Are we losing the power to write?
We are losing the wish and the will to write in the Twenty-First Century. 
I refer to the art of handwriting. Handwriting words requires a degree of connection with our emotions … when we move … when we move our pen … in times past we expressed emotion … our strokes jagged … or spiky … or looped and long-tailed … Remember when you wrote with a flourish … or you wrote in anger and rage?
David Bowie’s song lyrics are all written by hand. Space Oddity. Rock and Roll Suicide. Starman. Drafts or re-drafts … final drafts? The labelling is not exact, but with few crossings out these are today like sacred texts. Hand-written. Profound. On Friday, 22nd March, at a Preview for Friends of the V&A (Victoria and Albert Museum), London, I wandered as though on a pilgrimage with others ― a packed homage to a human genius living still, to this day, above and beyond.
Gobsmacking reverence
People transported by reverence, awe, respect, memories and remembrances, all looking ― to use modern-day parlance ― gobsmacked. The kaleidoscopic range of references reminded me of the multitudinous references that Walt Disney surrounded himself with ― the warp and weft of the creative cloth ― the finest of fabrics other mortals can not weave.
In praise of the pen
We simply cannot do with a computer keyboard what we can do with a pen … be it a quill, a fountain pen, a Biro or a pencil. David Bowie wrote with a ballpoint pen. These hand-written lyrics are now glass-protected.
Information-exploring
David Bowie loves the potency of vocabulary, and speaks with a lexicon of words that reflects the wide-ranging explorer of cultural and occultural information that he was. An explorer with no access then to internet explorer. There was no keyboard (other than the typewriter), and the only tablets were those of the ancients ― those tablets of stone. As I peered over glass-secured sheets of words ― gritty and real ― lasting and ever-lasting, it seemed that David Bowie held the same mystery, and magnificence of those who made their mark with hammer and chisel.
As society has taken up the keyboard, and recently the tablet computer, and the smartphone, we have let go of words. We have diminished words to their lowest common denominator, and we have fallen prey to the abbreviation: CU@4, and CU L8R. In Bowie’s hand-written lyrics, there are no abbreviations in sight.
The Joy of Verbal Poetry
And when interviewed about his use of a word generator, a modern-day take on the Dadaist way of creating surrealist poetry ― think ‘poetic party-popper’ ― David Bowie explains with such gentle humility and verbal poetry. His is an English language that stretches the mind, speaking at a time when words mattered, and the choice of words mattered. For information and an opportunity to explore the Dada Poetry Generator:
It seems to me that there has been a dumbing down in our society. David Bowie wrote those ever-fresh lyrics at a time when, instead of watering down words and phrases and vocabularies, newspapers and literature would assume that their readers were intelligent enough to learn and understand the meaning and definition of a word or phrase or sentence, and so feel flattered and were well informed. David Bowie reveals how our mighty texts have fallen, and with his latest oeuvre, no doubt will remind us all of how words inspire, and encourage us to aspire to learn more.
The Power of Words
Words can champion us! Words can describe us! Words can celebrate us! Words can support us in excavating the deepest foundations of our soul.
David Bowie’s retrospective at the V&A is a spiritual tour. Do you wish to take a modern-day pilgrimage to another Mecca? David Bowie Is… is it.
And get out the Roget’s Thesaurus! More on that topic on another day…
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