Today would have been David Bowie’s 74th birthday. While I am not David Bowie’s biggest fan by any stretch of the imagination, I cannot remember a time when I was not, at very least, fascinated by him.
My earliest memories of Bowie are inexorably entwined with his performance as The Goblin King in Jim Henson’s Labyrinth. I wasn’t allowed to listen to the radio much as a child, so I had no idea that the Goblin King was a rock star and artist with many years behind him. I only knew that I couldn’t take my eyes off of him.
As I grew, Bowie’s influence in my life did, too. His performances were found in the soundtrack of my youth: I remember going to a friend’s house and she had a jukebox in the basement. That was the first time I heard Bowie proclaim, “Let’s Dance! Put on your red shoes and dance the blues.” Then I witnessed him gently crooning “Peace on Earth!” to Bing Crosby’s Little Drummer Boy in a Christmas special. Later, I heard “China Girl” in a scene from The Wedding Singer. When Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge took the world by storm, I was taken by Bowie’s rendition of Nature Boy, and introduced to the songs Heroes and Diamond Dogs both sung by other artists. And I was delighted when Bowie played the role of Nikola Tesla in The Prestige alongside Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale. It seemed that no matter which way I turned, I was not going to escape the Goblin King. And it’s just as well. I didn’t want to escape him. He had cast a spell over me.
But what was the spell?
I am not the first to notice Bowie’s ability to be a chameleon. Or his unapologetic way of engaging with any and all art forms. He had a way of committing to a character, or a performance, no matter how strange it may be. In fact, when it comes to David Bowie, you can always expect the unexpected. When I sat down to write about him today, I really thought I would focus on his inexhaustible commitment to creativity, but as I considered Bowie’s legacy and what drew me to him, both as a child and as an adult, I think I finally know what the spell is…
When you peel back the layers of glitter, and costumes, and makeup that make David Bowie the rock star. Behind the one permanently dilated eye that gave him that otherworldly glare…You’d find a person. While I can’t claim to know Bowie’s inner thoughts, or anything he struggled with, I think it’s safe to say that he didn’t fit in. As an outside observer, I’d say that Bowie’s career was a lifetime of realizing that this star-shaped peg was not going to fit into a round hole. So he made his own place to belong.
By doing that, he showed us that we could too.
I think the magic of David Bowie is that hidden in his art is a silent invitation to be yourself. Every word, every note, every costume, whispering: It’s okay to take risks. It’s okay to be different. Just try something. If you don’t like it, try something else. Life is meant to be explored.
There’s a delightful story about David Bowie’s interaction with a young fan, circa 1986, at a special screening of Labyrinth in London. A bunch of kids were invited to have a meet and greet with Bowie after the movie, but one young boy was shy and withdrawn. Bowie noticed and arranged to have a private meeting with him in a quieter room.
During this meeting, Bowie revealed to the boy that he, too, was shy and only appeared brave because he was wearing an invisible mask. Then he “removed” the mask from his face and immediately revealed how uncomfortable and awkward he was to the boy. Then he handed the invisible mask to the boy and said, “Put it on. It’s magic.”
The boy put on the invisible mask, and Bowie continued, “I always feel afraid, just the same as you. But I wear this mask every single day. And it doesn’t take the fear away, but it makes it feel a bit better. I feel brave enough then to face the whole world and all the people. And now you do, too.”
Then Bowie created himself another invisible mask, and put it on, smiling. “Now we’ve both got invisible masks. We can both see through them perfectly well and no one would know we’re even wearing them.”
The boy, now all grown up, recounted the impact of that exercise and said that wearing the invisible mask, gifted to him by the Goblin King, himself, made him feel safe for the first time in his whole life. And he still wears the mask to this day.
I don’t know if David Bowie really went through the exercise of putting on an invisible mask every day, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Regardless, it takes a special kind of person to notice a someone who didn’t fit in, and to give them a gift that would change the way they see the world.
But I suppose that’s what David Bowie did best: change our perspective.
View the original story of David Bowie and the Invisible Mask here.
