“I didn't know where I was going, but I promised myself it wouldn't be boring.”
— David Bowie
Bowie said this in various forms throughout his career. Behind every transformation was the fear of madness and at the same time a curiosity about the limits of human identity. His brother Terry killed himself in 1985. Bowie did not attend the funeral. He carried that weight in silence and turned pain into art.
I was fifteen when my brother Terry told me about Kerouac and jazz. Three years later Terry was committed to a psychiatric hospital. Schizophrenia. He spent the rest of his life there. I always knew the same illness might be waiting for me. That knowledge did not paralyze me. It freed me. If the mind can break at any moment, why pretend to be normal? I became Ziggy Stardust, the Thin White Duke, anyone at all. Each character was an experiment: what happens if you become someone completely different? If you are afraid to be yourself, try being someone else. You might find yourself faster.