FYI: There’s a professor spending a year living as David Bowie
At one point or another, you’ve probably wondered what it would be like to live the life of a rock legend . . . but actually following through with all that curiosity? Not a chance.
Meet Will Brooker, a 45 year-old professor from London who is immersing himself into the life of David Bowie for one full year.
Brooker, who had been commissioned to write a David Bowie monograph, decided to fully embody David Bowie — in all of his many iterations — in an effort to better understand the music icon’s inner workings.
“As a way of trying to get a new angle, I thought I’d first immerse myself in the music that Bowie was listening to at the time, try to get myself into his head space, read the books he was reading, watch the films that we know he watched,” he said.
Since committing himself to the experiment, Brooker has dyed his hair, worn Bowie-esque makeup, and has even tried his hand at a David Bowie diet (which, according to Brooker, consists of lots of red peppers and milk). Brooker even enlisted the help of a tailor to keep his fits looking as bona fide Bowie as possible. Ziggy Stardust jumpsuits aren’t easy to come by, people!
Brooker will go through Bowie’s career chronologically, starting with the late ’60s, which marks David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” era. In spite of all the physical challenges the experiment poses, Brooker continues to look forward to the many Bowies he’ll be channeling throughout the year. “It’s fortunate that I’m going through his career chronologically,” he told the Guardian. “I think by ’83 he was pretty clean. I think I’ll get tan, get fit, get my hair changed again, get my teeth whitened.”
No doubt, Brooker has gained insight from the experiment thus far, but is still unsure of how David Bowie would react to all of this news. “I hope he would be interested in and amused by my research. I do feel, though, that everything he says and does in public is performance, so if he did hear about it, we would be unlikely to know what he genuinely thought.”
Fair enough! And more deets in the vid below.
You can follow Will Brooker’s incredible adventure on his Twitter. Keep an eye out for his monograph, Forever Stardust: David Bowie Across the Universe in the coming months.
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