About January 2016: And then Bowie died

In 2009, I wrote a book about the decade that, in strict calendrical terms, was then stumbling to a close. I suggested, however, that the period of time I was describing really began on a blue New York morning when the first plane hit the first tower and ended seven years later only a few blocks away when the US economy imploded in a puff of, if not logic, then sudden and unexpected self-awareness. (This of course allowed me to suggest that anything that happened in the few months between my completing the book and 31 December, 2009 were essentially irrelevant). The alternative is what the historian Ferdinand Mount called decaditis, the assumption that human events pay scrupulous attention to Gregorian norms, and suddenly decide to behave differently because they find themselves in the Noughties or the 1920s or whenever.

And the same, of course applies to individual years, but every now and then something happens on or around the beginning of January that sets the tone for the next 12 months. And if we follow the conventional Dad Rock narrative that 2016 was The Year When Lots Of Famous People Especially Pop Stars Died (see here to decide whether that’s true) then it pretty much followed the rules. In retrospective we could be wilfully contrarian and say that the process began on 28 December of the previous year, when Lemmy growled his last, but let’s stick with Bowie, which means the year started on 10 January, or maybe more accurately 11 January because that’s when so many of us found out. 

I got the news at work, in the editorial department of an Asian lifestyle magazine. Idly checking out Facebook, I chanced upon an article from the Hollywood Reporter, posted in the Fantasy Death League site. Shock, denial, sadness, all the usual reactions. The problem was, that I was surrounded by 20-somethings who weren’t entirely sure who Bowie was, and certainly didn’t get why I seemed so stunned by his demise. For the rest of the day I consoled myself in the virtual world, connecting with friends of a similar vintage who knew what he meant, who had danced to his rhythms and those of his acolytes. I don’t think I did much work. Something had been reset, tweaked, knocked out of place, within me and within so many people I knew.

Because maybe 2016 really did start roughly on schedule. Lots of people died (Pierre Boulez, Alan Rickman, Terry Wogan in the same month) but I don’t think it was until April (Prince, Victoria Wood) that the whole Death Year thing was apparent. And then Brexit happened and then Trump happened and here we all are a decade later. But what we didn’t necessarily realise at the time was that Bowie’s death was a curtain-raiser not just for a miserable year but for a succession of calamities that extended well, well beyond its conventional boundaries. In some ways, it’s still 2016. As someone remarked a bit later, back when Twitter was still vaguely human: 

If I just assume that I have been having a weird dream, which started with Bowie dying, then the last 31 months or so make more sense 

Where we find ourselves now is Bowie’s world, and we just live in it.

PS: Of course, this is subjective. There are people even younger than those who were my colleagues in 2016 and their memories of that year are rather different. As this article suggests, 

Looking at Instagram, around 2016, there was no carousel posts... People were posting a picture of their avocado, and it wasn't so performative... There weren't short-form reels, so there wasn't that algorithmic kind of fatigue that people have now. 

and 

To be honest, 2016 was the year of Snapchat stories... If I go back through my Snapchat memories, it's pretty much all from 2016. Instagram was all about photos, we didn't have to worry about Reels, we didn't have to worry about updating our stories all the time. It was just a simple, chilled life. 

and only after we’ve dealt with that important stuff, in passing:

It was a particularly gloomy year for celebrity deaths, with legends including David Bowie, Prince, George Michael and Alan Rickman all passing away. And 2016 also saw some major world events - such as the UK Brexit referendum and Donald Trump's first US election win - that continue to divide people, whether they celebrated or despaired at the result. 

PPS: Or for a more conventional explanation to those baffled colleagues, not to mention the Gen Z-ers worrying about Reels, here’s Martin James, a few hours after the news broke: 

Throw a pebble into the pool of popular culture over the last 50 years and Bowie is never too many ripples from the centre. The Beatles scratched the surface, but Bowie excavated it, renovated and tore it all down again, just to start all over again.

PPPS: And my own contribution in the aftermath:

...maybe what we’re really grieving for is the fact that however often we paint on that Aladdin Sane flash, we are not and never will be Bowie.