Poor Kim had to cancel our session scheduled for today because of a back injury. She’s miserable. I hope you guys will send her healing energy! I plan on interviewing Jesus and Mary as well as Prince then. Hopefully I can squeeze all of your great questions into that hour!
On a completely different topic, I’ve lived in the same zip code all my life, and I’ve had a yearning to move for, well, decades. I’d like to wait until the kids are largely finished with their schooling, and that time is approaching. For some reason, I’ve always been drawn to the Carolinas. Kristina and her husband are moving to one of the suburbs around Raleigh this summer, so I’ll probably see how she likes it over there and visit a few times to scope it out. I’m done with the brutal Houston summers, and North Carolina temperatures seem to be more tolerable. The only thing is that I’m spoiled not having to pay state income tax here in Texas, but the property tax and sales tax is higher than in North Carolina so it might be a wash. Do any of you live in the Carolinas? If so, can you share the good, bad and the ugly with me?
Last, don’t forget about Erik’s Hour of Enlightenment radio show tomorrow at 5:00 PM PT/7:00 PM CT/8:00 PM ET. No more than 15 minutes before the top of the hour, call 619-639-4606 to ask Erik your question. Two ways to listen: Click on the “Listen” icon on the right sidebar of the blog or click HERE.
Enjoy Part One of the David Bowie interview!
Me: Hello.
Robert: Hello.
Me: How are you doing?
Robert: I’m fine.
Me: Well, I hear we have Robert Bowie here.
Robert Bowie? Did I just do that? Sigh.
Me: Hi, Erik! First I want to say I love you very, very, very much.
Erik blows me a kiss.
Me: Aw.
Robert: Yeah, David Bowie is here.
Me: Okay, so hello, Mr. Bowie. How are you?
Bowie: Hello, I’m well, thank you.
Me: You know you just transitioned, so I had a lot of requests from blog members for me to interview you.
Robert (smiling): When you said he had transitioned, he said, “So I’ve heard.”
Me: So you’ve heard, huh? We’ve got a smart aleck on our hands, eh?
Bowie laughs.
Me: Okay, but obviously, just by reading comments on the blog and my Facebook page, I see you’ve really made an impact on a lot of people, musically and otherwise.
Bowie: That’s the icing on the cake. That wasn’t my intent. I’m just a creative soul so I had to express myself in a way that honors who I am.
Robert: The way he showed up, the only thing I can make out because I guess this is in line with how his personality is, I can just see his head and face up to about here. (He points to his upper chest.) So I really can’t tell what he’s wearing. I get the impression that he’s wearing a suit or something. It’s like tweed. What is tweed? That’s what I just heard. Tweed. And his hair is not—I mean I knew a little bit about him because who doesn’t—but his hair is darker than I remember seeing it, but not quite like black. It’s more like a brown color.
Me: Okay. I’ve seen him with highlighted, I mean, blond hair.
Robert: That’s what I was thinking.
Me: Well, let me ask you some questions, if I can. First, what was your spiritual mission in your lifetime as David Bowie?
Bowie: To be true to yourself.
Me: To teach others or for you to be true to yourself?
Bowie: To be true to myself.
Me: And how did you accomplish that?
Bowie: And then by proxy.
Robert: Does that make sense? He says because he was true to himself and projected that out there, other people learned how to be true to themselves.
Me: I can see that with you. You accomplished that very well. How did you accomplish that?
Bowie: I didn’t second guess who I was, and I went with the flow.
Me: Did your music have anything to do with that?
Bowie: Whatever it was I figured I needed to do, I did it. I was pulled emotionally to what I needed to do, and I just get bored easily.
Robert and I laugh.
Bowie: So I had to constantly change things up. That is a lesson for people to not get stuck and static. Be open to constantly changing and evolving because that’s why you’re here and that’s what you are—this constant, eternal change.
Me: How interesting. Wow, that sent shivers. Was it in your contract to die the way you did and so young?
Bowie: That was the agreement.
Me: Why?
Bowie: Because whenever we die it’s because we’ve done everything we needed to do.
Me: Okay.
Bowie: Even a suicide. I mention that because of the connection to your son.
Me: But not all suicides. I mean, they come in with a contract to do something, but they—
Erik’s was a contract, though.
Bowie: Here’s how I see it, and I know others have a different viewpoint. As I’ve come to understand it based on all the lives I’ve lived, you always go when you’re supposed to, even if it’s by your own hand.
Me: Okay. I don’t know why you’re frozen, Robert.
He probably doesn’t have enough bandwidth.
Robert: I guess his energy is messing with things.
He laughs.
Me: Back up, Mr. David Bowie! But anyway, it’s okay because it’s a nice pose. You don’t look cross-eyed or weird or anything.
Robert: That’s good!
Me: Reflecting on your life, you really feel like you accomplished your spiritual mission, right?
