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Today we celebrate a fellow who treated identity the way most people treat hats; put one on, take it off, leave it on a chair, come back a different man. David Bowie.
Bowie didn’t just walk into a song, he arrived from somewhere else entirely. Outer space, backstage, the future, the mirror. You never quite knew. He sang like a man delivering messages he wasn’t sure he was allowed to open himself. And every time you thought you had him pinned down—bam—he’d slip out of the frame and leave you holding yesterday’s photograph.
David Bowie understood something early on: that rock ’n’ roll wasn’t just about sound, it was about shape. The shape of a face under a spotlight. The shape of fear, the shape of desire, the shape of what happens when you don’t recognize yourself anymore and decide to go with it anyway. Ziggy Stardust wasn’t just a character it was a warning label. A love letter from the end of the world. And that voice. It didn’t settle in one place. It leaned forward, leaned back, sometimes it hovered. On “Life on Mars?” it sounds like it’s climbing a staircase made of questions. On “Heroes,” it’s standing right up against the wall, telling you that you can be brave, not forever, maybe not even tomorrow, but just long enough to matter.
Bowie had a way of borrowing from everything without stealing. Soul, kabuki, Brecht, sci-fi paperbacks, German electronics humming like streetlights at midnight. He took it all, ran it through his own shadow, and handed it back rearranged. The Berlin records sound like postcards written from the inside of a man trying to disappear and succeeding just enough to be heard more clearly. And the thing is, underneath all the costumes, all the lightning bolts and painted eyes, there was a songwriter who knew how fragile people really are. “Ashes to Ashes,” “Rock ’n’ Roll Suicide,” “Word on a Wing.” These aren’t songs by someone hiding. These are songs by someone showing you the mask and the face underneath it at the same time. David Bowie made it okay to be unfinished. To be strange. To wake up one morning and decide the old version of you had said all it needed to say. He didn’t tell you who to be. He just proved you didn’t have to stay who you were.
So here’s to Bowie, the man who fell to earth and kept right on falling, beautifully. Turn the lights down, turn the volume up, and remember you’re not lost. You’re just in the middle of changing.
ink, watercolor on paper
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