How to Bring Your Kids Up Bowie

Back in January, when David Bowie died, I published this article in Avidly. It started like this:

Sunday night, as he was dying of cancer downtown, David Bowie was also in my apartment in upper Manhattan, singing my son to sleep. One of the unexpected great joys of having a child has been the opportunity to sing, over and over for more than six years now, the lullaby David Bowie wrote for his newborn son in 1971. Titled “Kooks,” the song appeared on one of his earliest, prettiest albums, Hunky Dory, the one with the soft-focus cover image of a very feminine face looking upward, lips slightly parted, one hand brushing back long straight blonde hair that flows down onto the figure’s shoulders. Reviewers at the time saw the cover as evoking Bacall or Garbo — Bowie himself cited Dietrich as the main influence — but of course it was Bowie himself, imagining and projecting himself into a stardom that at the time he made Hunky Dory he was not even close to attaining…

And here’s the rest of the article.

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