Stepping out into a spacious odyssey
Following in David Bowie’s famous footsteps as part of pilgrimage to New York City exhibition
NEW YORK — There are few artists who merit a true pilgrimage, but if there’s one luminary worth travelling for, it’s David Bowie.
With the final stop of the Victoria and Albert Museum’s experiential David Bowie Is retrospective exhibition now on view at the Brooklyn Museum until July 15, I knew a pilgrimage was in order.
What I wanted was to plan a visit that would allow me to see New York as Bowie did — where he found stability after a restless search for comfort and anonymity within the confines of art and fame.
I devoted a single, intense day to my pilgrimage, scouring through Bowie’s interviews to not only get a sense of the places he frequented in New York but also to try to imagine what his routines might be. I decided to set off from Washington Square Park a few blocks from his home. Bowie referred to the park as “the emotional history of New York in a quick walk.”
Circumnavigating the park allowed me to settle into people-watching, something at which I suspect Bowie was adept. Frequented by Bowie, it’s a pleasingly cluttered spot.
Fortified with caffeine, I turned my steps toward the perpetually traffic-clogged block he lived on, taking a few moments to stand in front of the building and crane my neck for a glimpse of his rooftop home.
With a 3 p.m. timed entry for the exhibition in Brooklyn looming, I hopped onto the C Train at Spring Street to head down to the Brooklyn Bridge pedestrian walkway near City Hall. Catching a ride on New York’s subway system is, actually, an appropriate addition to spending a day in Bowie’s shoes. The Scottish novelist William Boyd once wrote in Harper’s Bazaar that Bowie revealed to him, somewhat delightedly, that he was able to navigate New York’s public transit system anonymously by carrying a Greek newspaper, thereby convincing curious subway riders that he was just some Greek guy with a resemblance to the Duke.
Once in Brooklyn, the exhibition I’d wanted to see since it first opened in London in 2013 was finally within my grasp.
This wasn’t my first time hitting the road in pursuit of David Bowie. The summer of my 16th year, I donned a brown polyester uniform five days a week and trudged up the street to sling biscuits and mix up mashed potatoes at Kentucky Fried Chicken. For other teens, this job might have been to fund a car; for me, it was all about Bowie.
It was 1983 — the year of Bowie’s bestselling album, Let’s Dance — and I was, unabashedly, unashamedly, what people called a Bowie Girl. As the Serious Moonlight tour criss-crossed the globe, I cadged an invitation to visit a friend of mine in Houston in mid-August and started saving my hard-earned money for plane fare and concert tickets.
This time around, my heart skipped a beat as I walked up to the Brooklyn Museum, knowing that 400 items from the David Bowie Archive were waiting inside, providing an exceptional glimpse into the creative process of an artist whose work I’ve followed since my tween years. Museum attendants handed out headphones for the multi-generational crowds to wear while moving through the exhibit, immersed in interviews and music. We pored over hand-drawn stage designs and diary entries, surrounded by original Aladdin Sane costumes made by Kansai Yamamoto, video projections spanning five decades, and a demonstration of the custom text randomization software Bowie co-invented to help combat writer’s block.
I’ll admit it: Tears were shed. Later, a Bowie-inspired cocktail from BKW by Brooklyn Winery at the end of the day took care of any residual aches and pains.