This is the script of this morning’s Pause for Thought on BBC Radio 2’s Zoe Ball Show.
Some things mature with age. Like taste in music. In my case, at least.
Fifty years ago today David Bowie retired Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. I never quite got it at the time – the whole concept and the narrative songs, but I now listen with fresh ears. Unlike other grown-ups who loved Ziggy from the beginning, I took time for my taste to grow up.
Bowie was asked why he decided to leave behind the Ziggy persona. His reply was really honest. Living the persona was affecting his own personality and sanity. How about that? He was acknowledging that we can’t live different lives at the same time without damaging who we are. And that is worth pausing to think about.
But, the thing that grabs me about Ziggy was that David Bowie had created something unique from his own imagination. Imagination opens space for exploring what I call “God, the world and us”. Who we are and how we engage with the world and each other. Imagination allows us to break out of what we think the world is, and try out new and creative ideas.
Now, this is also what I have grown up to appreciate. I think when I was younger I was a bit rigid. I think I saw the world in black and white rather than in color. But, growing up – with its broadening of experience and thinking – makes life and people more complicated … but also more interesting.
To be honest, this was sparked for me not just by art and books and music, but by the way Jesus worked two thousand years ago. The gospels demonstrate how he invented stories, told tales, used vivid language that made people like me stop and wonder what he was on about. He annoyed people by refusing to answer closed questions – the ones that demand a yes or no answer – instead, telling a story.
Good stories live on. They tease the imagination. Ziggy Stardust might be dead, but fifty years after the funeral he still invites us to open our mind, embrace the imagination and love life. Or, in my case, to grow up.
