Farewell to Major Tom

Commencing Countdown, engines on. Check ignition and may God’s love be with you.

January 10th was the day the music stopped for me. Just over a week ago I got a nervous phone call from my friend David immediately after the news broke. He was in tears and I was awestruck…How could my hero be gone? How could the invincible man who fell to Earth be finally ascending back home? He can’t leave us in this madhouse, alone and heartbroken.  I didn’t want to accept it because it seemed like impossible nonsense, I wasn’t finished with you yet Bowie! To think how unfair it is that I will never get to be a humble member of your audience or possibly brisk by you in my best trench coat on a foggy London day only to glance in your hypnotic gaze in passing and question my literal brush with greatness. What a pity…  I can’t change what time has brought us and in order to pay my respect and complete love for the freak who made my heart into a kingdom  I have been compelled to write this post.

First, I want to tell you who David fucking Bowie was to me. He was the first person I was acquainted with who ignited wild adolescent curiosity in me as well as took a magnetically tender grasp on my heart as he danced with me to the depths of my affections. Racking my brain on how to describe my shake-less introduction to Bowie is failing to arrange exact and simple. Well maybe that’s because Bowie was a complicated entity sent to earth to teach us pitiful earthlings a thing or two about love.

I was born of a mother, who has a sister, who have both been “Bowie Netters” for as long as I have existed. So being born in 91, the generational gap was bridged and the Queen Bitch strode across that stage and into my world. He most definitely played a huge part in who I am today, through his rebellious expressions of identity and through the way his music spoke to me as a child. He was so powerfully mysterious and his music reflected a sense of wonder in me that had all my respect immediately due to the fact that I felt like he knows what love is and I wanted him to show it to me. I’ve always had a God-like obsession with him from childhood on. The Labyrinth was a big gateway for me. Jim Henson is one of my favorites as well, and the moment I laid eyes on Jared I wanted to be his. Fuck the babe, forever with the masculine androgynous mulleted warlock I choose! I would dream in vivid reconstruction that I was to finish the Goblin King’s labyrinth nightly; the little worm would ask me in for tea in such a polite manner I would never refuse. Other dreams involved me to chat with the two headed brothers who guarded the pathway straight to the castle and in polarity one spoke absolute truth and the other absolute lies. I always chose the wrong door and ended up experiencing Sarah’s exact journey but more in depth; these lucid manifestations of my subconscious were both incredible in their visual completion in accordance with an emotional resonance of fascination/escape just as it was for Sarah.

There is so much Bowie for me to love because of who he was to my mother, a lifelong fan. She would obnoxiously blast Heros or Station to Station on repeat until my ears were on the verge of an early deafness. It was incessant, constant Bowie all the time and of course that meant she would be singing along. I had no idea who this man was yet he was an extension of me. To clarify, I didn’t have a choice: Bowie was imbedded into my being whether I wanted him to or not. For that I am perpetually grateful for her insistant influence on my upbringing, without it I would have never had the courage to wear my strange on the outside.

So I salute you Ms.Tracey Serino, my dear mother and close friend. You gave me a gift unlike another: the gift of monumental prestige and musement by someone who will never let my inner child expire.

As a 24 year old musically adept and selective adult, I have my own reasons for loving the alien. He has been a hair whirl of inspiration for me as an artist, I want to buy the world he has to sell. I may be a few decades late to witness first hand the phenomena he was to the world, but it just blows my mind how one man turned his back to the norm and changed the rules. We can thank much of our progress in gender/sexuality tolerance to the Duke himself, he had the power and the platform to force the world to recognize that there isn’t a strict binary to these identities. I did a project on social construction last quarter surrounding Bowies early flamboyant years; who better to showcase the expression of the ideology? He was the iconic depiction of environmental construction: constantly changing, evolving and remaining fluid. Think about it…when you imagine David Bowie does one version come to mind or are there many? He explored every crevice of his person with grandiose poise; confident sex appeal oozed from his pores even in drag, having everyone questioning their preferences . This is why David Bowie is my beloved hero; he showed tremendous courage by living under the spotlight and remaining feircly true to his fluctuating self while simultaneously reflecting his surroundings.  I will never let you down, I will never say bye bye…but I will try to understand that even though we all seperate you as a deity you were a mortal man.

I shed tears as I write my farewell. I am internally upheaved at this loss but I am moreso beholden to his impact. There will never be another Halloween Jack or Ziggy Stardust, ever. You showed me that the strange is so much more beautiful than the norm. You taught me to challange social expectations and live with tolerance and love. I will wear my red shoes every day in hopes for when I become a Blackstar we can dance among the heavens. I will leave you with the dictionary definition of wonder:
a feeling of surprise mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable.
Thank you Major Tom, I salute you.

 

With eternal admiration,

Brianna Loren aka Your Rock’n’Rollin Bitch