My friend Jeff gave me the darlingest gift for my birthday this year:
Barbie Bowie! She looks just like me! The attention to detail of this doll is incredible, from the striped and polka-dotted tie to the platform brogues. The Barbie company made an exact replica of David Bowie as filmed by Mick Rock for his “Life on Mars” music video.
This was my singing debut, at the National Arts Club, where I also did my best to replicate Bowie’s “Life on Mars” look and sound.
It was one of the most thrilling moments of my life to meet Mick Rock at a photo exhibit of pictures he and other photographers had taken of David Bowie. I brought along a giant book of Mick’s photographs of Bowie, which he signed for me, and we hung out a bit. He did think I was gauche though. I was as eager as a puppy, and didn’t act as reserved as a cool New Yorker.
Me and Mick Rock, the photographer who did the “Life on Mars” video and many of the iconic Bowie photos in the early 70s.
I was really sad when Mick Rock died last year. His enormous book with a really cool holographic cover is behind Barbie in the top photo.
I was also honored to meet Carol Spencer at her Dressing Barbie book talk at the National Arts Club in 2020. She was a Barbie fashion designer for more than 35 years (early 60s to late 90s), and her book was published for Barbie’s 60th anniversary. I enjoyed many of her clothes, with no idea of the amazing woman behind them.
When I was a girl I loved playing with my Barbie, and it was hard to give her up when I reached the end of the elementary school years and other girls at school deemed Barbie too childish for us. I collected every color of the high-heeled loafers that went with the Barbie outfits in the late 60s and early 70s. I loved dressing Barbie in different outfits and imagining her going out on exciting dates. Little did I know I was in training for my Karen’s Quirky Style column!
Me and Mick Rock, the photographer who did the “Life on Mars” video in which Bowie wore this blue suit, and many of the iconic Bowie photos in the early 70s
In the last entry, I talked about some of the reasons I imagine explain Bowie’s popularity and general appeal. Now I’d like to share a bit more about his impact on me personally.
The first Bowie song I heard on the radio was Fame, when I was 10 years old. My parents didn’t usually play music in the house, or if they did, it was classical. But for some reason the radio in the large wooden console stereo was tuned to a rock station on this day. (My aunt must have changed the station the previous night when she was babysitting me and my sister.) I turned on the radio, and suddenly I was hearing something astonishing! I had never heard music like this before. The rolling bass line! The groove. The soundscape of tinkling and puncturing and rising and falling vocal lines. So much complexity. I couldn’t understand many of the words, beyond Fame, so it was the pure sound and the physical impact of it. The excitement! This music moved my body to dance. It filled my heart with possibility and longing to be somebody other than a shy, lonely suburban kid. It blew open my sheltered, limited life, and I knew that someday it was all going to be different for me. Now bear in mind that I didn’t know who Bowie was, and I didn’t know who was playing the song when I heard. I didn’t find that out until years later. But the impact of the song was marked indelibly–a significant moment in my life.
The next encounter with Bowie was the discovery of this record album at a used record swapmeet, with my boyfriend Rick and my sister Kim, when I was about 16.
By now I had been listening to rock radio avidly for a few years, and I knew who Bowie was. But I wasn’t a nut for him like many fans probably were. I just fell in love with his face on this record. I was intrigued because it looked like he had one blue eye and one brown eye. I thought I recognized a few of the songs, and I bought it.
This is when my feeling of connection to his music began, particularly with Rebel Rebel. Hey, I was 16! Totally the right time to find a voice for the wish to rise up and rebel against my parents, be my own person, be wild and free. Again there was that rolling, relentless twanging guitar sound, the insistent drums and bass, the driving force of it. And then the lyrics were about a girl I wanted to be. The hot tramp that Bowie loved! At around this time my sister and I saw Christiane F, and the teenage girl in the movie was going through the same stage of rebellion and trying to find herself, and it all was MC’d by Bowie.
Kim and I also found The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars around this time, and rented the VHS movie from the video store, and this story, visuals, and music entered our consciousness and stayed there for many years, well into our early twenties when we were sharing a series of apartments in New Westminster and partying most nights of the week at the local biker bar, Rockin’ Tonite. The whole storyline of the savior from space, and the end of the world, and the feeling that there was some magic somewhere–illlustrated by the movie with Bowie in all those fantastic costumes–stirred that longing for a special life. It spoke to my inner knowing that I was meant for something more than the limited suburbian world I grew up in (Burnaby) and the safe, ordinary life of an accountant that I’d chosen for myself.
As you all know, this drive for something more has illuminated my life, leading me to the Diamond Approach and inner journeying, to Monkey Valley, vision questing, and eventually to New York City, where I feel I’ve come home.
With my friend Andrea at a Bowie photography exhibit in Soho
So I’d like to close this post with a quote from Bowie’s song Lazurus, from his final album, Black Star:
“By the time I got to New York I was living like a king. Then I used up all my money.” The aptly named Lazarus depicts the end of life, rising up to heaven/the next realm of existence, seeing what we left behind down below, the feeling of freedom. The sorrow of the loss of what’s left behind. Oh, the cleverness, humor, and soul of Bowie. He shared the course of development of a human soul throughout a lifetime with us.
And from “Soul Love: “Inspirations have I none, just to touch the flaming dove. And love is not loving… And reaching up my loneliness evolves…” It could go on and on, but it has to end sometime. David Bowie.
