No Plan

Tomorrow, January 10th, David Bowie will have been gone a year. His boundless creativity and hats-a-plenty that he wore through his nearly 50 year career boxed up and shoved away into the back of the closet. His last gift to the world of the living was Blackstar, a beautiful and haunting record about mortality and finding peace with where life stops you, was truly a definitive “period” at the end of the paragraph that was not only the character of David Bowie, but the man David Jones. I’m sure had cancer not caught up with him we’d be looking forward to yet another David Bowie release. Or maybe a Tony award for his performance in the Broadway show Lazarus.

We’ll never know.

As is the case when an artist passes while still very much active, creative, and making what put them in the spotlight in the first place, David Bowie has some unreleased works stocked up. Some of these works have been released as the No Plan EP. These were songs that had been recorded during the Blackstar sessions and were included on the Lazarus S/T. The first track, “No Plan”, is a beautiful and moving song that seems to embody the same spirit of finding peace with what you’ve done and accomplished at the inevitable end. Lines like “I’m lost in screens of sound”, “All of the things that are my life”, and “Here is my place without a plan” embody the headspace of a man at peace with what’s coming. There’s a melancholy lean for sure, but Mr. Jones is ready for whatever is coming.

I suppose we can take solace in that. If the man given the death sentence is singing up till the end of his life, then there’s no reason for the rest of us to continue mourning the loss. We should celebrate the gifts left behind.

Right?