"David Bowie Is" ...

At last, a post that combines my love of artifacts, the history of costume, my middle-aged chick bragging rights about having seen all the cool concerts, and Ziggy/The Thin White Duke/any spider you ever found on Mars ...

No less than the Victoria and Albert Museum has sold, apparently, nearly 50,000 tickets to an exhibition of David Bowie memorabilia, creating what promises to be an exhaustive and multifariously fascinating retrospective of the man, the art, the career - and, yes, the costumes and his various dramatic personae.  Hit the link if for no other reason than the photos The History Girls have posted (by special permission; so not reproduced here) - the Yamamoto bodysuit alone is worth the clicks (two clicks - if you don't view it full size, you aren't viewing it at all!).

Bowie is a valid subject for those interested in history for - pick your reason.  He is the 20th (and 21st, as long as he's been quiet this century) century's answer to the Renaissance man - and his collaborations have  reached farther across the arts and popular culture than anyone in Renaissance times, perhaps, could have, or could even have conceived of.  Not merely by what he has himself done, but by his myriad associations and - let's face it - a dizzying fortune the like of which Michael Jackson never even dreamed - Bowie has accumulated force unlike any other rock star.  Far more than personifying glam rock, he practically invented reinvention - a dynamic so necessary to pop stars today it's almost unthinkable to associate him with the idols who have lived within one image throughout generations-long careers.  There was a time, boys and girls, when even Elvis's single transition from leather jackets to spangled pantsuits could cause cognitive dissonance.  To this day, people still talk about the "fat Elvis" years as something almost alien to the rock and roll guy who gave us his most iconic music - and gleefully cheesy movie musicals.

David Bowie had already lived nine rock and roll lives even by the time *I* saw him in 1984 - and was candid about having damn near lost his, literally, thanks to some of the more florid chemical excesses of his glam years.  The Thin White Duke wasn't ghostly merely in a visual way - he was the husk of a man all but displaying his own corpse.  And that was thirty years ago.

Bowie is the man who caused me my undying adoration for snaggle teeth (I never did forgive him for getting braces - that was actually worse in my mind than marrying someone who wasn't me!).  He was my second big arena show.  He has crooned Wild Is the Wind into my ears since I was a weeping, overdramatic teenager, and my own encroaching age has only deepened my appreciation for the instrument of his voice.

I can hardly even comprehend the level of technical expertise, the sheer madness of his creativity, the scope of his contributions on the stage, and in all the lives of those who are his fans for one reason or other.  Few people have developed the ability to offer quite so damned many reasons, at that.


What's funny is - as hagiographic as all this hyperbole embarrassingly is, and I don't deny it - the fact is, I'm trying NOT to be a gushy little fangirl.  Bowie has DONE all these things - he just IS an immense presence, it's not my gooping about him that makes it so.  If I'm honest, most of my goopier feelings about Bowie are long since dessicated in my own drying-up hide, and I just enjoy (a) the nostalgia memories of my own Bowie experiences bring on, and (b) his catalogue of music, which is literally matchless - without hyperbole.

For those who have the chance, I envy them the opportunity to see this exhibit.

For those who never have - y'all can envy *me* the memory of seeing him live, from the front row.