Bowie: Everything!
Me: God, that’s awesome! What do you think your biggest contribution to the music industry was?
Bowie: To break the mold. That’s why I feel a bit of melancholy with the music industry and with human creativity in general because everything is about being safe, about sticking to the thing you know will make money and then not ever changing. That’s the actual definition of being static. You’re not changing, and that’s boring. I don’t like boring.
Me: That’s true. Well, you made an impact on so many musicians. What advice do you have for other artists, then? Obviously they should keep changing, keep evolving, have the courage to get out of your comfort zone and not just think about the money and all that. Anything else?
Bowie: Don’t compromise who you are as an artist, and in general, as a person, no one should even in your everyday life. Do not conform.
Me: Can you think of an artist that has compromised who they are?
Bowie: Oh, there are a handful, but I don’t prefer to say that publically.
Me: Okay, then tell me someone who is true to who they are.
Bowie: That’s a better question.
Robert: He’s flipping through a bunch of people.
Bowie: The one that’s most popular right now that most people can identify with is Adele.
Me: Oh, yeah! Okay. I’ll have to agree with that.
Bowie: She’s a 21st century artist and one that does not compromise who she is, yet she’s still driven to make sure that she can connect to people. For me, that wasn’t always the drive. I didn’t always want to connect with people. I wanted to make people think, and if I didn’t connect with a person, it’s probably because they just don’t want to think. My art was always about that. It was about making you wonder: “What’s going on there? What’s the message here?” For some people, if they really want to get into the nitty gritty of it, I always had some story I was trying to tell.
Me: Do you have a favorite song, and then we can go into the message behind it? I’m talking about a favorite song of yours.
Robert: He brought up the latest album.
Me: Okay. I don’t know anything about it.
Robert: Yeah, I don’t either. The only one that I’m familiar with from the latest album is the song, Lazarus, the last one.
Bowie: I enjoy that one quite a bit because it was my goodbye. Consciously, I didn’t think of it as a goodbye. I just really saw it as my way of processing death.
Robert: Then he mentioned another song that was like Stardust, something with Stardust.
Me: Okay.
Bowie: I enjoyed that particular period of time.
Robert: I guess that was in the 60s and 70s. I remember a little bit about this where he was dressed up androgynously, and he had the glitter and the different hair.
Me: Oh yeah.
Bowie: Every single song that I’ve ever written, if I hadn’t fallen in love with it, then I wouldn’t have produced it. So, I love everything that I’ve produced.
Me: What was the message behind Stardust?
Bowie: That you are more than a human being.
Me: Oh, cool! What do you think about how popular and defining your androgyny was?
Robert: So the question about Ziggy Stardust?
Me: Yeah. Well, that was another question. What do you think about how popular and defining your androgyny was and why Ziggy Stardust?
Bowie: I always found my fame to be funny, to be amusing. And I enjoy poking at people’s fears because people who were the most afraid of it, people who were rooted in the old way of doing things were completely up in arms about that.
Me: Yeah, that was a long time ago. It was just not accepted.
Bowie: I enjoyed that quite a bit because I’m a rebel at heart. I don’t know that I would have called myself that in life, but I’m a rebel.
Me: Okay.
Bowie: I see that now.
Me: Okay, so why Ziggy Stardust? What was behind that?
Bowie (laughing): Drugs!
Robert laughs.
Me: Oh, really? Is that when you were high and that’s when you came up with that persona?
Bowie: Yeah, I did a lot of drugs during that time period, the 60s, the 70s, all the way into the 90s. I did quite a bit of drugs, especially in the 70s, and that influenced a lot of what I said and did. Ziggy Stardust came about during an LSD trip.
Robert: LSD was involved somehow.
Me: Was stardust a type of drug like cocaine or something, or is it just a last name?
Bowie: It’s a powdery substance.
Robert and Bowie both laugh.
Me: Well what is it? What is stardust to you?
(Pause as Robert listens)
Robert: I didn’t know you could sniff LSD!
Me: Oh, okay. I don’t know.
Robert: Well, maybe it’s not LSD, but he’s showing me two substances: A speed like substance like cocaine and then a hallucinogen like LSD. He just showed it laying on a table and it’s like a very light beige or white powder.
Me: Wow, when I saw it, I saw light beige also.
Robert: Yeah.
Me: Whereas normally I’d see it as white.
Bowie: But when you sniff it and look at it again, it looks like glitter on the table. Stars sparkling.
Me: Ah, that’s why it’s called stardust! Interesting.
A blog member sent me this fascinating news story about a plant root from West Africa that cures addictions after just one dose. Check it out HERE!
Last but not least, I removed the second Ireland video because it had duplicate clips. Muy annoying. So I fixed it and reposted it. Enjoy at your leisure. It’s also on the new Channeling Erik mobile app from the iTunes app store!
