Wistful

The Greeks have a neat word, “nostos” (νοστος), which means ‘yearning’ or ‘missing your home/family/cooking/country’ etc. It’s kind of un-translateable. They are good at that kind of conceptual stuff. The Germans do some good things too with vocabulary. I remember the holidays reps in Greece years ago used to ‘long for’ a bath! The little things.

Bowie wrote a song for Blackstar called Wistful. It’s a bit like that word ‘nostos.’ Perhaps he was starting to feel a bit concerned about his health. It is now assumed to be the track, No Plan (not quite right yet), eventually released as an extra for the Lazarus package. He’d already been singing about bluebirds and other reminiscences, so it’s not surprising he would at some point refer to his mortality. Barnbrook, the designer of the album cover, relates the notion of a black hole sucking everything in, the finality, the end. Bowie would probably have enjoyed the irony of the starman being sucked into a black hole. No Plan is a great Bowie song. He uses ‘no’ and ‘nothing’ a lot. I write about his concept of nothing elsewhere. It’s a recurrent philosophical concept.
Again, we need to tread carefully here, since this song was part of the Lazarus theatrical package and written for the musical. It’s likely the to be a Newton song, not a Bowie reference. When We First Met is also included. Someone on twitter thought it was Bowie and Iman ranting! Interpretation is fascinating sometimes.