David Bowie: One Wave Sets Thousands In Motion

There are about a million tributes to David Bowie on the web now. So I suppose one more won’t hurt anything.

Bowie was always one of those artists whose name would make me nod and say something like, “Oh yes, one of the greats.” I appreciated what I knew of his music and his general way of being, I was impressed by his ability to move between genres, I liked his performances in The Man Who Fell To Earth and Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence and of course Labyrinth.

But I was never a devoted fan. I’m friends with several Deadheads of the sort who would follow the band on tour back in the days, and my mom camped out on several occasions to get Barry Mannilow tickets. I know what devoted fandom looks like, and I’m not a devoted fan of any performer or band! There is so much music and so little time that one can only deliberately delve into a few artists. So I can’t speak of him from the perspective of deep fandom.

And while I try to be supportive of those who don’t conform to traditional gender norms, I’m a straight cis male whose gender identity and presentation line up easily. Many have praised Bowie for his breakthroughs in making it cool to be bi or gay or gender non-conforming, and that’s great. But while my long hair and habitual earring occasionally confuse young kids, overall my gender experience is pretty boring and mainstream. I can’t speak of Bowie from the perspective of someone who needed a gender-bending role model.

But despite that, David Bowie’s work touched my life in two important ways.

Over the past few days, people have been making fun of the video for the Mick Jagger and David Bowie 1985 cover of “Dancing In Streets”. Take a look:

It is indeed very, very 80s. But it’s nostalgic for me. There was a Live Aid campaign in movie theaters, where they had a “please give” appeal followed by this video. This was before they had ads at movie theaters, so it was pretty unusual. (If I recall correctly they would actually send ushers through the aisles to collect donations while Mick and David sang. I’m not sure who thought funneling charitable donations through people making $3.45 an hour was a sound strategy.)

Somebody at the United Artists movies at Golden Ring Mall got a kick out of this bit of film, and left it prepended it to their copy of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. The video came out in 1985, it was still part of our RHPS experience in 87. I’m told it was still part of Rocky Horror screenings there in the late 1990s.

And we gave it the full Audience Participation treatment. I danced along to David Bowie doing those moves. (Not so much to Mick.) It was the first dancing I did in front of an audience, and that helped form my relationship with dance. And it was part of Rocky Horror, which was a formative experience in many ways.

So this is my David Bowie. Maybe it campy but it’s campy like John Waters kitsch, someone with fantastic artistic and intellectual chops enjoying the simple unpretentiousness of it.

Years later, in 2001, I was a regular at the open mic night at Leadbetters Tavern in Fells Point. One night I had a good set, and I think the best song of that set was a cover of Bowie’s “Heroes”. The host liked it, and it led to me getting a regular Tuesday afternoon happy hour gig for several months. I never made much money at it — in fact, counting parking and gas I think I lost money some nights — but it transformed my experience with music. I became professional musician, on however small a scale, thanks to connecting for a moment with a David Bowie song.

And one of the Tuesdays I played as part of that residency was September 11, 2001. Which was another important experience for me.

I never knew David Bowie, was not even a devoted fan, and didn’t really have a deep lifestyle connection with him. And yet his life touched mine deeply in two different ways. He transformed my relationships with music and with dance. I would be a quite different person if he had never been.

(Tangentially, I’d like to point about that Bowie was interested in both Western occultism and in Buddhism. While he was not a Zen Pagan I’d like to claim him as a fellow traveler. And even more tangentially, you ought to take a few minutes to watch the original video for “Space Oddity” on YouTube. Now that Bowie’s gone the rest of the planet’s artists are going to have to step up, and you might find some inspiration in this bit of film.)

There is a Japanese proverb I’ve been thinking a lot about lately: “One wave sets thousands in motion.” It’s been on my mind because of a conversation with a local poet and artist who used to come to the poetry workshop I’ve hosted on and off over the years, Zelda’s Inferno. (A group started by my friend Robin Gunkel, to give due credit.)

This poet is an Army veteran, a former officer who moved to Baltimore in the mid 2000s shortly after leaving the service. I remember him speaking very movingly of the men under his command, the esprit de corps, the brotherhood of those who serve together. (Not to in any way disregard the women who serve, it’s just that this specific conversation was about relationships between men.) I’ve never been a fan of the military as an institution but I was happy to know that people like him held positions of some authority in our armed forces. He’s written some fine poetry, he’s the sort of father who brought his daughter to art events and encouraged her creativity, and he’s has recently started organizing a theme camp at Playa Del Fuego — no small task in management. He’s been an unrelenting positive force in the Baltimore scene, and is someone I greatly respect.

So a few weeks ago we got to talking after Telesma’s fantastic Winter Solstice show, and he told me how much it meant to him to have our little group of poets welcome him when he moved here. He had just made a big life change in leaving the military, had moved to a new place, and our group was one of his first connections he made here.

Here was this man I admire telling me that he admired me and my work, that it had meant a lot to him. I’d had no idea.

This happens to all of us. We never know the extent to which we affect each other, the ways in which what we do resonates in people’s lives. We can see it more clearly in a brilliant artist like David Bowie, but just as smallest speck of dust has its gravitational pull, so each of us tugs on the lives of others.

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