Bowie playing to be. La narrazione e il raffinato gioco della rockstar senza soggetto

David Bowie played with Rock music treating it like a vital form of expression even if still unripe, and in some ways underdeveloped. Therefore, like any other form of art, it could be treated through a process of re-reading, and through a new analysis and metalinguistic point of view. To do so, he became a musician: he loved composing, recording in the studio and performing live. He gave each of these phases an innovative and transformative power, looking with great analytical attention to his precursors. He imagined alternative routes, feeding on cultural sources which primarily included the theatre, which provided him a broader view of the performance and of the identity of the rock musician, and then literature, cultivated music, cinema, visual arts. The Ziggy Stardust operation was conceived in this direction: a self-reflexive subject based on a musician who talks about being a rock star, while at the same time putting himself on stage in person and taking on the guise of his just created alter ego. A game of mirrors which, amplified by the media and by their visual and narrative mechanisms, got immediate feedback. The fictional dimension in Bowie landed well beyond the space of the stage; at the same time, he denied the need for a rock musician to stage his own intimacy and one's own experience. It was his narration of ideal characters (more or less fictional) that had to get on stage so that they might act as a possible model for the audience, in a theatrical and almost symbolist way. The artistic career of Bowie encompassed performances, emotions and the same body charge that Rock music could carry, enriching the latter with much denser content, without losing sight of the ironic and simply playful component. The musical concept is, beyond all, the way through which his identity was consolidated in contemporary culture, succeeding in making crossovers and fusions of genres, especially among Rock and Soul-Dance music: cultural bridges that have opened really innovative ways and have left a deep mark in contemporary popular culture.