A professor at Kingston University in London is living as David Bowie for a year, reports The Guardian.Will Brooker, a film and cultural studies professor, will shrink most of Bowie’s career into one year, embodying each of his different identities. And here we are, having to make do with dressing as Bowie only on Halloween.
Brooker is currently “in” Bowie’s mid-70’s Thin White Duke period. In an effort to get into Bowie’s mindset, Brooker is only consuming the same cultural content as Bowie was at any given moment in his career. Brooker is also following Bowie’s er, nutritional habits, which consisted of milk, potato chips and red peppers. It cannot, however, simply be assumed that he’s taking any of Bowie’s favorite dietary supplement at the time: cocaine. Brooker’s quoted in The Guardian saying:
The levels of cocaine Bowie was consuming is not just illegal for a professor like myself, but it’s much too expensive – as well as unhealthy.
Instead, he’s been having a lot of energy drinks. All of this strict emulation is helping Brooker inhabit Bowie’s “head space,” which he says can be a “dark place.” Apart from publishing in a research paper that presumably says “It was fun,” it’s uncertain what result Brooker hopes to achieve with the study. Now, how to convince your boss to let you be David Bowie for a year…
Watch Will Brooker being interviewed on Australian TV: