Bowie or Bach

annalise ross

“Bowie or Bach?” the angel asks.

I blink my steamy eyes, wishing, for far from the first time, that I still had a physical form, one that could properly express my confusion to a being unaccustomed to human reactions. “Excuse me?”

“Bowie or Bach?” the creature repeats.

“What are you asking?”

The angel glows in annoyance, eye-dotted rings glaring, rotating. “Which artist do you admire more, Bowie or Bach?”

“I like both.”

Wrong answer. “What do you mean you like both?” it snaps.

“They’re not really comparable, are they?” I reply. Self-preservation tells me to choose one and escape the celestial being’s wrath. My big mouth tells me to keep talking. So I continue. “They’re completely different.”

“Are they? You humans seem very similar.”

“They are,” I answer excitedly. I haven’t had a proper debate since I was alive. “For one thing, they lived three hundred years apart.”

“That isn’t very long.”

“It is to us.”

“Is it? Your species has been on Earth far longer than that.”

“Yes, okay,” I admit, “but we aren’t talking ancient history here, we’re talking Western music. Baroque and glam rock. Somehow one leads to the other, though they don’t seem to have anything in common.”

“They are fairly similar,” the angel answers. “Vocal cords, physical instruments, frequencies. That’s all human music is.”

“You’re wrong, first off, but I think you’re missing the point. Their styles are completely different. Do you think Bach could do Starman as Ziggy Stardust? People had just admitted the literal universe didn’t revolve around them! He couldn’t even imagine a rock-and-roll alien or spiders from Mars. He’d probably die on the spot if someone suggested it.”

The angel blinks. “Johannes Sebastian Bach died of a stroke.”

“It’s an expression, man.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Never mind.”

The angel rolls its million eyes, then sighs. “So you would prefer to meet Bowie?”

My next witty remark dies on my metaphorical tongue as my invisible jaw drops. I take a breath to steady myself, certain I misheard the being’s words, that some element is lost in translation between angel-ese, or whatever it speaks, and English, before I realize I don’t need to breathe anymore. Still, it helps. I continue. “Meet? Like, talk to him?”

“Yes,” the angel answers, exasperated. I can tell it’s getting tired of my games, but I’ve been waiting for something interesting for so long, and it looks like I’m about to get my wish. “Each soul gets to meet one person of their choosing. Providing that person is already deceased, of course. We’ve had cases of humans trying to exact their final revenge through the program. Interesting how they would rather cause others pain than bring themselves joy.”

I let it feel smart and philosophical about its musings on the inexplicable behavior of humanity for a second before I try to clear things up. I’m nice like that.

“But why Bowie or Bach?” I ask. “Why not… Einstein, or King Tut, or, I mean, Jesus was a human at one point, right? What about all of them?”

“They’re all busy. There are many souls in heaven.”

“So you don’t actually get to choose whoever you want?”

“The program has its limits, but you appear to like both, am I correct? Whatever you choose, you will not be unhappy.”

“But… they’re both legends! I mean, Bach’s Bach, one of the greatest composers of all time. And Bowie’s…” I try to come up with something a little more eloquent. I can’t. “Bowie’s Bowie! He was revolutionary!”

“Many people were far more revolutionary than he,” the angel scoffs.

“I don’t know, man,” I reply. Funny. Calling an angel man. “He was pretty incredible. He bent societal laws of gender, sexuality, even identity. He remade himself in every album, taught generations of young people to be happy with who they were, to celebrate their differences and accept others for theirs. And his music, god, it makes you feel things. I mean, it was the soundtrack of my childhood, high school, I had my first kiss to Moonage Daydream, you know… then college, and… well… I guess my whole life, really. Usually Ziggy Stardust, of course, that was his best album. I think I wore through three records’ worth. But everything he did was so in the moment, so experimental, I mean, the Berlin Trilogy? Something like that could only come out of the person he was at that exact moment, running from a drug addiction to the most politically tense city in the world…”

I keep talking. I don’t know what I’m saying at this point. It just feels so good to talk after so much silence.

I think I’m talking about Bowie’s role in societal acceptance of bisexuality, or maybe about the time I listened to Rock and Roll Suicide on repeat, verging on a mental breakdown, just to hear the words You’re not alone, not alone, not alone, when the angel interrupts. “I don’t have time for this.”

“I thought time was a blur to you.”

“Yet it is very real, and there are many other people I must speak with. It’s obvious you want to meet Bowie. I’ll send him in.”

“Hold on, I didn’t say that.”

“Didn’t you?”

“Well…”

I embark on another rant, this time focused on the fact that Bach is Bach, half-crazed in my efforts to keep my audience captive, to avoid one more second of solitude.

In life, I had a natural sense of time. I could always get the cake out of the oven at the perfect moment by feel, I could figure out exactly how late I was to work, how long until lunch, or midnight.

Here, it’s gone. I lay out Bach’s personal history, how he came to world renown (people didn’t really appreciate him until the 19th century, I explain to the angel’s blank stare), then how his Baroque style turned into Classical, into Romantic, into the 20th century and its explosions of sound and style and genre, technology and instruments, blues and Elvis and the creation of Rock, and war and change and cultural shift and finally Bowie and self-expression and joy and listening to records on the living room carpet, and maybe a second passes, maybe a year, maybe a millennium, and the angel spins, and spins, faster, faster, faster, and—

“Enough!”

A shockwave blasts through my soul as it freezes, suspended in time and space, completely still. Each eye glows like the center of a galaxy.

“YOU. MUST. CHOOSE.”

Its voice booms in my core, a voice that should shout Do not be afraid before it speaks, because I am very, very afraid. But something in me, maybe the recklessness I miss so much, maybe a wish for something more than death, something where I’ll simply cease to exist, something where I won’t feel so alone, makes me whisper: “How can I?”

“YOU MUST.”

“How can I?” I repeat. “Bach is the root. Bowie, the product. How can I choose?”

“Bach is no more the root than Bowie is the product,” it replies, its voice calmer, its rings starting to stir. “Millions came before Bach. Millions have already come after Bowie, and billions will in the future. Neither individual is more important than the other. Both were simply blips in time.”

“Then why does it matter so much? What if I choose neither?”

“Then you choose neither. Nothing happens, but you will be costing yourself happiness.”

“For how long?”

“Only a moment. But something is better than nothing. You could already be happy if you had chosen sooner. You care so much about making the right choice that you are paralyzing yourself. In your indecision, you deny yourself joy.”

I must choose one, I decide then. I’ve been alone for so long, and this angel will leave me soon. I don’t want to be alone again. But which one? Bowie or Bach?

“What if I choose wrong?” I ask.

“You can’t.”

“But what if I do?”

I feel small. The angel watches me for what could be a second, a year, a millennium, before something in its million eyes shifts and it looks at me as it never has. Almost softly.

“There is no wrong choice,” it whispers. “Either will make you happy, for a time. Possibly even a long time. No matter which you pick, time will keep going. You are eternal now. You will live infinite lifetimes more. This one choice doesn’t matter.”

“But happiness?” I whisper back. “If it’s so momentary. Does happiness matter?”

“What do you think?”

Yes, I almost say. Always.

Annalise Ross is a Junior at National Cathedral School in Washington DC and a portfolio student at Writopia Lab. She mostly writes literary fiction, drawing inspiration from music, history, and the world around her.