Bowie

Just last Friday, I hit play on the entire catalog of David Bowie and culled my closet, in the hopes that his supreme domain over the word cool would somehow seep out of the speakers and guide me as I determined the fate of each garment. Friday was also his birthday, and the day he released his 28th album. It was his final album release, as he fell back away from Earth this morning. 

I don't so much think I have the right to wax on about the loss of Bowie. Although he was a god to many, he was a human to many more, and that deeply personal loss is theirs. But he always has (and will continue to) inspire (really the word inspire doesn't cover it), so I thought it would be fitting to simply look back on a Bowie inspired creation of the past. I wrote the following post in April 2013. 

I love every glittering hard edged sexy speck that is David Bowie. In fact, I've been known to get into serious arguments with close friends about the neverending cool that is Bowie. I defy you to find a rocker that has always been as undyingly cool as Bowie. I'll fight you. EVEN LABYRINTH COULD NOT STOP HIM.

So when that wildfire storm of a bloggess Tempest Devyne announced a Bowie sewalong, I was aaaaaaaaaall in. Bowie sewie, baby. The only problem was too many ideas. Glam rock outfit...punk acid rock leather...slick R&B gospel suit...I landed on the look from "Jump They Say," from the album Black Tie/White Noise. VERY COOL VIDEO. He's on skyscraper rooftops, being pushed and pulled in medical rooms and elevators by sharp suits and pale nurses...the tune was written about his half brother, who, I believe, did jump. To me, it always sounded like an admonishment, a commendation, and a warning at the same time. VERY COOL SONG.

But I couldn't seal the deal, as the fashion was clean lines, tailored coats, and, well, black and white. 

Summer's coming, I can smell it in the air, it makes me feel alive, and I'm hellbound for color. Enter Nicole's (of You sew girl!) holyfrig amazing Drape t-shirt dress pattern. This is "pattern magic," with no magic required. I'm of the no-thank-you camp when it comes to figuring those bad boys out, so imagine my delight when I had an artsy draped dress in UNDER AN HOUR. My first crack was made up in silky grey jersey, in the hopes of a slim resemblance to Monochrome Tailored Jazz Bowie... and I would've went with it, but I really needed to shoot it on top of a building (seriously, you gotta watch the video).  

But then I remembered this magnificent print, picked up at Spandex House. Or maybe it was World. Whichever one, IT HAS A SIX DOLLAR A YARD RACK. I had enough of this fabric fulla colors-to-light up-your-face to extend Nicole's pattern to maxi proportions. I believe there's even some serious moonlight in there. Definitely some blues for those red hues. And nothin says sway like jersey. The "Let's Dance" dress was on.

Big Daddy was always quite fond of this tune, we'd duet often. And Bowie is just, as always, the coolest. I revisited the video: a sweaty, white gloved Bowie lolls against a plaster wall with a lone upright bassist, a disinterested yet slightly worried singer, squinting into the sun bleached distance, as bar patrons of all ages drink and shimmy. You feel like you're in a mix of present and past Mexico, and Bowie is so cool, he doesn't even need to be in the video. You leave him halfway through the first verse and follow a young girl who happens upon a pair of patent leather red shoes, and then it all goes wrong in that Bowie video way: a mushroom cloud blossoms in the distance, and she and her beau are transported to some kind of New York (I may be projecting here), where they find themselves scrubbing streets, thoughtlessly spending, and dragging mechanical factory inventions around like packhorses. In the end, she ditches the shoes, and they snap out of it, back dancing barefoot atop their mountain, the sharp city intact in the distance across the water, the red shoes abandoned.

Appropriately, I went sans shoes for these photos, taken while away this weekend with Hollow Leg Dad, Hot Mama, and The Child(ren). Also appropriately, I would rather be dancing barefoot in their sun bleached backyard than heading back to the sharp city.

I'll put on some Bowie tonight for sure. It's the best for dancing when you have the blues.

2016: This dress has since been shortened to mini length, and now graces the (over 6 foot tall) frame of a stunning actress/singer/dancer who exudes joy twenty four seven. I don't regret the giving of it-- it was an excellent reincarnation. And there will always be Bowie in my closet.

#tbtpost: Mr Brown, A Ghost Story

Happy Hell Night, or Mischief Night, or Devil's Night, or RUGGY'S BIRTHDAY(!), or, you know... Thursday. I thought it might be fun to throw back to an old post every now and again for this hashtaggable day. Maybe you'd like to join in, and dust off an old tale that new friends may have missed? For the first #tbtpost, I've got a ghost story for you. Added bonus: Now With Proper Capitalization. (Miss the ee cummings vibe? You can peep the original lowercase post here.)

