6 fucking years. Wow.
I'll never forget it. I had just staged an intervention with my eventually-to-be ex-wife. Her parents flew out from the Midwest and the three of them were staying with me, in what used to be our home (and thankfully was now just mine). Her stuff was stacked all over my living room, and I'd graciously given up my bed so everyone else could have a good night's sleep after their long ordeal and drive out of the high desert. In other words, my life appeared to be in a shambles, but in reality, the shambles was well and truly behind me. She was probably at her lowest point, but I was on an upswing. I'd had a fabulous weekend. I had prospects for a social life. I had friends. I sat on the chaise lounge watching Chef starring John Favreau with my outgoing father-in-law (nice guy), trading texts and emails with prospective new love interests, friends, laughing and drinking beer well into the night, even though I had to be up at 4:30 AM for work.
Cut to when my first alarm went off. I was sleeping on the couch, my phone was beside me on the floor. I snatched it up as soon as I heard that tell-tale wake-up chime and silenced it. This would have been before I switched to an iPhone, so I was in Android country. Not sure how that factors, other than it's a detail I remember, so it fills the scene in. A moment later the phone buzzed again - too soon to have out-distanced my snooze - and when I picked it up, I saw a text from my friend Tori. It said, simply:
Dude. David Bowie died.
I felt at that moment that all the progress I'd made, everything, was for naught. David Bowie taught me how to age - how to grow older with grace. How to navigate life's unending menagerie of madness with tact. I'd just exhibited this lesson in the two-and-a-half years it took my marriage to end, to get to the point where I was, about to send my ex and her family off into the negative zone outside my own peripheral existence. And now, my teacher was dead.
Fuck.
Six years later, we return to the same stage - it's Sunday night while I'm typing this, the long-delayed love of my life curled up on the sofa by my side, Black Star playing on the stereo. I lost three cats, gained one, started a bunch of podcasts, ended one big one, gained friends, lost some, turned my back on others. Life continues to throw its curve balls at my head, and I duck and pop back up and smile.
Just like David Bowie taught me.
Watch:
Playlist:
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - F# A# ∞
Huey Lewis and the News - Sports
Tennis System - Technicolor Blind
Tennis System - Lovesick
Tennis System - Bitter (Single)
PJ Harvey - To Bring You My Love
Talking Heads - Fear of Music
Depeche Mode - A Question of Lust EP
Boy Harsher - Careful
Beach House - Thank Your Lucky Stars
Ministry - Moral Hygiene
Fleetwood Mac - Tusk
Beach House - Once Twice Melody (Disc 1)
Felicia Atkinson & Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - Un Hiver En Plein Été
Fleet Foxes - A Very Lonely Solstice
Chet Baker - Baker's Holiday
The Yellow House - Refurbished
David Bowie - Black Star
Card:
Transformation.
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