Total Immersion

"David fucking Bowie! David fucking Bowie!" right opposite me in the pub, literally and I mean literally, at the table opposite me. So Bowie, or Bowie if you prefer, how do you do it?"

"Do what friend?"

"Be it, you know. How do you get to be it? You know, for so long?"

"I've been nothing for so long."

"No, you know what I mean just there, putting that shit. How do you get there?"

"Well, I suppose I'm just pretty."

"No, bullshit. I mean, you are certainly pretty, but that can't be it."

"I don't know. I Suppose I just did it friend."

"Just did it?"

"Yeah, I just did it. I grew up on a council estate in Leytonstone where my only friends were the feral dogs who stalked the night and slept or ate the day. I slunk into their life sleeping behind the bins, chewing grease sodden newspaper holding the memory of forbidden meat. Some nights I ventured as far as the park, only with the pack, always with the pack, I chased the foxes from their territory. Heady days. heady days friend."

"It sounds rough."

"It was rough but that's not it. That's just where I was. We knew no better."

"Is this some some kind of metaphor?"

"No friend; no metaphors here. That's just where I was. It was fun, exhilerating, but sometimes painful. You've got to understand I was bottom of the pile. I mean I was the runt, the runt of the pack, still am."

"Bullshit Bowie. If you don't mind me saying."

"No friend, that's okay, but it was a rough few years. For all of that though, I have great fondness for that time. I still go down there sometimes, removing all the ridiculous garb of what I've become. All those characters have changed of course and I have age on my side. Or not. Depends which way you look at it but when I'm down there and the game is on there's nothing better. I can live with the dirt and the grime and the smells, the scrapping in waste vegetation. My friend those days, those days I live."

"But Bowie, that's not what I'm asking. How did you get here?"

"Friend, I don't remember that."