Dear Mr. Bowie,
Tonight, I have tried to write a letter to you that I wish I had done year’s ago, to no avail. I have been trying to express how you had imprinted on my life. How someone you never met can impact your life.
You know that scene in “Almost Famous”, and the sister tells her little brother if he listens to Tommy with a candle lit, he can see his entire future; it’s an amazing scene. I think everyone in love with music and who are humbled by the power of a good song, know the ability a song can have on your person. Unapologetically and without remorse, your life can change with the play of track.
When I really first listened to your music, it was in college. It was my track. I was poor and living in New York and at one point we had such bad mice, we kept a score of who could catch the most (oddly, the house tied with accidents for most catches.). Your music made me feel electric and alive during this time. It has a toxic ability to make an entire party of art students in Brooklyn dance around a dodgy flat all night dressed in space garb. Before it was ironic, I swear. It also gave me a thirst for this life, the rock aura and the infectious dancing and the “I can be who I want” mindset.
I fell in love to your music. To a great person and a group of friends. To my life. I danced. I threw myself around the dance floor of shitty dive bars in the Lower East Side for hours upon hours and nights upon nights, shutting my eyes and realising what it meant to feel music. Parties played your music late and it was like seeing a haze take over us all, soaked in sound.
I remember growing up watching Labyrinth and was so fascinated with your character. My best friends and I would have sleepovers and sing along with your goblin king. For a small town upbringing, you were the first real exposure I had to different ways of expressing ones-self. Of how you present your image to the world. And how people can love you for it and want to sing along with you still in our Target pajama sets and princess sleeping bags even we we still had so much to learn on finding yourself. Weird, eccentric selves.
I found solace in your music, in Heroes. In Rebel, Rebel. I could hide in it and twirl in a room to it alone. I could sing along (with dance moves) as we would duet in my shitty cars.
It was confidence and happiness and amazing nights and people who are so good, you and your music did that for me. You led me to these things.
It is a disservice to the music and bravado you bestowed on this world to do anything by strap in your space bodysuit and paint on a red lightening bolt, but I did also find some peace on something you said.
I don’t know where I’m going from here, but I promise it won’t be boring.”
I do hope they stocked up on lycra and face paint. Thank you for being my hero. Thank you for being my Tommy moment.
Your friend,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tgcc5V9Hu3g&ab_channel=emimusic