A Letter To David Bowie

Dear David Robert Jones,

(Do I really need to call you by your real name? You had so many names, so many identities to choose from. I could have called you Ziggy Stardust. Or Aladdin Sane. Or The Thin White Duke. Or one of those memorable screen personas that you played (The Man Who Fell To Earth or maybe even Pontius Pilate). Well, let’s just stick with David Bowie.)

I know that this letter would count for nothing now. You are gone forever. You have made the grade and you have left the capsule long ago. Is five months long enough, actually? Even five years is not enough for crying over losing you to the heavens high. But the sad part is that I realized this so long after you left us all. 

It is too late then to say farewell, my friend. 

And yet, here is a letter summing up all my feelings for you.

I think I first saw you in a movie. It was Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Prestige’, you were playing Nikola Tesla (who else?), the strange, elusive and enigmatic inventor who could have easily been the stuff of legend than of reality. But Tesla was a real wizard, and so were you. It would take me ten years to see the truth for myself.

I continued to hear about you as music lovers gushed about your musical innovations, your inimitable style, lasting relevance and popularity (even in the 21st century) and your enigmatic personality. But I never really fell in for all those things. Until one sad day when you decided to be free, just like that bluebird, and left us with our faces wet with tears. Let me tell you- we were not lying.

And curiosity got the better of me and I think you saw me kneeling at the door wherein were concealed the treasures of your music. Yes, I mean the varied genres that you did. The styles you invented and re-invented again in your own unforgettable style. All that mess of beauty and brains was beyond that portal. All I had to do was to get an axe to break the ice.

And you did that for me. I remember the first of your many unforgettable songs that I listened one unforgettable afternoon. ‘Space Oddity’ was its name; it told the tale of Major Tom, an astronaut who was after all not one at all. It was you, David. You were telling me the tale of your life even before you had started to live it. You wrote and sung it more than 45 years ago and yet there it was all- new-found fame, subsequent isolation and enigmatic detachment- all the things that you had felt constantly in your exciting, eventful life. 

You had me roped in. You tugged me into your strange, chaotic and exotic world where many a delight was to be discovered. Sure, at first, I was hesitant (every die-hard fan of The Beatles will be a bit reluctant, I guess) but you were now seducing me with every turn and move, every song that I heard, every style that you showed off in your swagger.

Boy, you taught me to love ‘the hot tramp’. You taught me that the church of love could be a holy place too. You held my hands as you taught me to sway under the serious moonlight. And I could do nothing but look into your eyes, those eyes so green and red. Red, like jungle burning bright.

You led me further and I discovered then that there is more to you than just love and sexuality. There were songs of darkness and despair as you feared the end of the world. There was disillusionment with civilization; there was also this constant, desperate need to come down to the real world. And then you told tales of psychopathic rage, of how it feels to have the world under your heels. And you told me that soon you will be free, before you actually went ahead and were strung out in heavens high. Man, you made me break down and cry.

Don’t get me wrong- there was optimism too. You taught me that changes could not be avoided and rather I should turn and face the strange. You asked me, in all wonder, is there life on Mars? Well, you are lucky, David. You knew the truth before you died. 

And through it all, you remained a prankster. Forever, you kept on changing your looks. Like a relentlessly energetic, inventive reptile of the stage, you kept shedding skins even as you slipped into new colours, into new clothes and with new hair. Frankly speaking, many of your fans were not sure if you were a boy or a girl. But it did not matter. You were at once the rock-and-rolling bitch Ziggy Stardust and also the wild-eyed Thin White Duke. You were all your unforgettable rock personas and yet you were none of them- you were, above all, the one and only David Bowie. Who in the world will not love Aladdin Sane? Even the question is pointless.

As much as you changed looks, you changed your musical styles. It began with glam rock with earrings and eye shadow but then turned into plastic soul with the saxophones and baritone. You were teaching young Americans how to duck and sway to the beats of the New Orleans streets, yes you, the Englishman who could never be stopped. You could do jazz, electronica, funk and art rock and you could also create some of the most divine dance music of all time. You could blow the mind long before Michael Jackson would arrive on the scene with his moonwalk.

And it went on and on. Your voice was never the same as well. Sneering and shrill, gasping and hollering, smooth and velvety, sensuous and dark and ultimately melancholic and wistful- there was so much you could do to your voice. Your lyrics are crammed with so many things to tell of. Love and lust. Politics and social commentary. Science fiction and satire. Drugs and death. ‘Young Americans’ is a portrait of 1970s America told as a beautiful, elegant soul number. ‘Ashes To Ashes’ is the heart-pounding tale of a junkie cast out of the modern world. The words- from conversations to elaborate musical portraits to even Nadsat- hit us hard and draw us away into alternate worlds. ‘Five Years’ is an aching portrait of mankind’s relentless excesses. ‘Be My Wife’ is just perfect as a plea from a lonely loverboy to a girl.

Through it all, through all the changes and golden years, you were a rebel. You did not care if people laughed at the make-up on your face or could not quite get your animal grace. You were a rebel in you own right and your songs went on forever. Even with all that, you were awful nice.

It is all over now, even as we are all cheering for your spirit to shine like a Blackstar in the skies. You taught me so much, David. All my youth has been in crooning romantic melodies of The Beatles for my beloved. You made me come of age, sing new songs and sing them in ways I could never have imagined. The songs of love you sung are now the ones that I sing to make my true love come to me. You made me love more passionately than ever. You made me dream.

And now you are gone. But remember what you told us: that we can be heroes, even just for one day. Well, you are a hero too, David. It is just that you will last for generations. We still wish that you are still a starman waiting in the sky who would like to come and meet us. I, above all, look forward to that moment most fervently.

Yours sincerely,
Zoeb Matin