My Journey

I want to take you on a journey. It is an emotional journey of my life via the Bowie is exhibition.

Under the guise of taking my 15 year old to a museum, I travelled 50 miles to see if we could secure tickets on the day. I thought I had been clever, choosing a day that was neither the weekend nor a school holiday, but alas there was still easily a queue of people at least 150 in front of me. I decided to ask about membership and found out that members get free entry and can get up to four children under 18 free! Sold to the lady in the Bowie t-shirt!!

I did not know what to expect but we picked up our headphones and went in. Gulp! Take time to take it all in and explore everything. It is an art exhibition and therefore talks about how Bowie has influenced attitudes, fashion, music and more. The exhibits include a letter explaining why David Jones became David Bowie. It has the hand written music of The Laughing Gnome. It continues with more hand written lyrics including Life On Mars and Five Years. I found it really interesting to see how the lyrics had changed from what Bowie had originally put to the song we know today. For example, ‘stared at the wheels of a Cadillac' – was originally tram or train. One of my favourite areas in this section was the life on mars video. I stood close and really felt I was in the Top of the Pops studio. I danced and pretended I was the only one there. Did you know that the costume for that performance was based on droogs from the film A Clockwork Orange? No? Neither did I? This exhibition is educational even for a die-hard fan. I also enjoyed the puppet from ‘Where are we now’ as Bowie was looking right at me and blowing me kisses and winking. Had better not tell Iman!

I question how strongly the people who attended are as a fan as I saw no one sing, no one dance, no one excited comment, so I felt justified when after a few songs I clapped at the end of each one. I don’t care what other people think. I love Bowie and wanted to express it. To me, Bowie has been the friend I needed when I was low and lonely as a teenager and that bond is stronger than ever today. This was such an emotional journey for me. At each part of Bowie’s life and change in direction, I have grown and changed too. Thank you Mr Bowie for being there.

And in case you wondered just how influential he has been in my life, last week my mum asked me why I had never married Bowie. ‘Mum, he never asked me!’