"From the beginning of 1970s, I've watched our friend, David, becoming a different person. Excuse me, you really have turned off the thing, did you I’m not going to let the thing I'm telling you be heard by others.

"Good. Let's continue.

"Do I know him Of course I know him well. When I knew him, George hadn’t blinded his eye yet -- well, not completely blind, in his words, ‘It's very hazy’. At that time, he was not like what he looked like afterwards. He was the kind of kid you would like to take home. Your parents were also assured that you were be with him. The teenage David was a neat and polite boy.

"They always said that an iceberg could not appear in one night and David had been preparing for ten years, trying all kinds of styles, breaking through himself time after time until the miracle came. They said he thought a lot and planed a lot, just like a artist creating a work that he foresaw would be beyond the eternity, like a scholar studying some theory that he knew would change the world. They even said his change was the product of extraordinary genius inspiration colliding with long-term thinking, pain and longing and he changed the world and created an age... and other such nonsense. Later even he said such nonsense himself.

"But if you are a friend of him like me, you know it’s all bullshit. His monkey business through the last ten years had almost nothing about with what he was at that time -- at least I can't see any connection between them. In fact, he just popped into another being in a flash without any warning.

"All of a sudden, everybody were talking about his features. First, he became very pale -- not the fair rosy as your sister, but more like bleached bone or moonlight, pal and transparent. And his red hair -- not golden red like your mother's or brown red -- was the most vivid and soft red I had ever seen, like fire and the hair of the fox living in the stories I heard when I was a boy. Why. You think it was because he made himself up and dyed his hair？Of course he had to make up and dye his hair. Or how could he explain why he changed to the strange appearance？

" If you had seen the later him, you would understand what I meant. You know, though he still tried to keep the features and it looked like his style hadn't changed since that time, you could see clearly that his hair roots showed brown golden -- the original color of his hair -- and the wan and weary look on his face. Then he became different from the one before. No, I can't say why. If I must give it a reason, my only guess is that something strange befell him and broke him apart.

"Drugs You say it's beacuse of drugs?

"NO, not need to apology. Everybody knows he took drugs at that time and took a lot -- maybe too lot -- just like a fellow watched the work he devoted all his life into became nothing, one who lost his lifelong love suddenly and miserably, or a young man who embraced the world with all his heart and passion but the world punched him in the nose and trampled his head into a mire... Why, we all know that he was terribly awful at that time. He tried to keep everything seemly being OK, but we all know he nearly died. Every one said to him, 'You know, you can't be living like this any longer. You know you almost look like a fucking dying man.' But he said to me -- only once -- that he did all this only because he wanted to survive.

"Occasionally, he liked to have drink with me. We are such friends that they all knew we knew each other and were on good terms. But few knew we often got alone with each other privately and said something too stupid or crazy or spiteful to talk with others -- you know what I mean, do you Every one should have such a friend, because every one has such things in his/her stomach.

"He said, 'I only want to survive it and try my best not to become a crazy. Because it's really too painful -- it's really too painful to say goodbye. It's too difficult, lover, too difficult for me.' He always called some one 'lover'. It's his habit. But I'm not his lover. I must make it clearly. I'm never ever his lover. We are only friends.

"He said, 'I know it would be painful. But I have never knew it is so terribly painful. However, I must live with the pain and try not to lose my mind.'

"I said to him: 'But you absolutely don't have to be like this, my friend. If you're so painful, why don't you continue to play him Come on. Continue your performing tours. Issue some new songs and new albums.You'll be popular for at least another five years, or ten years, or longer. Everyone has the faith for you. Anyway, you must play some role -- that's how you live. And what I have to say is that you are really a good actor.'

"He said, 'No, lover, It's not what you think. They all said I created the role and I performed the role perfectly to conveyed the message of one kind or another and to express emotions like this or that. Some of the comments just stunned me. I have never been so profound, even when I dreamed or went crazy.’

"But they all said so that sometimes even I believed it was born from my dream and longing and desire. I believed it was my creation, the crystallization of my soul and mind. I pretended to be it, to watch the world with its eyes and to feel the world with its soul. It was just like I came from the deep space with it and had never touched humankind before and never seen a kind of so odd intelligent creatures who changed their world and built their society and developed their civilization in a so strange way, who loved, hated and harmed each other in the same time. Except for them, no one could make me feel so great beautiful and ugly, fanatical and numb, bustling and lonely, wise and ignorant... I imagined how it was shocked, excited and confused, how it tried to keep the calm and reasonable of an observer, and how it inevitably attracted, affected and lured by human beings, until it was plunged into the weird and colorful whirlpool and chose a strangest and craziest identity to embrace and taste the world, even to affect the world.

