It’s been quite surreal. From the time I woke up Monday morning and saw the news on Twitter, I’ve been surrounded by Bowie. Of course all my life I have been; I suppose that’s what hit so many folks hard. How can there not be Bowie? I’ve read a lot of heartfelt tributes, musical assessments and odd titbits. I was goggled by the Lazarus video, as were most people. I love that he saw Death coming, as someone said on Twitter (not sure I can find it, so many many tweets), and thought hmmm, I can use this.

But I’m not a confessional writer; I am always oblique. I can’t seem to help it. Metaphor is more truthful to me. So I wrote this piece that Jason was kind enough to publish at Pulp Metal Magazine, The State of the Church of Bowie in 2525. Futuristic, playful, referential but never reverential, I hope. I chuckled to think of a multicontinentination that stretched from the ‘coast of Colorado’ all the way to China in a sort of post-apocalyptic world, uniting East and West with the Atlantic at its heart (but never North and South of course). A religion that had weathered a Reformation or reconciliation of its own, yet threatened anew by apocalyptic sub-cults? Who’d believe that?

Who indeed.

If you think it’s a stretch to imagine a church of this nature, you should see all the people I see around me who have found strength in those messages from Major Tom, Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane and the Goblin King, all the way up to the stark Black Star. Bowie may only have been a flawed and all-too-real human, but he managed to reach myriad hearts and minds by embodying that one thing we all have in common: that very often, we all feel completely alone.

Drop by Pulp Metal Magazine, read The State of the Church of Bowie in 2525. And then check out all the great stuff there.