As I, like so much of the weary world, emerge today to realize that we live in a world worse now that David Bowie has left it, I remember the only time I was blessed to be one degree away from the Thin White Duke.
In 1994, as a reporter for the Miami Times, a black community newspaper, I was assigned an in-person interview with the legend’s equally legendary wife, supermodel Iman. Separately they were unspeakably beautiful, and together they formed this force field of otherworldly perfection.
She had just started her self-named cosmetics line for women like her and me that mainstream makeup didn’t cater to at the time, and around 10 a.m. on a random Monday I was summoned to the lobby of a sparkling Coconut Grove hotel to speak to her.
>>David Bowie through the years
The Miami Times was specifically targeted to the black community, and the makeup was targeted to it as well, so the subject of race was on the table. Somehow, her husband of then two years came up, and we started talking about the response to them from her black fans.
Iman told me about walking in some U.S. city – I think it was Philadelphia, a city that had a special place in Bowie's heart after recording the "Young Americans" album there. As they walked, she said in that queenly, succinct accent of hers, a black man approached them, clearly perturbed, waving at Bowie before pointedly asking "What is up with this, my sister?"
I remember her sitting up a little straighter as she told me of her response. "I looked at him," she said, her long fingers punctuating the air as she did on that Philly street, "And I told him 'Love is what is up…my brother."
I’m crushed.
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