Bruce Bisset: Leave the capsule if you dare!

Bruce Bisset.

Art concerns itself with exposing and exploring innovation and change, discovering whole vistas of ideas never revealed before or never illuminated in such a way as to present an otherworldly grace and beauty and frisson of intrigue that draws an "Ah!" of revelation.

It is an artist's job to reach deep within their soul and out to the furthest extent of the universe, and bring forth or bring back some polished treasure which astounds and captivates those who behold it. Do that, and you fulfil the role.

Do it surpassingly well, again and again, and you can be counted amongst the greats.

Regardless of what you may think of modern music in general, David Bowie was such an artist, well-deserving the sadly overused honorific, "great". His career was a series of starkly different offerings, the only constant being change in the music he wrote and the persona he adopted to unveil it.

Not for him the careful development of a hallmark sound leading to a peak in its creative niche; he burst assumptions and sprang full-bodied new directions on his audience every time he made a record.

No other musician has done that.

Many have dabbled with a change of style; many have introduced innovative stylistic change; few have succeeded in making more than one "sound" their own. Bowie created, and succeeded with, many. From glam rock to synthopop, psychedelia to funk, he found ways of making each genre uniquely his own.

As the excellent documentary screened on Prime on Tuesday showed, Bowie's unusual chord progressions and intensely exacting vocal arrangements surprised and excited his peers, and his partnerships with a variety of them through the years produced music beyond what they had conceived before.

Save for his voice, few of Bowie's albums bore even a passing resemblance to any other. That was his genius.

It may seem trite to say so, but talent like his can only be unleashed fully when an individual is permitted to create as they wish.

By which I mean, is nurtured and educated to think, not to regurgitate; to dream, not to blank or bliss out; to explore, not to hide; to wonder, not to accept. We must give our children permission to be all that they can be, so that they can be; any constraint more than for their own safety and sanity is a barrier to true self-expression.

How many talents are squashed or inhibited because we presume to teach our children to think as we do, do as the world would have them do, to be locked-in cogs and not free-wheeling engines?

Sure, that's a scary concept, one that will have most parents shaking their heads. But it's really only scary because at base, we dislike change. So we discourage it.

That's evident in the way State education is becoming more, not less, standardised, with by-rote learning and core-subject emphasis the prescribed practise for "teaching" our children. The ruling elite want adults they can control, manipulated to fit the parts designed for them, and naught else.

That creatives "escape" to boldly delve where few or none have delved before, and create great art, has all to do with strength of will and little (with lucky exceptions) to do with their formal learning environment.

To reach for the stars, first we must look up.

But we don't know how to properly value art - or freedom - do we.

The counter-culture that gave us David Bowie is a long way from today's manufactured "celebrities"; the only thing worse than not seeing his like again would be if no one missed it.

That's the right of it.

- Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet.