(Image created with Starman footage via SpaceX ©️2018)
My first true love died on 10 January, 2016. The man who fell to earth had held my hand and serenaded me through a lifetime of ups and downs. Epic fails and triumphs. Milestones and losses. He never wavered. Never left my side.
It never mattered that he didn’t know I was alive. Because David was bigger than life itself. More than immortal. His very essence provided the soundtrack for my being.
And then he died.
It sounds absurd. You may find it unbelievable or, at the very least, ridiculously over dramatic but when he died, the world fell silent for me. Colors dulled. Gravity weighed me down like never before as my soul ached to follow David. I begged him to take me along for he’d never before forsaken me...never left me alone to explore the landscape of this strange planet on my own. And I wasn’t ready. I didn’t know how.
Two years have passed without his guidance. Two years. I don’t know when to dance or turn to the left. Two years without a plea to stay. Two years when I’d always believed we’d have five. Two years without silhouettes and shadows. Two years no longer knowing if it’s all worthwhile...
This past Tuesday - along with every other science nerd on the planet - I was excitedly awaiting the test launch of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy. I’m forever fascinated by their antics and possiblilities. But this launch was different.
When I first heard that Elon Musk was using a Tesla covertable roadster as the payload for this rocket, I immediately deemed it a cheesy marketing ploy. And he named it Starman...seriously? How utterly gauche.
But then I watched it. And I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Starman embodies the vernacular of the human experience over the past century. The wanderlust and the ingenuity. The beauty and the dreams. The audacity and the vision. It’s the best of us. And probably the worst. It’s the breaking away from 20th century limitations and reaching far, far beyond. Starman is boundless. It could float through the universe unencumbered for a billion years.
Starman is my beloved Bowie. In tribute. Posthumously continuing his mission to poetically change the very structure of the universe. Proving once again that he cannot be defined or contained.
My world is once again alive with sound and vision. But this time I will not try so desperately to hold onto it. This time I will remain open and grounded and I will breathe. I will surrender to the forces that are at work. The natural. The supernatural. And I will embrace the wonders that are David...knowing that he is no longer mine alone. Knowing that he really never was.
My sweet Bowie now belongs to the universe. Or maybe it’s the other way around.