I was very lucky to spend my collegiate years in the historic old town of Boston, MA, at an historic old college founded in the historic old mid 1860s. I chose to live on campus-- well, technically, as a freshman, there wasn't a choice. "On campus" meant a block long row of victorian brownstones acknowledged in the National Registry of Historic Places (told ya). I was down for that coolness, freshman or no.

As a pink faced first year, I was assigned to a sprawling room with 12 foot ceilings, crown moldings, and two windows that faced the back alley. The back alley of death. Now, as a grownup, armed with years of city living experience, I'm quite certain I would not walk down this back alley by myself. Not even at high noon with clear skies in broad daylight. But I did it at all hours back then. I had no choice, it was the shortcut to many classes, and as a quasi-triple-major I didn't have time for the long way. Once, I met a police officer running full tilt down the alley, pausing to tell me to GET THE HELL OUT OF THE ALLEY, as he was busy chasing a suspect who had just assaulted a woman. At 1 in the afternoon. HAD I SEEN HIM? No, officer. 

I'm not even shitting you.

But I digress.

(Mom and Dad, obviously I survived the back alley so please breathe. Okay? Okay.)

My dorm room came with two roommates. The first hailed from a sunny tropical island, and we hit it off immediately. She was absolutely game to take the bed by the windows, she wanted the sun, and I was absolutely game to take the bed waaaaaay over on the opposite side of the room, away from the fire escape leading to the back alley of death. We left the bed in the middle for the absentee number three. We rummaged each others' closets, hung the prerequisite comedy/tragedy masks and posters of gloomy rock artists whose music we'd never heard, and went off galavanting nightly in the week before classes began. We had so many days as a twosome, we weren't sure number three would ever arrive. Luck was ours! We had the biggest triple in the brownstone, nay, in the SCHOOL, for two! We Urban-Oufitted the third bed for late night geekfests and schoolwork.

But she did arrive. Weeks after the official start of the year, in a stink of rain and hail. The daybed was suddenly enveloped by a dark cloud that seemed to have been accumulating for 17 years. We opened our closets to her, we offered her the fancy daybed pillows, we hastily took our posters off her wall and encouraged her to hang her own.

She was not having us.

The triplet down the hall was much more her style, girls I would deem "popular" and "cool" in high school-- we were the straightlaced nerds. She smoked. She drank. She was on academic probation almost upon setting foot in the front door. But she was stuck with us. Beyond miserable, and completely volatile to boot, she would scream and curse at us before storming off to the triplets. Our quirky brownstone loft became quiet and gloomy. We went with relief to our classes, dreading going back to the dorm.

One night, around 3 am, I woke up completely and calmly to the sound of something shattering.  I turned to look at island roomie, way across the room by the windows. And saw a man sitting at the edge of her bed.

It was dark, and he wore a mask. Even in his seated position, I could tell he was he was very tall: he was hunched over the foot of her bed, elbows on his knees. He was slowly moving his head from side to side, looking first at my sleeping roomie, then turning his gaze to rest on the sullen newcomer a few feet away. Each time he turned his head back to my fair haired roomie, the soft glow from the back alley security light positioned on our fire escape would catch his face, illuminating the shiny brown mask covering his features.

I watched him do this for minutes. It seemed his only purpose. I truly didn't feel he was there to harm anyone, but still, feeling worried for my roomie, and safe enough in my far away bed, I reached for my glasses to get a better look.

And found he had stopped his motion to stare directly at me.

I whispered, "okay, you're cool", and hearing every-bit-of-horror-music-ever-played in my head, I purposefully clenched the covers and pulled them up, slow motion, over my face, seeing him stock still, fixing me in his sights the entire time. Under the covers, with my glasses still on, I waited to hear his footsteps fall across the room. They never came. and finally I fell asleep.

The next morning, covers still over my head but with the sweet light of back alley sun flooding across the room, I sat straight up and found island roomie stirring. Third was comatose, and usually was till noon. My glasses were still on, the only evidence that anything had happened at all. I grabbed my shower kit and headed for the door, when my foot hit something cool and shiny. A thin ceramic mask, with not a nick on it. A brown mask, of the tragedy sort, lying face up on the floor, seven feet away from where it used to hang... above my bed.

Island roomie saw my look of complete horror and as I stammered out my story, third awoke. Mad. But listening, quickly quieting, and then turning pale. She barked questions at me. What did he look like? Was he tall? Was he staring at both of them? Or just her? 

A week or so later, she was gone. Left school, went home. The triplet down the hall told us, not without some guilt, that her boyfriend had been killed in a car crash, weeks before she was to start college. All of her anger towards us made sense. We had no idea.

We took the masks down and gave them away. After freshman year, I stayed in the dorms, becoming a resident assistant, and made it my business to stick my nose in everyone's business. I still feel badly about her.