Renaud Cojo "After All", 2017 (David Bowie Cover, 1970)

One year ago, on the eleventh of January, as I woke up the sun had died out. A dark planet had taken its place. A star, yes, but forever stuck inside my own universe. I had lost my bearings. The day before, the man who lived inside David Bowie’s body, with all his ghosts, had ended his earthly existence. In an ultimate graceful act he had put together in a last opus the motley pieces of a puzzle, the catalyst of every assumption, every desir, every secret.
There is no such thing as memory. Only life lays shadows like so many souls that float with our irrepressible energy to compose. They ignite our aspirations. Memory is a lottery that draws the chips of fortune at random like tiny traps. On the contrary, the death of the loved one weaves everyday the evident threads of shared moments of connivance that were lost in the tumult of life.
Even if the collapse of a mountain causes much more commotion than the rise of a promising one, I savour this presence to the orphan, like the cup of victory. An invisible Odyssey.
I live, with these careful moves, this face serene against distubed spirits. These thirty-four concerts I have attended, each breath and each mirage I have kept to myself.
My trips were as many conquests.
And the music too, whose slightest melody is a milestone in the building of a life-my life.
I don’t remember anything, because it has all been processed into me.
I have never met David Bowie, even if we happened to be less than three metres from each other on a couple of occasions. For thirty-seven years, I have been through his works and the mysterious echoes of his influence on my close surroundings. His voice so present. His works, so immense.
I had to answer him on this anniversary, in the way he had taken the world by surprise on the same day in 2013 after a ten years long silence.
Such a long silence,but such a moving reunion too.
« After all », because disenchantment, emptiness, solitude pervade this piece, and are after all, the foundations of this monument.
My grateful thanks to all those who have helped make this eulogy :
Louise Lecavalier, Frédéric Tavernini, Laurent Rojol, Christian Quermalet, Joseph Doherty, Marianne Couranjou, Zita Couranjou,