B ★ O ★ W ★ I ★ E 

 How to be invisible!

Bowie practices invisibility in New York - NY Times (see article here)

These pictures reminded me that Bowie met W.S.Burroughs and it is Bill who had a theory about how to become invisible. It is about 'seeing' people before they see you, maintaining a confidence that means you blend into the background if you will and thus invisibility. Being mindful of not dressing like a superstar helps too. Look how clever David is here. The master of reinventing himself and taking on differing persona is in his element here and 'playing games with the faces'. Everything he did is a work of art

Here Bowie in New York could walk his last child, daughter Lexi, to school every day and nobody would recognise him. The odd individual might spot this guy and think to themselves "Wow that guy looks just like David Bowie but . . . .it can't be can it? David Bowie wouldn't just be walking around the streets of New York." As a theory it was of course blown apart in the worst possible way when John Lennon was shot but remember Bowie maintained this level of anonymity after the shooting of 1980. 

David walks Lexi to school incognito - genius!

Not so elsewhere in his life mind you!

According to biographer David Buckley, the Los Angeles based David Bowie, fuelled by an “astronomic” cocaine habit and subsisting on a diet of coffee, peppers and milk[sic!], spent much of 1975-76 in a state of psychic terror. Stories, mostly from one interview, pieces of which found their way into Playboy and Rolling Stone, circulated of the singer living in a house full of ancient-Egyptian artefacts, burning black candles, seeing bodies fall past his window, having his semen stolen by witches, receiving secret messages from the Rolling Stones and living in morbid fear of fellow Aleister Crowley aficionado Jimmy Page. Cocaine will do that to you of course . . . . .

Bowie would later say of L.A., “The fucking place should be wiped off the face of the earth” 

I miss him . . .