when i think of david bowie
i can picture myself at 16, at 17, at 18 even...
vividly...painfully...
scrawny and awkward,
anxious and weird.
funny haircut, odd sense of fashion,
never quite able to follow the trend...
always coming close
but then weirding it in up in my typical way...
a crooked tooth that stuck out
and arms that bent backwards...
a bizarre sense of humor
and an often debilitating inability to
have a normal conversation
with other people...
(i still suck at small talk and
say oddball things when i am nervous).
and then i remember finding david bowie...his older stuff...
and thinking holy hell!
it's ok.
it's ok to be weird.
i remember renting vhs tapes of his concerts
from maccormack's store
and studying them...
mesmerized by them...
he was weird.
and it was ok.
i was weird.
and maybe...
it was going to be ok....eventually.
i used to sign my notes major tom...
and i may or may not have had a
large cardboard box in my bedroom
that i used to pretend was a rocket
when i was much too old
to be sitting in a cardboard box
floating in space
hiding from the
real world.
so yeah,
it was pretty damn comforting to
watch this guy with funny teeth
and crazy hair, heavy eye liner & blue eyeshadow
silver lame suits and songs about spiders
and laughing gnomes
just be himself.
it's funny the things that shape you
when you don't even know
that you are being
shaped.
“Staying back in your memory
Are the movies in the past
How you moved is all it takes
To sing a song of when I loved
The Prettiest Star”