bled un­der a rip tide, spin­ning un­con­trol­lably, dragged out in­to the deep of no re­turns.

Cin­na­mon Girl looked up from her smart phone, in much the same way some­one might have looked up from a broad­sheet news­pa­per back in the daze (sic) paus­ing be­fore im­part­ing a snip­pet of sala­cious triv­ia. "Bowie's dead," she dropped it with no frills. "Iz wot?" I mum­bled still more at sea than land. "Yup, the slim White Duke gone through–lung can­cer."

My first re­ac­tion was to reach for a go­ril­la, as my dear old Dad might have put it–not a hairy one but a slim white Broad­way. Then I dou­ble checked, be­cause you can't al­ways be­lieve the tes­ti­mo­ny of your ears and I re­al­ly didn't want the morn­ing idyll to crash land so cat­a­stroph­i­cal­ly. "You mean Zig­gy Star­dust, my boy Al­ladin in­Sane?" I trans­lat­ed the en­su­ing si­lence as af­fir­ma­tive and shook my head.

First Raf Robert­son, then Jit Sama­roo and now David Bowie; it's start­ing to look like open sea­son on mu­si­cians.

Now I re­alise that the Man Who Fell to Earth while ap­ply­ing lay­ers of face make up lib­er­al­ly sprin­kled with star­dust and play­ing hide and seek with his gen­der, may not be as big in T&T as Jit or Raf but for quite some while the boy born David Jones in Brix­ton sarf Lon­don, led the Rock world by its nose.

Not a mean feat for some­one who dis­liked per­form­ing and start­ed out with the am­bi­tion of "writ­ing for the­atre." The­atri­cal­i­ty–if such a word ex­ists–is prob­a­bly what de­fined Bowie more than any­thing else and his chameleon changes of per­sona, his ac­tor's pen­chant for re-in­vent­ing him­self, were more lib­er­at­ing for the post-hip­py gen­er­a­tion of the 1970s than Mao's lit­tle red book or a sack­ful of Nepalese tem­ple balls.

I don't know if Bowie (self-rechris­tened af­ter the Jim who in­vent­ed the epony­mous hunt­ing knife which saw ser­vice in the Alamo) ever vis­it­ed Trinidad.

Oth­er rock aris­tos like Mick Jag­ger have been glimpsed chip­ping the street fan­tas­tic or grac­ing the Mem­bers' stand at the Queen's Park Oval but if Zig­gy Star­dust had put in an ap­pear­ance on a Car­ni­val Tues­day, he might well have won an award for Best In­di­vid­ual Mas. In fact he could have played King of a band called the Taran­tu­las from Tom­pire.

I can see it now, de­signed by Pe­ter Min­shall with Bowie singing on top a big truck. Maybe I can per­suade my part­ner Yao to make a sur­re­al­is­tic retro trop­i­co-goth­ic fea­ture–The Re­turn of Al­ladin Sane.

Sic tran­sit Glo­ria mun­di...an­oth­er one of those im­prob­a­ble he­roes who de­fies and re­de­fines norms has left us, but even in his pass­ing he left a part­ing shot.

His lat­est al­bum Black Star is be­ing hailed as a part­ing gift, and more specif­i­cal­ly the video of the track Lazarus fea­tures him ly­ing on a hos­pi­tal bed: "Look at me I'm in heav­en; I've got scars that can't be seen..." The video for the ti­tle track be­gins with an im­age of a dead space­man, prompt­ing one grief-strick­en crit­ic to com­ment: "Even his death was a work of art."

Ma­jor Tom knew he was on his way; he'd been re­ceiv­ing treat­ment for lung can­cer for the past 18 months and his 25th and fi­nal al­bum Black Star was re­leased on his Jan­u­ary 8 birth­day.

Al­though he'd giv­en up tour­ing (be­cause un­char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly for a rock n roller he got bored on the road) and kept him­self out of the pub­lic eye, pre­fer­ring the pri­va­cy of his So­ho Vil­lage apart­ment in New York and the plea­sures of fam­i­ly life (like drop­ping his daugh­ter to school) the artist in him ob­vi­ous­ly want­ed to make a fi­nal state­ment.

He went down, or should that be up, singing. There are many of us who will join in his fi­nal cho­rus.