Bowie's lasting legacy of imagination

Washington

SO how could we be so stupid? David Bowie has barely been seen in public, doesn't do interviews, and then he puts out the video for a new song, Lazarus, in which he's sickly thin, in a hospital bed, with his eyes covered. "Look up here, I'm in heaven," he sings in the song's opening.

As fictitious movie producer Ben Geisler shouts in Barton Fink: "Wallace Beery! Wrestling picture! What do you need, a road map?" Except we made our deal with Bowie a long time ago. His gift for telling a story and inventing the characters and universe driving it - and our willingness to suspend disbelief - became our immutable pact. Why would we doubt him now?

Images of death and destruction have been elemental in Bowie's work, from his Ziggy and the Thin White Duke personas to his Outside and Heathen albums. If there was a time to worry, it was after his heart attack in 2004 and subsequent public withdrawal. Then our hero returned, out of nowhere, to make 2013's The Next Day, a record strong enough to register with his best work, and followed on Jan 8 with the adventurous Blackstar. Yes, L…