David Bowie
Blackstar

("I'm a blackstar, I'm not a popstar")

The man who fell to earth has passed away.

Having left the earthly path forever, he has definitively entered into legend, silently, in the night, on a cold winter evening.

Like a supernova, exploding, he left an indelible glow in the firmament.

This Blackstar, the 25th studio effort of the English artist, cannot be considered just an ordinary album.

It is the spiritual testament of one of the last sacred monsters in rock history.

The white duke left us in grand style. With the mask lifted from the labors of a "chameleon-like" career, what remains is the imprint of the man and the artist, here at the peak of inspiration.

Yet the enigma remains intact, and every track on this record strengthens it, though partially revealing the mystery.

The start and peak of the album is the title track. The hermetic Blackstar takes us into dark rooms in front of distorting mirrors, on a long musical journey of jazz inspiration that partly recalls cult bands (though little known to the Italian public) like Gong, a ten-minute suite that sinks its claws into the raw flesh of the listener and can be defined as the masterpiece of the last Bowie.

Indeed, I would say, the musical masterpiece of recent years, along with the equally black, in color and themes, "Black Lake" by Bjork, which shares with this a grandiose and dark visual project.

The text, cryptic and full of mystic references and embellishments, brings us back to the secret rooms of the singer's unconscious, already mentioned, "in the villa of Ormen", among mysterious eyes and mysterious hands with a candle "at the center of it all" on the "day of execution".

Ormen is a Norwegian town, and its meaning is "serpent", and its inclusion in the text is a tribute to the Swedish writer Stig Dagerman, who died by suicide at 31 years old.

The song, already unsettling in itself, is accompanied by the video (which we previously mentioned) that preceded the album's release in November, a disturbing short movie of excellent cinematic quality (the director is Joan Renck) that refers us to another book, "Coraline," a fantasy novel by writer Neil Gaiman where one of the characters, "with button eyes" is nothing more than the mirror image (and thus opposite) of the protagonist's mother in a world of opposite mirrors, who feeds on the souls of her victims.

Bowie's prophetic blindness, a mirror image of his myth and his opposite, now free to see and depict his inner and artistic world without limits, to let it flow in his faithful and contrary reflection, is lost and returns later, when the singer, now free of the bandages, a priest of an occult religion, shows the viewer a book (emblem of knowledge) on the cover of which a black star (or pentacle) prominently shows itself, which seems to reveal a mystery that, however, remains.

The astronaut in the video (Major Tom from Space Oddity?) is now deceased, like an angel fallen from another dimension, his skull adorned with diamonds is the sacred object of a pagan cult of liberation, where bodies, made trembling by the disease of the material world, seek communion in a rite of esoteric liberation.

The girl who picks up the skull has a tail, she informs us that we are neither "here" nor "now" but have crossed the threshold of a mirror world (Coraline's mirror?). She reminds us, not coincidentally, of Jennifer Connely in "Labyrinth." In one frame, the black star is broken into several parts.

A twisted video laden with occult symbolism, sure to ignite conspiracy enthusiasts and religious fanatics who will see in this an avowed "hymn to the satanic."

Bowie, passionate as he was about esotericism, seems to want to do nothing to disabuse them, as in the past, when in Station to Station, he described a journey through the sephirot of the tree of life, "From Kether to Malkuth".

The man with button eyes, "the blinded prophet", will also return in the second video of the work, "Lazarus", an obvious reference to resurrection, to life beyond death, which makes the entire operation even more unsettling, if possible.

Here the artist is split: the sick man in the bed from whom the disease, the band with button eyes robs strength and vital energy, but grants superior sensory capabilities, and the artist, standing, who describes his last work of art before re-entering the wardrobe, a not-so-veiled metaphor of a coffin.

The signs of the illness are visible, not hidden at all. The camera lingers on the taut skin, the emaciated body, the deep and distant gaze at the same time.

These two pieces alone would be enough to declare an absolute masterpiece. But there's more. Worth noting is the musically more immediate piece, "Girl Loves Me", which does not spare, like the others, delirious and confused attacks in the text ("where the f***ing did Monday go?")

"Sue (Or in a Season of Crime)" is a piece with an elegant jazz taste, like others on the album, "I Can't Give Anything Away" is a fitting closure to the album, which neither adds to nor detracts from the previous chapters.

A cryptic, refined album, difficult to understand, which only refined palates will truly appreciate, and which owes its inevitable commercial success to the media clamor due to its author's passing.