When I was thirteen, queer and completely unaware of it, growing up in small town Ontario where there was nothing, no hint of any place for someone like me, my older brother, for reasons unbeknownst to me, went through a musical exploratory phase and acquired a large quantity of David Bowie’s records from the 1970s.
Then he bought a new stereo. I inherited his old one, and I started raiding his record collection. I liked a lot of the stuff he liked–many of my earliest, fondest tastes in entertainment came direct from him. (Most memorably, Star Trek tos–thanks brother!) I borrowed his Alan Parsons Project record and his Peter Gabriel stuff, but I kept gravitating toward the Bowie.
I would listen to these records over and over, staring at the weird-eyed dude on the cover, trying to understand the gritty, undeniably different life he was singing about, the sad lost quality that seemed to go hand in hand with over-the-top exuberance.
Somehow, even though the things he wrote about were often dark and painful, his music still clung to a sense that it was all worth it, the pain was worth it, being weird was worth it, confronting people with their own hangups was worth it. There was magic there, and the promise that, if you managed to get the formula just right, it would turn you into something totally transcendent.
One day in grade eight, during the miserable 40 minute bus ride home, a pukey little jerk named Steven was beaking off about my favourite rock and roll freak show. I pricked up my ears, of course, interested to hear what someone else had to say. I was ready to change my mind about Steven. I mean most of my peers didn’t have any idea who David Bowie was.
“David Bowie’s a faggot,” he announced from the back of the bus, evoking laughter or more probably fart noises from everyone around him.
I’m sure I took every opportunity to shun him after that, but he surely did have my attention with that bold claim.
“Oh really?” I thought, immediately even more interested in my musical guru than I had been before.
Okay so I was thirteen. I had no real idea of all of the implications of that slur or what it was all about, but I buckled down, and like a good nerd, I did my research.
I read bios and I combed through lyrics and I paid attention as Bowie sang about sex with men and sex with women and loving men and loving women and being weird and sad and turned on and switched on and being in a place of ambiguities and alive in all the contradictions. I loved him for all of it.
I remained a fan through the pop transformation of the 80s and I listened through the Tin Machine years and the Outside and Heathen years. I admired everything about his ability to stay relevant and to keep exploring and to advance his art and to never, no never, grow stale.
He kept making music and being awesome in a genre that is undeniably owned by and driven by youth, right up until the end. All the way through to Blackstar, he remained true to himself and true to his own changes. The glorious fuckshow that is life is what he always wrote about, from its blackest shades to its brightest colours.
But it’s his 70s and early 80s discography that will always be closest to my heart. It helped me through the worst fucking years of my life, through my first depression in high school, and into my truly confounding twenties, as I fell in love with a woman and came out of the closet, and tried to live with all the contradictions and realities of being bi, and (even harder) realized that I’ll never quite be right with this world unless I’m making art. There’s something about the way he specifically contributed to the late 70s and early 80s culture of embracing ambiguity, of making the amorphous work for you, that has forever marked me and the way I approach myself and my identity.
I’ll always be grateful for you and to you, David. Always.
I am certain your final ascension is going to be as fucking fantastic as all the ones you had while you were with us here on earth.
I'm Happy, Hope You're Happy Too 