Ziggy Stardust is in the Firmament

A Tribute to David Bowie: Ziggy Stardust is in the Firmament

I watch the ripples change their size

But never leave the stream

Of warm impermanence and

So the days float through my eyes

But still the days seem the same

And these children that you spit on

As they try to change their worlds

Are immune to your consultations

They’re quite aware of what they’re going through

Ch-ch-changes

Just gonna have to be a different man

Time may change me

But I can’t trace time

–Changes, by David Bowie, 1972

Monday, January 11, 2016, marked the news of the passing of David Bowie on Sunday; a rather timeless and influential performer who embraced a multitude of changes in his public persona over the years. While David Bowie’s music was the soundtrack for so many in my generation, I could best relate to the more cosmic appeal of his popularity… characters like Ziggy Stardust, Starman, or Major Tom, from “Space Oddity.”

As the news spread across both conventional and social media outlets, retrospectives began about the man and his music. David Bowie went through some colorful transformations over his five-decade career. From his rise to greater fame in the 1970s during the ‘glam rock’ era, Bowie walked the edge, both in art and person. As I grew into young adulthood, Bowie’s often controversial characterisms continued to shock the elders and thrill the youngsters, eventually winning both sides of the audience around the time he sang “Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth” with the late Bing Crosby in 1977.

Considered by many to be an avant-garde artist, actor, and musician, fans learned to expect the unexpected where Bowie was concerned, and respect it. If we got used to seeing him in long hair, it would get cut short or dyed another color entirely. Bowie wore the androgynous clothes and style with such panache, that he often set the standard for how to be both outlandish and down to earth while keeping his head in the stars, simultaneously.