one of the unexpectedly great parts of working at the times when i did was getting to work with sooo many talented writers and editors.

one of the coolest was the very laid back dean kuipers, who i knew had previously worked at spin, my favorite magazine, but it wasn’t until tonight that i learned that he worked at Raygun, which for a while was the coolest mag in the world.

naturally dean had befriended David Bowie back in the day and the pair were working on an avant garde movie(?!?!) when this fascinating exchange happened, dean writes in today’s times:

On the second day of working together, with no one else in the room, Bowie took a long look at me and said, “Dean, do you think my work is still relevant?”

My heart broke. He worried that his surreal vision was too obscure, his many personae too fragmented. I reassured him that when your art is one of the root references of the present, you are always relevant.

“I wonder,” he said, unconvinced.

so yes, even david bowie, the man we are all remembering fondly, and missing, and fawning over

had real self doubts about the one thing he had been doing beautifully his whole life.

im so grateful dean wrote about this today.