I have lit­tle to add to the tidal wave of remem­brances and trib­utes in the wake of David Bowie’s death. Seems near­ly every­one has a sto­ry about how his music, his per­sis­tence, his gen­eros­i­ty, his genius, his unabashed weird­ness changed their lives. What he taught me as a young teenag­er was that the phrase “just be your­self” can just as well mean “be who­ev­er you can dream up,” and damn the pre­de­ter­mined roles and mean­ing­less stig­ma. Hard­er than it sounds, but Bowie pulled it off like no one before or since.

Bowie was, writes Sara Ben­in­casa, the “patron saint of… weirdos of all stripes, and that most dan­ger­ous crea­ture of all: the artist.” He did not shy away from pre­tense; he embraced it as his spe­cial méti­er. In 1999, Bowie deliv­ered the com­mence­ment address at Boston’s Berklee Col­lege of Music, where he received an hon­orary doc­tor­ate along with Wayne Short­er. In his speech, he says, he learned ear­ly on that “authen­tic­i­ty and the nat­ur­al form of expres­sion wasn’t going to be my forte.”

In fact, what I found that I was good at doing, and what I real­ly enjoyed the most, was the game of “what if?” What if you com­bined Brecht-Weill musi­cal dra­ma with rhythm and blues? What hap­pens if you trans­plant the French chan­son with the Philly sound? Will Schoen­berg lie com­fort­ably with Lit­tle Richard? Can you put hag­gis and snails on the same plate? Well, no, but some of the ideas did work out very well.

Thus began his exper­i­ments with iden­ti­ty that first took shape in the fan­tas­tic crea­ture, Zig­gy Star­dust, his “cru­sade,” as he calls it, “to change the kind of infor­ma­tion that rock music con­tained.” Speak­ing of Zig­gy, Bowie tells a sto­ry about play­ing “grot­ty… workingman’s clubs” in “full, bat­tle fin­ery of Tokyo-space­boy and a pair of shoes high enough that it induced nose bleeds.”

Informed by the pro­mot­er at one such bar that the only bath­room was a filthy sink at the end of the hall, Bowie balked. “Lis­ten son,” said the pro­mot­er, “If its good enough for Shirley Bassey, it’s good enough for you.” From this expe­ri­ence, he says, he learned that “mix­ing ele­ments of bad taste with good would often pro­duce the most inter­est­ing results.”

The speech is packed with wit­ty anec­dotes like this and self-dep­re­cat­ing asides. Most of the sto­ries, as you can hear in the video excerpt at the top of the post, are about Bowie’s “great­est men­tor,” John Lennon. Lennon, says Bowie, “defined for me, at any rate, how one could twist and turn the fab­ric of pop and imbue it with ele­ments from oth­er art­forms, often pro­duc­ing some­thing extreme­ly beau­ti­ful, very pow­er­ful and imbued with strange­ness.” Indulging his love for high and low cul­ture, Bowie under­cuts his ele­vat­ed talk of art-pop by describ­ing his and Lennon’s con­ver­sa­tions as “Beav­is and Butthead on ‘Cross­fire.’”

Bowie ends his speech with a heart­felt, and dare I say, authen­tic sum­ma­ry of his life in music. His only piece of advice, writes Boston.com: he urges the Berklee grad­u­ates to “pur­sue their musi­cal pas­sion as if it were a sick­ness.”

Music has giv­en me over 40 years of extra­or­di­nary expe­ri­ences. I can’t say that life’s pains or more trag­ic episodes have been dimin­ished because of it. But it’s allowed me so many moments of com­pan­ion­ship when I’ve been lone­ly and a sub­lime means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion when I want­ed to touch peo­ple. It’s been both my door­way of per­cep­tion and the house that I live in.

I only hope that it embraces you with the same lusty life force that it gra­cious­ly offered me. Thank you very much and remem­ber, if it itch­es, play it.

