My Death

1974. I'd spent summer in Europe with my parents. My first trip out of Africa. I already owned David Bowie's "Pin Ups" and a SA-only double album release called "Superstar" when I saw the posters for "Diamond Dogs" all over London. It had just been released a month earlier. When we got back to Pretoria I bought the record. My first concept album and one that had me glued to my father's new B&O hi-fi for more hours than I went to school, with Beyer Dynamic headphones keeping me coddled, safe in my own little, private world. Another world, light-years from Apartheid South Africa. "Makes you feel important and free."

I poured over the gatefold sleeve, soaked up every word, every note, every Orwellian innuendo, wallowing in the Moog, Mellotron, guitars and saxophones. Rebel Rebel in my own bedtime. Like many of his other works, "Diamond Dogs" became indelibly burned into my subconscious, and was also the album that marked the deepening of my voice and the transition to clumsy, shy, introverted adolescence. The journey to manhood would not be a smooth one. But I was in good hands. Bowie struck a chord with the freaks, the outsiders and the alienated. In 1974 he symbolized impossible glamour and an aspiration for the future. He made socially uncomfortable people like me feel cool. Bowie became mine. "Halloween Jack is a real cool cat."

Listening to "Diamond Dogs" this evening with adult ears I'm reminded what a dark piece of work it really is. It certainly isn’t an entry point for Bowie, but an album you love only after you’ve already begun an affair with his music. My music.

So (and at the risk of sounding trite) I lost a piece of myself today. But, hell, I travelled with David Bowie for over four decades and had the privilege of seeing him in concert on four occasions. Over the years his lyrics have become my vocabulary and his songs, milestones in my life. So although the great man may have shuffled off his mortal coil, he will live on in me, forever. He's a part of me. He is me. And I'm grateful.

In mourning, MAlfaRK ©