My very own starboard marker

Six months ago I lost my idol. The man very much responsible for me being me. I was devastated at the time and so was much of the world. David Bowie was such a huge part of so many lives – it was impossible to believe that someone who was so brave, intelligent and downright magical could be gone.

I said everything I needed to say in a blog I wrote at the time but what I didn’t share was a tattoo I got two weeks after.

It didn’t seem right at the time, the internet was wall to wall Bowie and it just seemed a bit soon and a bit twee. I got it for me, it was part of my grieving process and I wasn’t ready to share it with the world.

It all just sort of came together. The idea popped into my head fully formed while I was talking to my Mum on the phone. I wanted the black star from his final goodbye album, but that on its own was too dark for me.

Then the Aladdin Sane lightning bolt flashed through my mind, cutting across the star.

It represented everything that was sparkly and spiky and magical about him, that was it. That was my tattoo.

A friend of mine recommended a tattooist (Craigy at Union Tattoo) who just happened to have a cancellation, so what I was expecting to wait a while for happened within two weeks.

(Unfortunately the only decent pic I have of it is the one taken just after it was done. Have you ever tried to photograph your own wrist?)

It’s only little but it’s perfect. It makes me sad, but it also makes me feel strong and I smile every time I look at it.

It also turns out to have a very practical purpose.

I wanted the design on my wrist but didn’t really think too much about which one. In the end I just went with the one I didn’t wear a watch or fitness tracker on. It wasn’t until I was doing pilates (yes I do pilates – I may not be particularly good at it but I do it!) and I was having my usual issues of working out left from right, that I suddenly thought – I can use my tattoo!

It turns out it’s on my right side – my starboard side. I suddenly had an epiphany – I have a star on my starboard side. I wrote a book called Which Way is Starboard Again? and Bowie has answered that question for me forever!

Next time I’m out sailing, if a boat is heading towards Bowie I’ll know to keep clear.

I also conducted my own nerdy celebration of Bowie on the six month anniversary by helping orchestrate an augmented reality tribute. Before there was Pokemon Go there was Ingress (and before that Geocaching) – both are GPS based games that get you out amongst public art and sculptures and places of significance. My Dad got me into both, being a retired airforce navigator and fascinated with that sort of stuff.

I won’t go into too much detail but basically two warring teams united to create a digital lightning bolt across Lyall Bay.

The details are here (you don’t have to understand the lingo – the pictures say it all.)

Bowie was always an early adopter of new technology – I like to think he’d get a kick out of it.

I’ll end on a quote from a book I have recently read – Simon Critchley’s On Bowie, which sums him up perfectly for me.

“Bowie has been my soundtrack. My constant, clandestine companion. In good times and bad. Mine and his.
What’s striking is that I don’t think I’m alone in this view. There is a world of people for whom Bowie was the being who permitted a powerful emotional connection and freed them to become some other kind of self, something freer, more queer, more honest, more open, more exciting…He was someone who made life a little less ordinary for an awfully long time.”

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