A Couple of Kooks

Are you okay?

You wrote me -  in  ’71 I suppose – that you loved Bowie. And said (I’m going from memory here) “I’m in my bedroom listening to Hunky Dory (Kooks). Great album!”

I guess I was young and awkward then. Unlike you. In your bedroom, listening to David Bowie. But  I borrowed the album from a friend. And that song – and for me it was about you – lit a spark in my life and set it in amber. And every time I’ve heard it, or seen the  album, all through these years, a little piece of you has come floating back to me.

A year later I’d thrown my homework on the fire and taken that car downtown. And wanted to be like him, standing outside a stage door under a K. West sign….

Maybe everyone - all of us swallowed up in the spirit of the times he captured -  thinks they were the ones he really sang for. At certain moments. On our personal journeys. Post-hippy pre-punk me,  listening to Starman.  A post-punk little sister, on a journey to adulthood and riot-grrrldom, listening to Boys Keep Swinging.   You with your records and your cool,  in your bedroom. And all the generations since…..

I still think you and I were the ones he touched the most. But then, I would think that.

A guy on TV’s saying he met Bowie.  But we all met Bowie - all of our generation and beyond. That was the genius of the man.



Not my usual type of post and not how I wanted to start this year's blogs. But Bowie's death has hit us all so hard. We grew up with him and he grew into us, expressing things for us that we didn't know how to and showing us worlds...and sounds, we hadn't imagined.