I'm Living On

You may as well tell me that robins no longer exist, or that water isn't wet, for all the sense that hearing of David Bowie's death makes.

I was up at 2am, because I always am, when I heard. And then I sat around on the internet for three hours, disbelieving and hoping it wasn't true. Too sad to go to sleep, aching in that strange sort of loneliness that only happens in those imaginary hours of the morning.

I considered calling my friends, my teammates, because it felt like they should hear it from a friend, not from the internet. On the other hand, I could also give them a night of uninterrupted sleep, a few more hours of not knowing that we suddenly existed on a planet that was a little dimmer. I let them sleep.

I've never called Bowie one of my favourite artists. He's always been more like a puppetmaster, like background noise. Knowing, in the back of my head, that almost everything I do love is here, in some way, because of Bowie. Now he isn't, and it's like the someone has removed the keystone and everything is just sagging over.

I got to see him, once. In 2002, I dragged Sam Hoffberger (or Sam dragged me? That seems more likely) to New Jersey for Moby's Area 2 tour. Moby set the whole thing up, and asked Bowie to headline. Bowie turned him down, and insisted on opening for Moby. I remember, though can't find the quote, Bowie saying that it was Moby's show, he deserved the headlining slot. That always stuck with me. I remember next to nothing of the set. It was a long, long day, and my brain had already been broken about a hundred times by every single person on that bill. I do remember that there were many, many empty seats. Way to drop the ball, New Jersey. (I went back to my LiveJournal to see if I wrote a review. I did. I was uniformly terrible. "I was tired, so I spent most of the set sitting down. Then I ran to go see Carl Cox." Thanks for nothing, past-me.)

And then, of course, there's my team. Were it not for a long beaten horse about David Bowie's dick, would I even be here, me, now? Sure, we'd probably all have ended up together as Loud Assholes Who Yell At You a Lot or something anyway, but there's a unique magic to David Bowie's Package that I don't think anyone but David Bowie could have ever inspired.

If not for David Bowie's Package, when I got to Colorado, what would Megan have thought was the coolest fucking thing ever, and what would have made it clear that she was going to be the best person I found out there? I'm sure we'd have bonded over something else, but if I start imagining a world without Bowie, in loose threads and lost jokes, it all starts to unwind itself.

He existed at all, and we're all the better for it, but right now that's not enough to fill the emptiness that he's left behind. I think a lot about mortality, and have mostly reconciled that I, and everyone I love, exists within it, but somehow, Bowie seemed beyond that. I think I always imagined him as our Tony Bennett, a billion years old and still cranking out new music with whoever tomorrow's Lady Gaga is. I assumed that Bowie would show us how to age not just gracefully, but stupendously, how to keep inventing ourselves as we keep on marching over the hill and in to the stars. Maybe a tiny part of me figured him for a Timelord.

I'm struggling to define chaos in this, to explain loss, to grieve as poetically as I feel like he deserves. Nothing I've said here is novel: over the last few days, there have been scores of other people saying other things, all of them better than I have, or will ever be able to. (Read them. They make my heart hurt a little bit less.)

So there's this: David Bowie had a profound effect on not just what I like to listen to, but to who I've chosen to make family, and how I interact with the world outside my brain. He very existence enabled some of my most treasured, longstanding friendships, and merely missing or thanking a person whose entire lifetime makes up such an intrinsic component of my own social DNA seems wholly inadequate.

I am glad he was here.

David Bowie's package rules.

Not even going to pretend I didn't steal this from PJ's Flickr album.
2008 World Rock Paper Scissors Championships,
Team David Bowie's Package

About A Dog

My friend's dog passed away unexpectedly last night. He was bitten by another dog in the neighborhood, infection set in, and he passed.

I am basically a wreck.

Smokey belonged to my teammates, Baconshark and Tits McGee. Baconshark had brought Smokey home back in 2007, with the money he'd won at that year's RPS championship. I wasn't in the picture at that point, but Smokey was clearly the Victory Dog.

The next year, I tripped into the arms of a rowdy gang of jackasses more affectionately known as David Bowie's Package. After on-purposely getting drunk and accidentally winning the 2008 championship, Baconshark kindly drove me back to his house in Jersey, where I met Smokey. As I laid down on the sofa to pass out, PJ laid my giant check up against the seat, and I curled up. Hours later, I awoke to a large, skinny, furry blanket draped over me - Smokey was unwilling to share his sofa, and was sleeping on top of me like an adorable blanket. There's a picture of this, somewhere. I wish I could find it.

That was the beginning, they say, of a beautiful friendship. I moved out to Colorado shortly after the season ended, and only really got to see Smokes a few times a year. He was never, of course, my dog, but in my head, he was always the team's dog, the unsung, most adorable member of The Package. Trips to Jersey almost inevitably would end up with me at the Williams-Mercer Zoo, adults ("adults") in the kitchen/dining room doing adult things (talking/yelling about loud music), while Smokes and I would curl up on the floor and make googly eyes at each other. Maybe I just made the googly eyes. He just wondered where this extra human came from, and why there were so many snuggles.

I would badger Karen for stories about her adventures with the pup, jealous that I never got to spend as much time with either of them as I ever wanted to. And she'd humor me, telling me about the songs she would make up for him while they were taking walks together, or mundane things around the neighborhood that made him skittish. I'd sit around and wonder how so much dog could fit into such a tiny frame. (Seriously, where does the dog go on greyhounds??) And Smokey would grin, and writhe around on his back, and get loved on. Because this dog loved his people, and all the people loved this dog.

And so I'm sitting here at 4am, still crying, after sobbing on Jon for an hour after I heard, for this pup that I only tangentially knew, and for his people, who loved him so much. For Kevin and Karen, who are now down a best friend, and for their little one, who will never get to meet his big furry brother.

There are things I want to tell you about Smokes, about his giant, kind eyes, and his adorable greyhound grin, and his endless patience for the humans (me. Others.) who insisted on his post-racing career as a pillow. But instead, I'll tell you this: David Bowie's Package rules. And so do you, Smokey. <3.