"Of course it was going to become a rock star. It's the only choice for it in this time. If it arrived before three thousand years, it could choose to be a shaman or wizard. And it would be a prophet or philosopher or even a messiah two thousand years ago. Before one thousand years, It could be a theologian, a martyr, or a pagan on the burning post. Even if it came one or two hundred years ago, it would be a humanist, an enlightener, or even a socialist... But it came too late, my lover, too late. It came to our time, a shallow, vain, crazy, chaotic and changeable time. Except being a rock star, it had not any other choice.

"You know, my lover, from it arriving, each of my songs was its calls and declarations to this world. From then on, each line of the lyrics I wrote was a postcard sent back to its planet by it, as an observer and a traveler on the earth...

"--till now, I always remember my own feeling when I knew my friend had changed into another being. Actually I had known it since the beginning, but I never saw it so clearly.

"I watched his eyes. All of women and half of men in the world were crazy for the pair of eyes. One of them was light blue -- the eye belonging to the boy who I was familiar. Another one was dark brown. OMG, all the world knew that George punched the eye for a girl when we were 14. The punch scratched his pupil contractile muscle or whatever, so the eye's pupil was always in the enlarged state which made it appear brown and be almost blinded.

"But I'm very sure, believe it or not, my friend, at that time, his dark brown eye was watching me -- another one, not he, was watching me clearly with the blind eye.

"At that time, I held my breath and stared his eye -- the blue one. 'It's still with you, David, is it' I said.

"'Yes,' he said, 'Oh, yes, damned yes!'

"'But it must leave!' he said,' I can't endure any longer. I'm just a common one. It's too much, too heavy! You can't imagine what phantoms it has put in my head and what inspiration and soul it has made me experience and how deep, vast and heavy it is! You don't know what light, dark, indescribable ecstasy and incredible sorrow and loneliness it is! Oh my God, I just want to survive and try my best not to be crazy...

(A brief silence.)

"You all know what happened afterwards, first in France, then in New York, then in Berlin, Switzerland,Kyoto... He survived, did not go mad, and gave up drugs. He did a good job, really good. I have to say that I am proud of my friend. Not everyone can survive such a situation, and always remain rational.

"People made a fuss about his later appearance because he stopped making up, dyeing his hair, wearing high-heeled shoes and stockings. Then he even began to practice boxing, smiled at strangers, looked friendly and happy, and had a close relationship with his son -- the child was well brought up by him. Then, like those old stories, he met a young woman and fell in love with her. We all attended the wedding, and the best man was his son. His later collaborators complained that he was so attached to home that he always left the studio on time at six o'clock. Ah, don’t forget his lovely little daughter. He turned out to be the most infatuated and foolish dad I've ever seen. He even dubbed cartoons for his daughter... You know, the last time I saw him, he looked very much like his dead father, and also very much like the boy David I knew growing elder .

"I never told it to anyone. I mean, where should I start Should I say to people: Hey, you know My friend David Bowie, you all like him, love him and worship him. He has created many roles and played many roles in his life: Major Tom, Aladdin Sane, Halloween Jack, ThinWhite Duke... These characters are also very familiar and loved by you. But have you ever thought about the possibility that one of them is not created and played by him out of nothing, and one of them is really from unknown time and space, occupying his spirit and soul and being with him for a short time

"Among all the roles he created and played, there was one that was real -- a traveler and observer from Mars: Ziggy Stardust."

(Slight noise)

"Not from Mars."

"What"

"Ziggy Stardust, he's not from Mars. Stardust started with S, which shows that he is a citizen of Saturn colonies.

"What! What Fuck! Oh - I mean, oh! My God! Why did David say he was a Martian?”

"We're also curious. Maybe he felt that Saturn Ziggy Stardust didn’t sound as cool as Mars?”

"Well, you convinced me - that's David."

I never thought about getting rid of him, Ziggy Stardust. We started to be the same creature, the same person. At this point, you would try all kinds of chaotic and crazy methods, just to escape from him for a moment...

So you started to sink, to lose... Did I create him Or did he grab me I was no longer aware who I was. When my art became my life, my life began to imitate my art.

So I said to him: It must be over. I knew it's the brutal last blow, but I had to. Sometimes you have to be so cruel that you have to face up to what you love most and you create with most love, and say, "No, I'm not going to be like that anymore."

——David Bowie