Open Letters Monthly celebrates the life of musician, designer, role-model, performer, and glorious androgyne David Bowie. It's hard to remember how gray and buttoned-down a world he was born into in postwar Brixton, with rationing still on, fog still filling the streets, and debris from the bombings not yet cleared away. It's hard to remember because he did so much to change it. A boy or a girl born in Brixton -- or anywhere on Earth -- who feels themselves to be different now has one more marvelous model to inspire them. His life was a testament to the generative power of the human spirit. Let him always be with us.
