GO WITH THE LOW
A week with and without Bowie
I’ ve lost heroes before. Lou Reed’s death was a hard, sudden slap and Allen Ginsberg’s death made me cry like I’d lost an old uncle. But the death of David Bowie was difficult to process. Bowie seemed immortal, not entirely of this Earth. So how could he die?
As a teenager, I was obsessed with him in a way I don’t think I’ve ever come close to feeling about anyone since. It was like the way you loved your first girlfriend or boyfriend. Stupidly. Clumsily. Bowie was a secret handshake, something the cool kids with good taste knew about. He was a single word, “Bowie,” spraypainted on the wall of the gym.
I covered every inch of my bedroom walls with posters, taped askew in that way we did in the ’80s. I bought German bootlegs, biographies, and a half dozen T-shirts including one, from The Serious Moonlight tour, that glowed in the dark. I even forced myself to sit through Labyrinth, a film in which Bowie has hair like one of the girls from Bananarama and stars opposite puppets. And I hated puppets.
As an adult, I have a few of his songs mixed in on playlists, but I haven’t actually sat down and re-listened to the full albums in years. But this week, I did and was awash with memories.
Monday. Diamond Dogs I was fascinated by the album cover, a painting of Bowie with the body of a dog, and would spend hours wondering what it would feel like to be half Bowie, half dog. Would I eat dog food, or Quaaludes?
Tuesday. Hunk Dory “Life on Mars” made me feel like Bowie was gazing down on all the problems of mankind while seated in the clouds, sipping champagne in a mink coat and feeling bad about all the suffering. But not too bad.
Wednesday. Pinups I’d always wanted to use Bowie’s cover of “Sorrow” for the beginning of a movie: The credits roll and the song starts to play. Close up on the protagonist (me, of course) eating a poutine in the driver’s seat of a car pulled over at the side of the road in the middle of the night. That was really the only scene I had.
Thursday. Ziggy Stardust As a teen I’d listen to “Lady Stardust” and imagine it was an homage to Billie Holiday. But in my heart, I knew it was really an homage to himself.
Friday. Low I’d lie in bed listening to “Be My Wife” on my 15- pound Walkman, imagining myself one day performing the song on a piano (an instrument I did not play) to my fiancée. I recently learned that Bowie recorded this whole album while living on heroine and milk. I think he weighed about five pounds.
Saturday. Let’s Dance His fashion sense during this period made a big impact on me. I even went through an unfortunate period in which, like Bowie, I wore suspenders and a belt at the same time. You’d think it’d ensure my never getting pantsed. It did not.
Sunday. Heroes If I could have any song be the theme to my podcast, it’d be “Heroes.” The word “heroes” starts off sounding ironic, but ends up sounding so sincere it’s heartbreaking. In its way, the song encapsulates the way we view our heroes perfectly.