Sometimes you get so lonely,” Bowie singing from “Be My Wife” – without introducing it as he had at the Shrine, addressing it to no one in particular. Maybe it is about that void that we all feel from being human and not able to connect all the synapses and neurons that would make us complete. In that, aliens possibly feel the same way. Last night, the Wiltern was lit up like a spaceship, and it was the first time I had ever seen a show that was not determinedly lo-fi, so it was of course, spectacular.
There were a mix of a few solid music industry types that had come the night before, rock stars in slight disguise taking mental notes, youngster actors in the same cords and All-Stars, but then there were lots and lots of younger kids. One boy had on an entirely white suit, bright red hair, bringing the Thin White Duke of Echo Park to the show. We waved at him from our car, as we drove into the underground garage. My suit was lavender Bianca Jagger and I had on the as promised “Life on Mars” eyeshadow rings around my eyes. There were more fans of the rabid variety, who had come to pay homage to the god that Bowie is, and all the incarnations that he has been, illuminating all his aspects.
The show was somewhat similar in content, but he had changed the songs around completely, which is an amazingly interesting thing to do. As a performer, I know it takes a lot to change the order of things. It breaks up the rhythm which isn’t easy, unless you are David Bowie.
We hijacked the best seats in the house, the front row of the balcony, where I waved my multicolored boa and mauve lace covered hand at him. People were discussing us in the lobby – “Those two girls – they know how to attend a Bowie concert. They were bringing me back to 1973.” Ava hooked up the backstage passes, they’d been left for some reason without the tickets, and she wouldn’t leave it alone. I was terrified of going backstage or meeting Bowie, she had no problem whatsoever with it. I guess she owes me one.
I took her to meet Bryan Ferry backstage at a show in Anaheim last year. He was awesome, beautiful, like for me, a close second to Bowie, and she wasn’t able to speak. Ava, who talks all the time to everyone, leveling the playing field for all present, was actually, speechless. I had to gently nudge her over and say, “This is your biggest fan, Bryan, she really is very talkative, but I think you have made her a bit bashful.” He held her hand and spoke to her warmly, softly, and it was a gorgeous moment. She looked like five years old at the most, talking to a daddy that was more than a father. Some people are that – more than a parent, more than a role model, more than anything less than a religion.
Bryan Ferry had a slight cold, and was leaving for Tokyo in the morning. He was not particularly thrilled about the long flight, but he spoke to us for a long time in the cramped stairwell between the dressing rooms and the stage entrance. He was kind, gentle and it was the best kind of star meeting that you’d ever want. Like a walking, talking human “Pajamarama,” my favorite Roxy Music song, which is candy floss for the ears, and like a Tibetan Singing Bowl, heals all hearts if played long enough.
Seeing Bowie two nights in a row, makes it no less of a pilgrimage to the Great God of Rock. If I were truly devout, I would have made the journey from my house to the venue on my knees, but I would have ruined the cut of the sleekly trousers that crash so marvelously onto the tops of my blood red Chinese dragon cowboy boots. His body is lithe, like a ballet dancer still in the corps. His training with Marcel Marceau still shows through a bit, as he naturally stands with one foot slightly akimbo. The fact that I know he had a tenure as a mime really shows my fangirl fanatics. I sit back a moment during “Sufferagette City” – where the audience voices back an ecclesiastical “WHAM BAM THANK YOU MA’AM!!!!!” like we wuz at church. Looking into his boyish face and sincere smile, seeing all that he has been through weaving in and out of personae, less like schizophrenia, more like having lots and lots of closet space.
I hope that the man himself, is happy. He seems so, as all the players that play do, unless they intend to make it their business to be unhappy, but then underneath you find that they really are happy – way happier than their fans anyway. I have secret wishes. I wish that he and Iman are holding each other close at night away from all the lights and the coterie of makeup and hair and roadies and photographers and that the nights in their home, wherever it might be, who knows, possibly on another planet, or at the very least a bright satellite are cozy and sweet relief. My eyes shut and momentarily wished that the godlike rockstar I worship so much is really also just a man, a happy one. I hope that his little family is full of surprise and laughter. I hope his bed is warm when he wakes, that he feels good all the time, has few colds and never has trouble with his voice. I hope he doesn’t get terrible jet lag and that he has friends welcoming him all over the world, not as the aladdinsanefameashestoashesstationtostationiconicbionicman, but as old mates, with teary eyes and arms holding him tight. I hope that he is kissed by his children often and uninvited and that he has many days in a row of quiet contemplation. I wish that all the fans that try to grab him, that try to capture a piece of what he means to them don’t drive him mad. I hope that he doesn’t miss his friends too badly, the ones that haven’t made it this far along with him, those who didn’t survive the excess and the melee not to mention AIDS of the 70s and 80s. I hope that he knows in his heart that he is a great actor (OH MY GOD DID YOU SEE HIM IN BASQUIAT??!!). I hope that when he goes on stage, he knows that he feeds us all with a kind of sustenance that cannot be given by anyone else, anywhere else, and that some of us are so hungry that sometimes we don’t know if we are a boy or a girl, that we are stepping though the door, and it’s time to leave the capsule if we dare, that we wish we were sipping milkshakes cold and long, not knowing we were part of his song, all us, the pretty things that drive our mothers and fathers insane, us mellow thighed chicks, the fat skinny people, the queers throwing up at the sight of everything, all us Americans who are afraid of Americans. We leave his table for the first time, content, no longer starving from the malnutrition of identity. We leave his table with a name.
I didn’t meet him. I couldn’t. Ava was about to drag me up to the Mighty Bowie himself, and she would have done it, but I dug my heels into the pavement. His makeup artist, a fan of mine, said he had wanted to meet me, and was waiting too, wondering where I was, insisted that I go up to the dressing room, one I myself have used many times, the stairs that I run up and down to do my shows – this time seemed too long and scary. How do you meet someone who has meant so much to you? How do you say hello to God? I don’t know. I just went home. But that was enough. Oh thank you David Bowie. Thank you.
And thank you also for declining knighthood. Why should you be knighted when you are already King?