David Bowie — Starman and the Masks We Wear
Kindred Minds · Bowie × Ren Gill
David Bowie Starman Ren Gill — four names that echo across decades of art, identity, and truth. When David Bowie’s Starman beamed onto TV in 1972, the world met an artist who seemed to arrive from another planet — and yet, like Ren Gill, he spoke directly to the misfits on Earth.
When David Bowie first sang “There’s a starman waiting in the sky,” he wasn’t just launching a single — he was sending out a signal to the misfits. The message was one of recognition: there’s someone out there who understands. Bowie created Ziggy Stardust not as an escape from himself, but as a way to reveal what ordinary life wouldn’t allow him to show. The mask was never about hiding; it was about transforming.
Ren Gill carries the same creative DNA. Both artists use performance to explore fractured identity — the tension between who we are, who we show, and who we might become. Bowie’s stagecraft was a mirror held up to the soul, exaggerated until the truth came through the distortion. Ren’s “Hi Ren” does this in another language — a dialogue between his real and performing selves that strips the glamour away but keeps the theatre of revelation.
In Starman, the alien descends from the sky with news that connection is still possible even in isolation. It’s the sound of hope disguised as strangeness. Bowie’s genius was to make vulnerability look cosmic. For all the glitter, Ziggy was a messenger of empathy — saying to outsiders everywhere: “You’re not alone.” Ren does something similar when he steps into his own shadows, voicing illness, doubt, and despair, and turning them into music that heals by naming what hurts.
Bowie once said that wearing a mask allowed him to tell the truth. That paradox defines both artists. Ren’s medical gown and hospital chair are as much costume as confession — a stage set that makes his honesty visible. Where Bowie painted stars on his face, Ren paints scars through song. Both understand that performance isn’t the opposite of authenticity; it’s a vehicle for it.
Jung would call this a dance between persona and shadow — the parts we perform and the parts we hide. Bowie turned that dance into theatre; Ren turns it into therapy. The “starman” in Bowie’s lyric might as well be Ren’s inner voice, calling out from another place, reminding him that pain can be translated into light.
Half a century apart, both men build bridges between alienation and belonging. Starman arrived in 1972, when the world felt uncertain and brittle. Genesis arrived in 2023, in another age of fragmentation. Yet both songs perform the same miracle: they take the chaos of being human and translate it into melody. Each chorus feels like a flare sent skyward — fragile but radiant.
To listen to Bowie is to remember that art can be costume and confession at once. To listen to Ren is to realise that the mask still matters, but only if you dare to lift it. The thread between them isn’t nostalgia; it’s courage. The starman is still waiting — not in the sky this time, but within us, urging every listener to become their own messenger of truth.