Heroes

…and we can be heroes, just for one day...

    I heard these words for the first time in 1977.  I was 17 years old, a junior in high school who didn’t know or care who wrote and performed the song, “Heroes”.  All I knew was that it was amazing.  A unique sound, a feeling that made me happy.  Whenever I heard it I felt hope for my place in the future.

    As I grew older and learned about design at Massart, I came to appreciate this musician, artist and creative visionary.  He was a chameleon who changed his persona with every direction in which he took in his music. He exuded all that was wild about the 70’s and I have to admit as a Catholic educated girl, he scared me a little, but in a wickedly good way.  In the 80’s as I was entering the real world he transformed himself into the coolest man who fell to earth.  Like so many, I was inspired to dance in my red shoes.  And as David Bowie changed and grew as an artist and man, so I grew to become a woman, wife and mother. Life went on.

    My girls are almost grown now and my husband and I still play them the music of our past.  Artists we grew up with, The Beatles, Tom Petty, Simon and Garfunkel, Van Morrison and more can still rival the music of Beyonce, Kanye West and The National.  However, when it comes to David Bowie, he is and always will be, though no longer in body, the essence of ever changing, ever growing, everlasting creative heroism.  He pushed boundaries of sexual identity and sense of self, of creativity and conscience.  Yes, he was a hero, and with his passing I am left with a line from the song, “Young Americans”.  It just keeps dancing around in my brain, 

“Ain’t there one damn song that can make me break down and cry?”

Goodbye, David Bowie.  I'll be seeing you in the stardust…

Thanks for looking,

Claire