My Beachside Office

Poldhu Café, Cornwall,  a place of inspiration and good coffee. This is my beachside office, where I gathered the inspiration for my novel Mr de Sousa's Legacy.

David Bowie is............a bit of a disappointment really.

I've just come back from London and amongst other things I went to see the the David Bowie is Exhibition at the V&A and was very disappointed.

 

The first thing I saw was his famous Tokyo top bodysuit, which measured about a metre across and I thought, ‘I’m in for a treat here’.

 

Oh how wrong could I be? The design of the exhibition felt quite bewildering. The first thing I came across was an installation of oranges, and a film of the artists Gilbert and George! The room was packed to the gunwales with people all queuing to look at, well, not a lot actually. I stood in the queue to take a peep into a couple of spy holes in a heavy wooden door, only to see, an artist studio in one and a Buddha in the other.  Feeling very claustrophobic and hot I decided not to continue queuing with the hordes and make my own way around the exhibition, nipping in and out of openings only to find the odd film about the Moon landings which had some reference to Major Tom, but whether it was because I couldn’t see some of the exhibits properly through the mountain of people I just felt, some of it didn’t seem to have any reference to David Bowie.  After being in there 15 minutes the next hoards of people came into the room and the feeling of being hemmed in was quite unbearable.

As I turned a corner I found a few people flipping through his albums as though they were browsing in HMV and had an overwhelming feeling of boredom. Things brightened up a bit when I came across a few photo shoots of how he came to choose the cover photo on Aladdin Sane. There was also a tiny sketch that became the album cover for Diamond Dogs, and story-boards that took you through his thinking. There was also a crayon-drawn cover for the single of Ashes to Ashes which was exactly replicated in the finished product.

There were some of his costumes but not the kimono he wore at his last ‘Ziggy’ performance, which was a huge disappointment to me. This was and still is the most memorable costume he ever wore to me. I had headphones on and as I stepped near the exhibits Howard Goodall commentary faded in and out giving clipped versions of his life, but most of the time I couldn't get near enough to make the commentary kick in . His songs were played is tiny snippets and there was a whole wall of posters advertising things like Lionel Bart’s musical ‘Oliver’!?  and ‘Cabaret’ yes, I can see the connection there.

 

Half way through the exhibition things became a little ghoulish. Kansai Yamamoto's geometrical bodysuits, Alexander McQueen's distressed union flag frockcoat, and a ghastly pair of platform-heeled turquoise boots were modeled by a succession of white, blank-faced dummies that look like statues in a Greek temple, while Ziggy Stardust seemed to be laid to rest in a glazed coffin.

What I did like were the lyrics, there were loads of them, some written quite neatly but others scrawled or typed, as he apparently experimented with the William Burroughs ‘cut-up’ method. His lyrics, which were the highlight for me, were written on notepaper, graph paper, and scrap paper, with lots of crossings out and amendments.  To a Bowie fan like me, these pieces of paper are holy relics.

The exhibition was meant to take 90 minutes to go round, after 35 I had had enough, I know I missed a great deal due to the enormous amount of people in there, consequently, I came out feeling very deflated. 

I don’t know what I expected, but I know I didn’t get it.

Ann E Brockbank is the Author of Mr de Sousa's legacy, available to download from the Amazon Kindle Store.

 

My new novel Mr de Sousa's Legacy will be published on 5th July 2013

I am proud to announce my new novel will be available to download from Kindle
on Friday 5th July 2013.
If you like a good old Cornish based love story in a similar vein to Santa Montefiore or Rosamunde Pilcher, this may be something that appeals to you.
Let me take you on a journey, from Cornwall, to Tuscany, Yorkshire, to war torn Devon, Mr de Sousa’s Legacy spans the decades in an intense and epic love story…..a perfect summer read.