Nate Ragolia's Blog: Nate's Notes - Posts Tagged "david-bowie"

"Sailors fighting in the dance hall
Oh man look at those cavemen go
It's the freakiest show
Take a look at the lawman
Beating up the wrong guy
Oh man wonder if he'll ever know
He's in the best selling show
Is there life on Mars?"

David Bowie was always about transcendence, of style, of gender, of genre, of norms, of life itself. He was more than the sum of his songs, albums, personas. He was a role model better than any athlete or actor. He created with wild abandon. He stared down challenges. He lived without the kind of self-serious apology that many people do.

When I was a kid, 'Changes' was one of my favorite songs. I was a kid who other kids called "weird" and I always replied, "Thank you." I can't say for certain that David Bowie had anything to do with that confidence, but he definitely paved the way for generations of artists, and people in general, to embrace their own weird... and live fully with confidence.

Also, the especially prescient lyrics above, from Life On Mars?, featuring a skewering of humanity's violent tendencies, our fears, our social and class struggles, and our obsession with horrid acts, just goes to show that this man was truly timeless, and quite possibly from some distant star out there far above the world.