A Bowie Anthem for Becoming

Every now and then a song drifts back into our orbit and feels less like nostalgia and more like a message we’re finally prepared to hear. Lately, Bowie’s Starman has been that for me — not as a retro glam anthem, but as a reminder of what happens when something new wants to land in a person. A vision. A truth. A project. A version of ourselves not yet fully named.

There's a starman waiting in the sky

He'd like to come and meet us

But he thinks he'd blow our minds...

Bowie once noted that the “Starman” was never just a visitor from the stars, but a metaphor for “the possibility of something greater within us — a message from the future, or from our own potential.” That’s exactly how it feels: a threshold being, hovering just above the noise, widening the aperture on what’s possible if we dare to look up.

And then comes his invitation:

Don’t blow it.
It’s worthwhile.
Let the children lose it.
Let them use it.
Let all the children boogie.

What he’s really saying is this:

• Let the unconditioned parts of us lead.

• Let imagination loosen the grip of practicality.

• Let the inner beginner — the wild-hearted, risk-taking child — shape what comes next.

Music critic Simon Reynolds once described Starman as “a visitation from the future — a reminder that something brighter, stranger, and freer is possible, if we’re willing to hear it.”

That line lands for me because it mirrors the part of life I don’t want any of us to outgrow: the willingness to remain open to what is brighter, stranger, and freer inside ourselves. The part that notices a spark and says maybe. The part that doesn’t need to justify wonder before following it.

Bowie’s message is timeless for anyone standing at the edge of becoming:

There’s a starman — or a dream, or a calling, or a way of life — waiting just above your inner horizon, patient and luminous.
All it asks is that you don’t shut the door too quickly.
That you make a little room for wonder.
That you let the freer, braver, more imaginative parts of yourself take the lead.

Because maybe the children — the artists, the beginners, the unjaded selves within us —
maybe they’re the ones who know how to boogie us into the future.
And I certainly feel that is true of the creative side of Asheville — that quirky, questioning, wonder-driven layer of the city that has always mirrored the part of us willing to stay open, stay curious, and stay just strange enough to keep evolving.

Let’s boogie.