'Thursday's Child' / David Bowie

Thursday's Child
David Bowie

Initially, I didn't want to say anything. Didn't want to mark this date. Didn't feel I had anything to add to the thousands of articulate, insightful tributes. And I don't have anything to add, or at least, nothing that hasn't been said.

But I am heartbroken.

And I am grieving.

And while so many people are experiencing this grief today -- that does not lessen mine.

A glass of red wine raised: I remember.

I remember May, lush and green; grade 5 rushing to its end, summer stretching endlessly in front of us. My father, in the habit of renting old movies to force upon us on Friday nights, brought home Labyrinth. Had he known he'd be forced to rent it again every weekend for the next six months -- I'm sure he would have...but he might've thought twice.

I knew, I still know, every line by heart. On a windowsill in my childhood bedroom -- even now -- are individual letters cut from seventeen to ransom-note a line from As the World Falls Down:  "We're choosing the path between the stars / I'll lead my love between the stars." That was my first favourite song, proper -- the first song I claimed as mine, the first song that clenched inextricably around my heart. I was 11. He had a nice voice. I had no idea.

I remember February, scribbling in notebooks, a sacred, rare newspaper clipping of an Earthling promo shot safely tucked inside: 13 and realizing what music could do. My journal must be incomprehensible: rambling crushings, oh god I am in love with him oh my god; rambling insight, this song is me this song is everything I've ever thought; rambling dreams. I rarely spoke, then, about how much I adored him. It was too potent, too much, to share -- I worried that no one would understand.


But he permeated everything.

I remember March, quietly melting under pale sunshine; my last year of high school. Riven, raw with adolescent intensity, I wanted to explode. There was a boy or there was a test or there was a Grave Injustice Being Done To Humanity -- I felt it all and nothing made it better.

And then spring began to crush winter, and I remembered him, as I always remember him in spring -- and I tied up our family phoneline downloading as much as I could. Spring 2003 is unassailable, in my heart: it vibrated through me, perfect and heartbreaking, and with a constant Bowie soundtrack. I heard Low and I carried it with me, safely in the core, the gut, of who I was: today, Subterraneans plays and I am in London, Ontario for a karate symposium, on the verge of possibility, curled under blankets on the hotel floor with my Discman, body on fire.

I cannot separate myself from this girl who furiously railed against everything but David Bowie: who desperately clung to the honesty and beauty in his words; who watched his music videos endlessly, riveted to his face, his terrible dancing; who knew somewhere in her blood that if she stopped listening, she would fall, and she would get lost.

That girl built herself on his voice.
I would be no one without it.

I remember December, snow and ice, standing outside the Bell Centre with my dad, waiting impatiently for the doors to open. My father, in music production, knew all the promoters in the city -- our seats were incredible. It wasn't that I was too young to go with a friend -- but, ten years almost to the day after a profounder grief than this --------- I was and am so happy that I went with him.

The crowd was everyone: my own thick black eyeliner; 70-year-old women with canes; baby boomers with beer guts; metalheads and dreadlocks and insurance suits and we all knew every fucking word. He sang and we were transported, we were universal, we were one goddamn person, all of us, December 13th in Montreal, as Bowie kicked off his Reality tour.

I remember January, the week after my father died. Nothing made sense. Everything was too fucking surreal to process. I went from class to class, painstakingly taking notes, telling my friends but no one else. I felt numb, sick, quiet -- and I didn't even know I felt any of those things; I thought I was fine, man, all's good no worries death is part of life you just gotta deal ------------

And my headphones rarely left my ears.
I gripped reality by my goddamn fingernails, breathlessly, to 1. Outside.

There is no album more brilliant, none more emotional, in my eyes; nothing that brings me more intensely back to so many moments in my life. I have written essays about Outside; my personal email address is from one of the song titles; if you want to know why I listen to music or how I listen to music or what music I think is perfect I will shove this into your hands and say listen, listen, god, listen, and let it rip you apart -----

and it was all that kept me together.

I remember April, one birthday of many at a bar called Saphir, coming to a close. Last call. The ones who'd stood the test of cheap shots and young blood still dancing at my side. I had danced, we had all danced -- the night had been electric, vibrant. And the lights went up to Life on Mars?.

I was probably not barefoot but I feel barefoot in my memory, spinning with my makeup smeared across my face, shouting out the words and laughingly slow-dancing with Meg -- home. If not in place,

in soul.

I remember months and months. I remember years.

I remember searching for him, the thrill of the HMV hunt; the excitement when hearing a song on the radio and rushing to press 'record.' I remember endless dance parties with my friends and family, gushing vocal treatises on how deeply he affected the cultural fabric of what we know. I remember listening to hours... this Christmas, shocked at how different it sounded to my near-30-year-old ears: something's shifted, something's new, I am older. I am seeing his genius differently. And I know: there is so much more to see.

The world grieves today.
And there are really no words.



But thank you, David Jones, for being everything to me.
For all those years and more.