Lore
David Bowie
My brother, 12 years my senior, introduced me to a lot of interesting music at a young age, like The Beatles and Pink Floyd at age seven, The Doobie Brothers shortly thereafter.
My introduction to David Bowie came a little later, when a little thing called MTV popped onto cable television and changed the world…and my young life…forever. Growing up outside of New York City, I had a lot of romantic ideas about the kind of life I’d have if I lived there when I grew up. This was the early 1980s, and everything seemed possible (and also like it could all blow up nuclear-style at any moment).
Fashion is the first David Bowie song/video I ever heard, and from the moment of that first strange guitar riff, I was hooked. To me, the video epitomized all that is cool and weird and creative about New York, even though it’s never expressly revealed that the video takes place in New York. I watched it in awe.
We’ve been playing Bowie in the office off and on all day, and I think it’s fair to say we all are all affected in some way by his loss. Rock stars are almost always larger than life, but David Bowie seemed even beyond that. He was Ziggy Stardust; he was both male and female; he was the starman.
I’ve been reading tributes all day, and this tweet from Carrie Brownstein seemed to best articulate how I’m feeling:
R.I.P. David, and thank you.