by Bradley Lau, 05/07/2025
In the woods of upstate New York, snow had not yet fallen, but the air was brittle with silence. Through the window of a modest modern home, a geometry of glass and cedar where a man sat on the edge of a low bed.
David Bowie, or what remained of him, was buttoning a crisp black shirt with thin, deliberate fingers. He had grown slighter over the past months. Cancer had a way of sanding down a man, and chemotherapy had taken its tribute in weight and color. But the suit was sharp, and the felt hat he rested on his knee gave him, even now, the air of a conjurer. A man prepared not for a show, but perhaps for a séance.
He looked once around the room. Lexi and Iman’s photographs on the dresser, a cracked paperback of Mishima on the chair, a sketch of a circle with a black star in its center pinned to the wall. He exhaled, long and slow, as if steadying the air itself.
Then he stood.
The door in the far corner was not the one that led to the hallway. It had not been there the day before. It was black lacquered, with no knob, just a faint impression, as if waiting for permission.
He touched it.
It opened inward.
The hallway beyond was lined in mirror. Floor, walls, ceiling all variations of glass, darkened and oblique, like backstage panels in a theater long abandoned. No reflections returned to him. Only depth. As if he were walking into memory itself, and the memories had learned not to answer back.
He stepped inside.
At the end of the corridor, a circular chamber, equally blank, with eight chairs set in a wide arc. A solitary candle stood in the center of it all, its flame steady and persistent. He took the center seat. He placed the hat on his knee. He waited.
The first to arrive was young, uncertain. David Jones, 1966, all cheekbones and bright vowels. The longhaired Mod poet who once played saxophone and longed to be heard. He looked around, confused but unafraid.
“Are you… me? Will I… be you?” he asked.
Blackstar Bowie smiled gently. “In a way. But let’s wait. There are more of us.”
And so they came.
Ziggy Stardust in a swirl of sequins and posture, twitching with electricity. Aladdin Sane in mirrored boots and a toothy smile too wide for comfort. The Thin White Duke, pale and surgical, his presence like cut glass. Berlin Bowie, quiet and spectral, smelling faintly of turpentine. Jareth the Goblin King, amused and magnificent, a character who refused to admit he wasn’t real. Earthling Bowie with cropped hair and digital restlessness. They arrived without ceremony and sat like players in a strange tribunal.
There were no greetings.
Only recognition. Warped, somewhat amused, wary, still intimate.
Blackstar Bowie raised his hand gently, a gesture at once patient and precise, then cleared his throat softly, but with intention. The room settled around him.
“We are not here for judgment. We are here to remember. To reconcile.”
Ziggy scoffed. “You sound like a bloody therapist.“
“I sound like a man,” he replied. “Who is trying to become whole before leaving.”
Aladdin leaned forward. “We were never one thing, one person. That was the whole point.”
“Exactly,” said Berlin, voice low. “But he, we, have to live with all of it. Even the parts we cut out.“
The Thin White Duke lit a cigarette that didn’t exist, coolly exhaled, and watched the invisible smoke curl upward. “So what now? Confessions? Oh, I know, how about a song circle?“
Blackstar Bowie shook his head. “Not confession. Calibration. There is a thread through all of us. I just want you to see it.“
And so the arbitration began.
David Jones spoke of dreams deferred. Ziggy remembered the scream of crowds and the loneliness of divinity. The Duke spoke of control, of hunger, of what art becomes when feeling is too dangerous. Berlin Bowie described silence, healing, and the salvaged soul stitched together by synth lines in cold rooms. Earthling spoke of reinvention as survival. Jareth, amused and mercurial, said little but his smirk curled like a question mark, as if he knew several endings and was considering a better punchline.
Piece by piece, memory was returned to the center.
It was painful. Laughter and sorrow mingled freely. Old wounds were acknowledged. Songs were quoted and disputed. Faces blurred, merged, aged, then snapped back.
Eventually, the room fell still.
Blackstar stood.
“We were never fictions. We were protections. Experiments. Masks that let us move through danger and change. Each of you held something I could not yet carry. But I’m ready now.”
He placed the hat on his head.
“Thank you. All of you.“
Ziggy gave a salute. The Duke tipped his glass. David Jones looked on the verge of tears.
One by one, they faded, not disappeared, but integrated, like tracks on a master tape being mixed into a final cut.
The hallway brightened. The mirrors began to reflect again.
And the man walked back toward the room he had left, now carrying the weight and grace of all his selves. He removed his coat, lay gently on the bed, and closed his eyes. His breath slowed, softened, then stopped.
“Something happened on the day he died / Spirit rose a metre and stepped aside / Somebody else took his place, and bravely cried / (I’m a blackstar, I’m a blackstar)”
Somewhere in the woods, the snow finally began to fall.
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