David Bowie Saved My Soul

14 Years ago a starman blew my mind.

College. A time of personal discovery, uninhibited experimentation, and realizing that your music tastes suck.

Instead of lamenting how parents didn't expose me to their generation's provocateurs, or how my Midwestern town's homogeneity encased me a bubble of commercial radio rock, I am eternally grateful to have experienced Ziggy Stardust.

A Lad Insane

While I could write novels on the oddities of my family, my childhood outside of my home was painfully normal. I had the quintessential small-town American life of public schools, YMCA sports, and casual racism. 

Learning quickly of the loneliness that comes with being eccentric, I sheepishly assimilated to those around me for the sake of companionship. I told jokes I thought people wanted to hear and reserved my weirdness for my brothers at home. Yet I managed to keep my inner weirdo alive, nourished by a steady diet of Cronenberg, Lynch, and Gilliam.

A Couple of Kooks

In the autumn of 2003 I left southern Illinois for...central Illinois. I was assigned a random roommate at the University of Illinois. Sean and I got along great- both of us quickly connecting on professional football, college football, and video game football. But it was his friend, Yunus, who would introduce me to the tunes of a heterochromatic mad man.

Yunus described himself as the dumb person in his family, and he graduated a year early with a double major in Physics and Mathematics. His father migrated from India and married an American woman who used to belong to a bike gang. They produced a litter of brilliant children with an insatiable appetite for the arts. His eldest sister passed on her extensive musical library of copied albums to Yunus, who then passed them onto me.

"You should listen to these," he said, handing me discs of Hunky Dory, Heroes, and Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. 

Lose Your Sweet Head

I plugged in my headphones to my white Mac Book, inserted the CD-R with hand-scribbled "Ziggy Stardust", and began listening to the album while the files transferred to my first generation iPod.

Prior to that moment, my music tastes diverged from those of my high school friends in that I listened to the entirety of Sublime's albums, and not just the radio hits. I had tip-toed into some Brit Pop, Trip Hop, and even a few Pixies album. None of this prepared me for the oddity that is David Bowie.

My ears struggled with the unpredictable melodies, the unconventional voice, and bizarre lyrics. I couldn't classify it and couldn't comprehend what the hell the songs were about. From "Five Years" to the final track "Lady Stardust - demo" (this was on the Rykodisc CD) I patiently listened to the entirety of the album. I concluded that while someone talented made this music, it's not at all for me.

One hour later I gave it another go.

Freak Out in a Moonage Daydream

On the second playthrough some of the melodies began to catch. I still had no idea what any of the lyrics meant, and I was completely ignorant about the artist's significance to millions of people around the world.

When the lyrics "he sang all night long" marked the end of the end of the album, I immediately navigated my iPod wheel to the top of the album and played a third time. I felt that I was on the verge of an epiphany.

The third time everything clicked. I didn't make any startling revelations about electric eyes, ray guns, or space faces. Instead, I had began to understand one of the most important truths in my life.

Just because you don't understand something doesn't mean it isn't brilliant.

Oh! You Pretty Things

As I binged on every pirated album at my fingertips, I couldn't believe how my ears and brain had previously betrayed me. Two earbuds positioned close to my temples, the music was electroshock therapy snapping out of a coma of banality.

If I had nearly dismissed Ziggy Stardust and subsequently the rest of Bowie's discography, what other art had I failed to appreciated. Were there movies, paintings, and other musicians I ignored simply because they were different?

And then I realized this was bigger then art. How many people had I dismissed simply because they were different? Even worse, had I made fun of any of these people as a kid? I felt nauseous at that possibility- almost as if I were the bully who rendered David Robert Jones's eye permanently dilated. 

My inner weirdo awoke, finally appreciating the courage it takes for the eccentrics to defy convention be authentically unique.

Strange Doors That We'd Never Close Again

David Bowie wasn't the only inspiration to open my eyes, ears, and mind to the world, but he was the primary catalyst. Having been humbled in my perception of the world, I could never again see weirdness as a negative quality.

I wish I could say that I were brave enough to live as boldly as Bowie, but there's a reason he's a one-of-a-kind legend. As an adult with a salaried career in New York, I'm occasionally more conventional and predictable than I'd like to admit.  However, his art has bestowed me with a more open heart, Instead of fearing life's cracked actors, I cherish them.

Fear is in your head, only in your head
So forget your head and you'll be free