Bowie Definitely Maybe Sighted in Amsterdam

“Marvellous, marvellous, marvellous”

said the green and blue slug as he crawled under my shoe again. I was in Amsterdam after hitchhiking from Northern Denmark.

The purple and red frogs started eating the pavement in great bites of excitement as the road all around us breathed in an awesome display of might and deliberate showing off.

There were people wandering all around us with big, mad smiles on their faces. They were young and beautiful. The sun slapped us all in the face a few times and the houses wobbled about covered in happy special paint. A kaleidoscope of shapes and sounds and colours were blending themselves everywhere around me…

2.00 am
Somewhere in Northern Germany…

The service station restaurant was empty. The last customers had left half an hour ago. The middle aged waitress turned the kitchen light off. She stood still for a second looking at the floor then let out a sigh. Her body sagged with what looked like a mixture of defeat, soul-crushing boredom, and arthritis. She didn’t move afterwards.

It looked like someone had turned the switch off on a robot.

Some cheap and cheerful German pop music drifted over the air in the silence, at a volume just low enough to not hear it or enjoy it. Its only effect was to massage the brain into a state of low-level psychosis that crept up on the listener and stole his sanity.

I continued peeling the label from my bottle of warm cheap beer. Outside the rain beat a pattern onto the windows and the wind rattled the doors. I had come too far. There was no one here, and no one would take me anywhere at this time of night anyway. This had clearly been a big mistake.

In frustration I took out my guitar and began to play, but it was hopeless. The atmosphere of the place I was in was sucking away any creative or positive feelings from all around, like a black hole for the senses and emotions.

After a quarter of a whisky bottle my head began to nod. It was some time before the noise of money on the counter made me wake up.

“Heavy night?” he asked in an accent I couldn’t quite make out.

I turned where I lay my head and tried to focus, but my eyes weren’t working properly.

“…Huh??…”

He chuckled and said something in German to the miserable woman opposite. A packet of Marlboro appeared in his hand.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

The light above his head seemed to be obscuring my vision.

“W-where are you going…?” I asked him. He seemed to understand where this was going. The wind had stopped. My mouth had suddenly taken on the feel of pure cotton wool.

“Well it looks like in your direction now doesn’t it old son?!”

He clapped me on the back and I sat up sharply, blinking. He had disappeared, and I heard the toilet door swing behind me. The waitress remained motionless. A fly landed on her upper lip.

I can’t remember how long I was there packing my things up, but when I stood up to leave the woman, amazingly, had moved and was pointing her finger where a car had pulled up in the darkness outside. Its door was open and strange, eerie music was floating out from the dim smoky interior.

Well, what was a man to do? I took my guitar and walked out, saying what I thought was goodbye in German and wishing her well in the after life I had managed to escape from. She said nothing and started to look at the floor again.

I bundled myself into the car and the door slammed shut. It was a 1960s Mini Cooper, but I had no time to look around because as soon as I got in, I passed out.

I heared him singing just as I blacked out,

“Ziggy plaaaaayed – guitaaaaaaar!!”

“…Maaajor Tooooom…”

My head span round. What was that…whispering coming from…

I turned to the nearest pair of eyes and said what I thought was: “Pardon me, but did you hear something strange for a second, good fellow?”

What came out sounded probably more like: “Eeuaarruueigha whadyamakeofthat thhhhhingeeee in yer eeeaaaaurrs-eh?”

I can’t remember if they replied or not.

“…Maaajor Tooooom…”

Paranoia.

I was in no condition for this. Suddenly the world around had been filled with shadows. The people were staring at me, all of them. They could hear what I was thinking as well…I had to get out, get away and find a small corner of nature where I could curl up and place my head until the bad things went away…

The whispering was echoing everywhere. Someone walked past carrying a plant in a pot. For a very small second I felt sure I could see the movement of little legs behind the stalks – but then it was gone. I could hear the insane giggling of some small creatures nearby.

Someone tapped me on the shoulder. Little sparks seemed to be flying from his fingertips. I felt heavy and collapsed on the floor.

“Hey buddy, would you get out of the road so I can ride my bike, please?“

I looked up. The sun was behind him so I couldn’t see his face, but his voice was doing something to my brain that I couldn’t tell him in ordinary words… in the end I just let my body float out of the road and land on the pavement.

He cycled on. A thin guy, with the strangest haircut…

And now looking back on it, after tripping back through the rain of Northern Europe back to splendid shores of Scandinavia – I can’t say for sure if it was the real Bowie, but the search will go on.

Until I can get a new song about me from him.