I woke up in Los Angeles. That was fine, except I was meant to be 8,000 miles away. I was supposed to be in Melbourne. I was supposed to be in Melbourne to give the opening talk at the international David Bowie conference, in about 24 hours. The flight time from LA to Melbourne is 14 hours. I didn’t have a flight booked. I didn’t have any luggage. It was July 2015, and I was in an airport hotel with hair the colour and cut of David Bowie in The Man Who Fell To Earth, circa 1976. I had nothing else except the clothes I was wearing – a suit from 1973 – and a small black carry-on bag. It had all gone wrong the day before, on a flight from San Diego to LA. The flight was meant to be a short hop, taking an hour. But it took three hours, and so my connection left without me, and my luggage was lost. Technically, it had gone wrong. But in a way, it was all going perfectly. I embraced the sense of lostness, of being dislocated out of time and space: the wandering around LAX airport, the glo...
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