Global Passport of the Thin White Duke: How David Bowie Became Every Nation’s Favorite Alien

DAVID BOWIE, CITIZEN OF NOWHERE AND EVERYWHERE
by our itinerant correspondent still trying to find a payphone that works

PARIS—At 3 a.m. in a Marais dive bar, the jukebox coughs up “Heroes” for the fourth time tonight. A German banker in a bespoke suit weeps quietly into his pastis; two Senegalese buskers argue about the correct key for “Sound and Vision”; the bartender, a Romanian philosophy dropout, mutters that Bowie was the last Westerner who made alienation feel profitable. Everyone here is drunk on cheap wine and cheaper metaphors, but the consensus is unanimous: the man who fell to Earth still owns the lease.

It has been eight years since David Bowie’s corporeal exit—long enough for several governments to collapse, cryptocurrencies to rise and implode, and Twitter to mutate into whatever X is supposed to be—yet the Thin White Duke keeps ghosting every border checkpoint on the planet. Try declaring him at customs and the officer shrugs: “He’s already on the watch list—filed under ‘possible benefit to humanity.’” Which, in 2024, is the bureaucratic equivalent of a knighthood.

In Lagos, the danse macabre of “Let’s Dance” is sampled by afro-fusion DJs who insist the groove works even better once you strip out the colonial guilt. Tokyo’s Harajuku kids stitch Aladdin Sane lightning bolts onto thrift-store kimonos, proving cultural appropriation is only problematic when you do it badly. Meanwhile, in Kyiv, a volunteer medic tells me she listens to “Warszawa” on loop while packing trauma kits—something about the track’s glacial patience calms her pulse better than any benzodiazepine the EU has sanctioned.

Bowie’s genius lay in treating identity like a timeshare: you got the keys for a season, trashed the place, then flipped it to the next incarnation before the neighbors filed noise complaints. That business model now underpins entire economies. Silicon Valley execs crib his shape-shifter playbook to rebrand hostile layoffs as “pivoting.” Gen-Z TikTokers monetize gender fluidity with the same entrepreneurial zeal Bowie once applied to eye-patch couture. Even the Kremlin’s spin doctors, when cornered about war crimes, adopt the languid shrug of Bowie in Berlin: “I’m just an actor, darling.”

Of course, the planet has grown more Bowie-esque than Bowie himself ever managed. We are all Berlin-era wastrels now, living in half-abandoned cities where rent is negotiable in euros, dollars, or crypto, and yesterday’s persona is today’s liability. Climate collapse? Merely the ultimate concept album, complete with rising sea levels as the slow-motion encore. Artificial intelligence? A backing band that learned to play all the hits while the frontman was in the bathroom. Bowie’s prescience was less prophetic than pragmatic: he recognized that the future is merely the past wearing a new wig and a disarming smile.

International relations scholars—yes, they still exist—now teach a seminar titled “Bowie and the Balance of Power.” The syllabus argues Ziggy Stardust predicted soft-power diplomacy: when hard facts fail, send a flaming red mullet. NATO’s latest strategy documents quote “I’m afraid of Americans” without a trace of irony. Somewhere in Beijing, a propaganda minister screens “China Girl” to cadres as a cautionary tale about cultural seduction, blissfully oblivious to the song’s own self-loathing.

Death, naturally, was his final costume change. Instead of a press release, he dropped Blackstar like a posthumous ransom note, ensuring every obituaryist stayed up all night Googling occult symbolism. The album debuted at number one in 24 countries, proving mortality is just another emerging market. Streaming services duly filed him under “Eternal Recurring Revenue.” His ashes, scattered in Bali according to Buddhist rites, have probably been reincarnated as micro-plastics by now—still touring, still transforming, still impossible to deport.

And so the man who once sang about being a “space oddity” has become the planet’s default soundtrack for the ongoing absurdity. Whether you’re queuing for water in Cape Town, dodging tear gas in Caracas, or swiping right in Reykjavík, chances are Bowie is humming in your earbuds, reminding you that panic is passé and detachment is the last reliable currency. The world keeps ending; he keeps changing outfits. We should all be so lucky.