Space
It is important to address the idea and significance of space within the trilogy. It could be said
that Bowie approaches 'space' in an interesting way throughout his work as he no longer creates
his own fictional space within the songs that his characters inhabit. Bowie begins to shift his
focus towards the vast, desolate landscape laid before him in Berlin. The context in which we
look at ‘space’ in the trilogy addresses how the ‘space’ in between what we see and what we
hear, whether it be in Bowie’s image or in his music, helps us theorize our understanding of the
world around us.
The Berlin Trilogy speaks of space in terms of tourism. Berlin is now ‘sacred’ because Bowie
has inhabited it. The spaces themselves are otherwise relatively ordinary which explains why so
many fans make the pilgrimage to Berlin. Bowie that makes space special as "space is haunted
with memories, myths and ideas of the past by those somehow connected to it, while
simultaneously empty of meaning without prior knowledge or personal investment" 25
Moreover, there does appear to be a strange sort of fetishism surrounding the normality of
Bowie’s life in Berlin, which is particularly interesting when juxtaposed with the legendary
image that fans envision of Bowie. This explains why moving to Berlin in the 1970’s had such a
profound impact culturally, despite the fact that the life that Bowie was living in Berlin was a
very distorted view of normality. It was stripped back by his excessive standards, but he didn’t
have to concern himself with the mundane tasks of keeping a home or working to pay the bills
– because he was still David Bowie.
25 Sean Redmond, Enchanting David Bowie (Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2015).