Ziggy & Snape: Heroes For More Than One Day

What a grim start to 2016, losing David Bowie and Alan Rickman in one week. Ugh. 

Yes, I know, there were worse things that transpired in the world. Terrorist bombings in Instanbul and Jakarta. A tanking global economy. Donald Trump.  

But that doesn't diminish the impact or significance of their lives or their passing. I am firmly of the mind that if the human race is going to survive the 21st century, it will be the power of our individual and collective imaginations that get us there. And imagination's first and best playground has always been art.

So yeah, Bowie and Rickman matter. And it matters that they're gone.

I first fell in love with Bowie at age 13 with 1983's Let's Dance. Then I got to watch him strut and croon in the flesh during the Glass Spider tour. It was later that I finally dug into the vaults and discovered the full range of Ziggy weirdness and pre-Zig coolness that not only helped defined me personally but also my ideas of what music could be as a budding songwriter. Anything was possible and everything was permissible, especially if it liberated and expanded people's sense of their own personal and creative potential.

Bowie wasn't just a trend-setter, he was a permanent mind-alterer, the king of cerebral punkfunk, a radical social progressive, one of my "other Beatles", and yet also a fellow freak I felt I knew personally somehow. A ripple in the pop cultural cosmos that will go on for ages. 

Privately as it turns out, he was a man who wrestled with demons he was determined to conquer, learning from his mistakes and ultimately building a life around what was most important. Look at his relationship with his wife and children, his unflagging commitment to his art and his fans, his kindness to colleagues, his grace even with journalists. Listen to his 1983 interview with MTV or his 1999 chat with the BBC's Jeremy Paxman and you'll know what I mean. The guy knew what mattered and was eloquent in his description of exactly what that was. 

Even as he approached death, he was thoughtful enough to give us one last album (Blackstar) and video (Lazarus). A more complete, fully-lived life I've rarely seen. And this from a once-drug addled 70s rock star. (Note to self: Keep your mind open and your heart large; life's most important lessons could come from anywhere!)

Alan Rickman was of an apparently similar cloth: gracious to his co-stars, generous in his personal life, and avowed to make fuss of none of it.

His performances were legendary, from deliciously good bad guys (Die Hard, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves) and flawed good guys (Truly, Madly, Deeply, Sense and Sensibility, Love Actually, Bottle Shock) to grumpy extraterrestrials and suicidal robots (Dogma, Galaxy Quest, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) to the role that will no doubt define him for generations to come: Harry Potter's messiah-in-devil's-clothing, Severus Snape.

But like Bowie, he also understood how people should be treated. Said Daniel Radcliffe this morning,

"Alan Rickman is undoubtedly one of the greatest actors I will ever work with. He is also, one of the loyalest and most supportive people I've ever met in the film industry. He was so encouraging of me both on set and in the years post-Potter. I'm pretty sure he came and saw everything I ever did on stage both in London and New York. He didn't have to do that. I know other people who've been friends with him for much much longer than I have and they all say, 'If you call Alan, it doesn't matter where in the world he is or how busy he is with what he's doing, he'll get back to you within a day.'"

However, it was Rickman's belief in the transformative power of art that I resonate with most: 

"A film, a piece of theatre, a piece of music, or a book can make a difference. It can change the world."

I believe that. Art can change the world. But so can artists. Not only through their work, but by the manner in which they live their lives and the grace with which they treat those around them. May it be so among us who claim to be artists. In our rush to create, to get our work out there, and rise to greater heights, may we never forget that life's truest art is (in Bowie's own words), "just to love and be loved in return." 

In this regard above all others, Bowie and Rickman were true heroes. And for so much more than one day.