Many of my childhood memories took place in the backseat of my mother\u2019s Honda Pilot. Dozens of scratched-up CDs lived in the glove compartment, and album covers floated around the car. Eventually they would get to me. I would investigate them. \u201cAbbey Road\u201d and \u201cHighway 61 Revisited\u201d were frequent visitors to my lap, but \u201cBest of Bowie\u201d was my favorite. I traced Bowie\u2019s different faces. Why did he have different eye colors? Was that a lightning bolt on his forehead, or was he bleeding? The cover was also blue, which was my favorite color in 2003.<\/p>\n
Throughout my childhood I listened to the scratched-up \u201cBest of Bowie\u201d CD. With the advent of iTunes, I switched my medium. By middle school, the Ramones were my favorite band, and in eighth grade, my mother introduced me to Arcade Fire. It was magical. I related to the band\u2019s angst and joy. Arcade Fire was my favorite band by high school, but Bowie hung on as one of my favorites.<\/p>\n
In high school I befriended a girl obsessed with Bowie. She fascinated me. Her music taste was perfect. She was stylish and intelligent. She also had a dynamite voice. She introduced me to my first girlfriend. The relationship was a mess. It began and ended twice. She cheated on me and destroyed a successive relationship. I felt lost by senior year. Bowdoin gleamed with opportunity. But still, a summer separated me from my future. That was when I rediscovered Bowie.<\/p>\n
In February 2015 I saw \u201cZiggy Stardust\u201d on the grey-brown floor of my friend Nathaniel\u2019s Volkswagen Rabbit. When I got home after a night on the town (getting pizza and arguing about politics), I listened to the entire album. After listening, I froze. I laughed at \u201cMoonage Daydream,\u201d I danced to \u201cSuffragette City,\u201d and I cried to \u201cRock n\u2019 Roll Suicide.\u201d I remembered \u201cStarman\u201d from \u201cBest of Bowie.\u201d<\/p>\n
I have a tendency to go through phases. In second grade I went through a \u201cStar Wars\u201d phase. In eighth grade I obsessed over \u201c30 Rock.\u201d British politics enticed me in tenth grade. Soon after I bought \u201cLow\u201d on iTunes, I thought I had begun just another phase. It rapidly became clear that was not the case. Bowie\u2019s music permeated throughout my room in 2015. After \u201cLow\u201d came \u201cHeroes,\u201d \u201cAladdin Sane,\u201d and \u201cDiamond Dogs.\u201d Everything was Bowie.<\/p>\n
Bowie influenced my embracement of my eccentricities. I became more comfortable in myself. I was confident in my sexuality, outbursts, and masculinity. I got over the dreadful girlfriend who dominated my high school experience. The truth is that Bowie did not influence me to pick identities; he guided me to accept who I was. It was okay if the man who I was a week ago was not who I was that day.<\/p>\n
By the time I arrived at Bowdoin, my interested in Bowie had only expanded. I played \u201cA New Career in a New Town\u201d as I landed in Portland. After a summer of playing tennis with \u201cLow\u201d rumbling in the background, the first poster I taped up in my common room was the \u201cZiggy Stardust\u201d cover.<\/p>\n
In Brunswick I have tortured roommates and floor mates with constant Bowie music. One midnight during midterms, I played \u201cUp the Hill Backwards\u201d so many times to my floor mate Nicole I am convinced she thinks I was using \u201cenhanced interrogation techniques.\u201d I have spent many nights in the fourth floor Appleton study room watching the streetlights\u2019s floating fires with Bowie whispering in my ear.<\/p>\n
Bowie released the music video for his new song \u201cBlackstar\u201d in November. The video featured zombies, astronauts, and a woman with a tail. It was weird. Later Bowie released the haunting single \u201cLazarus.\u201d I could not wait for the full album\u2019s (also called \u201cBlackstar\u201d) release. I marked the day in my calendar and waited. But it did not dawn on me, of course, that I was marking Bowie\u2019s death.<\/p>\n
I filled the weeks between my final exam and January 8, Bowie\u2019s birthday, with his music. I discovered \u201cLodger\u201d and reappraised other albums I had looked over. When January 8 came, I consumed \u201cBlackstar.\u201d I listened to it upwards of five times. I argued with my mother about where it ranked on his best records. Later that day she wondered whether the dark lyrics could be a sign of its being his last album. I told her that idea made me depressed. On the night of January 10, I listened to \u201cBlackstar\u201d and \u201cLodger\u201d on repeat. Unlike other nights, I began to feel sad. I started to think about my family and what would happen if one of them died.
\nAround 4 a.m. on January 11, my sister woke me up to tell me that David Bowie had died. I thought she was sleepwalking or dreaming. I told her to go back to bed. Jesse said she was serious. Reluctantly, I opened my computer and searched \u201cBowie.\u201d<\/p>\n
I went outside and sat. I cried. I thought it was a hoax at first. I kept refreshing the page, but the same message remained. I felt helpless. But my helplessness changed into appreciation throughout the day. David Bowie may have died, but he has left us with a self-epitaph: \u201cBlackstar.\u201d In fact, he left us with 25 incredible albums. That night I went outside and looked up at the stars. As I looked up I realized the stars looked very different today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The influence of the late rock star on this author’s life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":532,"featured_media":1317,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16,18],"tags":[72],"class_list":{"0":"post-1304","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-lead","8":"category-music","9":"tag-bowie","10":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/532"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1304\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}