Pointless or viable?

Recently I hit the road on a sixteen hour trip from New Jersey to Chicago. A tenuous drive, but one that was easily alleviated by some good tunes from my IPOD. I was not alone on my journey, two good friends of mine, Karl and Steve, accompanied me to Arise. (A worship and arts conference at Willow Creek Community Church.) For each of us our musical tastes very, though we appreciate each others music and have many musical similarities. One point that we differ on is rock music. No my friends are not classical music junkies, but they don't listen to most music that is deemed "secular." They don't have a problem with most of the music, it's just that they choose not to listen to it. But with there request that I bring my IPOD along for the trip they were warned that there would be some music that they never listen to. Most importantly David Bowie. One request that was made to me was that I give some history on David Bowie and his music and I duly obliged.

As we traveled and the music of David Bowie would come up out of the random shuffle, I would proceed to tell the stories and the history of David's music.  For each song there was a bit of information that over the hours Karl would eventually say to me, "You really know allot about David Bowie." Like a ton of bricks falling I realized that I did, and at a moments notice of a single note being played I could bring out information of who, what, when, where, why and how on David Bowie's music. Certainly it was appropriate that many of the songs we listened to came from the Aladdin Sane album, being that it was an album influenced by David's Ziggy Stardust tour of America. How did I get to this point of knowing all this information about David Bowie?

The school bus stopped at the corner of Valleybrook Court and I finished another day as a sixth grader. Entering my house, all alone I had free reign to do what I wanted to do for just a short hour. Many days it was just sitting in front of the television and having a snack but some days I would have this urge just to put on some music. I would pop open the glass door on our entertainment system and flip the top of the record player. (Yes, record player.) Find some records that had songs that felt the way I was feeling and put them on. One day I found this album that the title alone expressed how I felt. The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars. What on earth is this, I wondered. I put it on, heard this weird voice and let the record spin for a little bit. I changed records after a few seconds putting this weird album back on the shelf and going to something more familiar.

Flash forward. The heat of the summer is in full swing and I'm preparing to go on vacation with my cousin, aunt and uncle. I'm in this confusing transition of eighth grade to freshman. I'm a Beatles freak and that's all I'm listening to. Instead of listening in my living room where my parents are I'm upstairs with a little more freedom. Grabbing piles of records and just listening for hours, slowly falling into myself with the Beatles. As I grab a stack of records I notice some David Bowie records. Hey there's that Ziggy Stardust album. Next to it is an album called Young Americans. The cover shows a very different looking David Bowie than that of the Ziggy Stardust era. But there's a song on the Young American's album, Across the Universe. A cover of a Beatles tune, and John Lennon's name is on the album notes as being a contributor. I gotta check this out, in fact let's bring Ziggy along and give that a listen to.

Across the Universe is played, sounds different but there's a different power to it. Ziggy Stardust is put on and Hang onto Yourself blasts through the headphones with delight. The words of Five Years strikes a chord in me and Ziggy Stardust tells a tale like none I've ever imagined. One listening of the record becomes two, then three and before I know it the Beatles record's are on the shelf and I'm surrounded by Bowie records. I was bit by the bug of Bowies music and the next four years I listened over and over again to everything Bowie I could get my hands on. I read books, collected magazines from Ebay and created a personnel library of information on a musician.

Now I wonder about all that I've learned and think that maybe all of the information that I immersed my brain into could all be pointless. I became fanatic over a musician who is just a musician. (And an artist and an actor.) While I criticized the teeny-boppers and boy band lovers of my time I was just as bad with classic rock'n roll star. I guess that's the power of music and the effect of one persons life on another. David Bowie and I are miles apart and generations different but at times his words seem like they're hitting on my emotions. That's what good musicians and artist do. They tap into the human condition and find connections between people. So maybe knowing all there is to know about David Bowie may not change the world but it's changed me.