A Meeting With Mr Bowie

Salutary stories no 4 A MEETING WITH MR BOWIE Michael Allen Do you know how to pronounce David Bowie’s name? Is it Bowie as in bow to the Queen, or Bowie as in bows and arrows? I am never sure, but I once came close to finding out. Back in 1986 I was sitting in a coffee shop on West 46th Street in NYC when the man himself came in and sat down at the counter beside me. He was, if press reports are to be believed, rehearsing a play on Broadway at the time. Anyway, there he was, so I thought I had better not lose the opportunity to resolve my doubt. ‘I wonder,’ I said (very politely), ‘if you would be kind enough to tell me how to pronounce your name.’ Mr Bowie turned, rather slowly, and made an assessment of the person who was asking this question. ‘It’s pronounced David,’ he said. I took a moment to digest this. Took a sip of coffee. ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘So it’s not Daveed, then.’ (In the French manner.) ‘No.’ Another pause and another sip of coffee. And because I knew that he had lived for a while in Berlin, I then said: ‘How do the Germans pronounce it?’ And I’m sure he would have told me, but at that moment he noticed a friend over by the window, and excused himself to go and sit with him. Moral: Never lose an opportunity to ask a question to which you wish to know the answer. But, equally, make sure that the question is not ambiguously phrased. _____________________________________________________ This story is the fourth in an occasional series of Salutary Stories which are being posted as free documents on Scribd.com. All the Salutary Stories are posted on Scribd under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution licence 3.0. What this means, in practice, is that you are free to copy, distribute and transmit the document in any way you wish – provided, please, that you attribute the work to Michael Allen. You can send it to a friend, print it out, use it as a teaching aid, publish it in an online magazine – whatever. For any other information, please contact me: mikel01 – at – globalnet.co.uk.