Goodbye David Bowie

It was at my mom's friend's house that I first fell in love with David Bowie. I don't think I was even 5 years old then. This friend's house had door beads, incense, pet dragons and snakes. It was like going into another world. And on these visits, waiting for me, a VHS copy of Labyrinth. 

I was young enough not to know the difference between reality and what I was watching on the TV. I felt like that world was real and I wanted so desperately to go there. 

Unlike Sarah, I was smitten with the charming and seductive Goblin King, Jareth. I used to wish that I had a younger sibling to use to get to the Labyrinth.

It took a few years before I loved Bowie for Bowie. I started listening to his music. His voice was so unique and beautiful. Some songs piercing me to the soul, as though someone is seeing the world in a way I could not imagine and was trying to tell the world of such wonders.

I have seen every movie David Bowie had been in. From the strange but compelling Man Who Fell to Earth, the sexy Hunger and the wonderful Absolute Beginners. The night he died I was sing the song Absolute Beginners out loud to myself before I even knew he had left us. 

In a way David Bowie introduce me to my favorite band, Placebo. The film Velvet Goldmine is in some ways a false and fantastical biography of Bowie (even though Bowie wasn't trilled about it). In this film the members of Placebo have smalls roles and a few songs. This led me to the listening and watching the video of the collaboration of Bowie and Placebo, Without You I'm Nothing.
After that I bought all of Placebo's albums and they became my favorite band. Bowie my favorite artist.

David Bowie also connected me to my best friend. Two 14 year old band camp kids who had just met in suburban Oklahoma. Our mutual love of David Bowie and Rocky Horror cemented a friendship that has lasted over a decade. 

Listening to and watching videos from his last album, Blackstar, I now realize that he knew he was going to die. He wanted to give his fans one last gift while at the same time telling us the end was coming. And since Bowie is the ultimate artist, he never came out and said he was sick, he used his art to say goodbye.

Right now my heart hurts for a man I never met, but who I felt had been a part of my life for almost as long as I can remember.
I can't look around my house without seeing something related to David Bowie. The "coffee table" book with his pictures, the Labyrinth poster on the wall, the cds and my one vinyl record (Diamond Dogs), dvd of films he was in and even the clothes in my closet. It hurts but in a good way.
He made such an impact on me.

We are lucky to have lived in a world where such a person existed.