Read the full tran­script of the speech here, or below the jump:

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Note: This post was pub­lished on our site less than two weeks ago–December 29, 2015–when we had no idea that David Bowie was in the final days of an 18 month bat­tle with can­cer. In the post, Josh Jones won­dered whether the video fea­tured above would be Bowie’s last live per­for­mance. And, alas, tonight we dis­cov­er that it’s appar­ent­ly so. David Bowie’s offi­cial Twit­ter and Face­book accounts, not to men­tion major news­pa­pers, have just report­ed that David Bowie has died, only two days after his 69th birth­day and the release of his new album Black­star. We’ll have more to say about Bowie, a hero of ours, in the com­ing days. But, for now, we leave you with the sad news and this now his­toric per­for­mance caught on lam­en­ta­bly grainy video. –D.C

The man of a thou­sand hair­cuts, David Bowie has been the van­guard for cre­ative rein­ven­tion for longer than many of his fans have been alive. As soon as he’s made us think he’s exhaust­ed his imag­i­na­tion, he reap­pears with yet anoth­er album, anoth­er look, anoth­er the­atri­cal tour. Except that last bit isn’t like­ly to hap­pen again. We may have seen the end of Bowie the per­former some time ago, accord­ing to such sources as long­time Bowie pro­duc­er Tony Vis­con­ti (who worked with him on 2013’s The Next Day) and British con­cert pro­mot­er John Gid­dings.

“David is one of the best artists I’ve ever worked with,” said Gid­dings in Octo­ber, ”but every time I see him now, before I even speak to him, he goes, ‘I’m not tour­ing.’” Does this rule out the odd one-off appear­ance? Who knows. Noth­ing is for cer­tain with Bowie. But it may well be that the per­for­mance above, a duet of “Changes” with Ali­cia Keys from 2006, rep­re­sents the leg­endary shape shifter’s last gig. (And if so, we hope some bet­ter-qual­i­ty video of it sur­faces.)

Bowie appeared with Keys, Dami­an Mar­ley, and come­di­an Wan­da Sykes at New York’s Ham­mer­stein Ball­room for a fundrais­er and sang Sta­tion to Sta­tion’s “Wild is the Wind” and Lodger’s “Fan­tas­tic Voy­age” in addi­tion to “Changes,” all fit­ting notes to end on, if this is indeed the end of his live per­form­ing career. He had rarely tak­en the stage since his 2004 heart attack dur­ing the Real­i­ty tour, but, Rolling Stone points out, “that didn’t stop him from play­ing with Arcade Fire twice in 2005 and David Gilmour the fol­low­ing year.”

But that was ten years ago. Dur­ing the record­ing of The Next Day, Vis­con­ti report­ed that Bowie insist­ed there would be no live shows, and there weren’t. Now, Bowie’s sur­prised us again with a new album, Black­star, and a ten-minute video, above, that looks like all the para­noid dystopi­an visions in 90s albums like Out­side, Earth­ling, and Hea­then come ter­ri­fy­ing­ly true. I can imag­ine this most recent, per­haps final, entry in the Bowie canon would make for a hell of a stage show, but it looks like he will pass that torch to the younger artists who con­tin­ue to inspire him as he ages grace­ful­ly. Black­star will be released on Jan­u­ary 8th, Bowie’s 69th birth­day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie on the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track for the Queen Hit ‘Under Pres­sure,’ 1981

50 Years of Chang­ing David Bowie Hair Styles in One Ani­mat­ed GIF

David Bowie’s Top 100 Books

David Bowie Becomes a DJ on BBC Radio in 1979; Intro­duces Lis­ten­ers to The Vel­vet Under­ground, Talk­ing Heads, Blondie & More

A 17-Year-Old David Bowie Defends “Long-Haired Men” in His First TV Inter­view (1964)

David Bowie and Cher Sing Duet of “Young Amer­i­cans” and Oth­er Songs on 1975 Vari­ety Show

David Bowie Sings ‘I Got You Babe’ with Mar­i­anne Faith­full in His Last Per­for­mance As Zig­gy Star­dust

Ricky Ger­vais Cre­ates Out­landish Com­e­dy with David Bowie

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness