Feeling, story and time: an unruly life lived through David Bowie

Drawing upon feeling, story and time, in this article I will make sense of my unruly life through the way David Bowie’s musical and film work has impacted upon my sense of self and belonging in the world. I will remember and recall major life events and stinging memories through his songs and performances. David Bowie has provided me with what I have elsewhere defined as the star metronome, providing me with the psychological, existential and phenomenological rhythms out of which (my) bare life emerges, blossoms and sometimes withers–its beat not linear or singular but irregular and amplified. I make sense of these wayward life stories through recall to the senses, and sensorial memory–remembering Bowie through touch, texture, sight and sound. I suggest that fan identifications such as this emerge through the interplay of three elements: affect and emotion, narratives of the self, and remembering and forgetting. Feeling, story and time produce the conditions for deeply meaningful star and fan relations to emerge.