Read the Speech Tilda Swinton Gave at the Opening of the V&A Museum’s David Bowie Exhibit

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This weekend, a David Bowie exhibit is opening at London’s V&A Museum. As museums are wont to do, they had an opening party, and, smartly, they got another slender alien to give the speech: Tilda Swinton. You can read the whole thing below. It features lines like “When I think of what it used to feel like once to be a freak who liked you, to feel like a freak like you — a freak who even looked a little like you.� It’s touching and bizarre, so basically, kind of perfect.

Dear, Dave,

When I asked you if you wanted me to say anything here tonight,

You said, ‘Only three words, one of them testicular.’

So I’ll pass that on.

Here I am at surely the most eclectic of all the London branches of Bowie Anonymous
All the nicest possible freaks are here

We’re in the Victoria and Albert Museum preparing to rifle through your drawers
It’s truly an amazing thing

This was my favourite playground as a child
Medieval armour : my fantasy space wear

And, alongside, when I was 12 - and a square sort of kid in a Round Pond sort of childhood, not far from here - I carried a copy of Aladdin Sane around with me - a full 2 years before i had the wherewithal to play it

The image of that gingery boney pinky whitey person on the cover with the liquid mercury collar bone was - for one particular young moonage daydreamer - the image of planetary kin, of a close imaginary cousin and companion of choice

It’s taken me a long time to admit, even to myself, let alone you, that it was the vision and not yet the sound that
hooked me up - but if i can’t confess that here and now, then when and where?

We all have our own roots
And routes
To this room

Some of us - the enviable - found the fellowship early in the funfests of Billy’s Bowie Nights
or equivalent lodges from San Francisco to Aukland to Heidelberg and all points in between

For others, it was a more lonesome affair, paced out in a sort of private morse code like following bread crumbs through a forest

I’m not saying that if you hadn’t pitched up I would have worn a pie crust collar and pearls like some of those I went to school with
I’m not saying that if you hadn’t weighed in, Princess Julia would have been less inventive with the pink blusher
Simply that, you provided the sideways like us with such rare and out-there company
Such fellowship
You pulled us in and left your arm dangling over our necks
And kept us warm - as you have for - isn’t it ? - centuries now
You were
You are
One of us

And you have remained the reliable mortal in amongst all the immortal shapes you have thrown

Nothing more certain than changes

Always with a weather eye out
Always awake and clocking the fallout

Those Mayans must have known something when they set their calendar down before
January 2013

Because, of course, now all bets are off

I know, because you told me, how tickled you were to knock Elvis - for once! - out of the headlines on your shared birthday this year

There’s so much for all of us to be happy about since then

Yet, I think the thing I’m loving the most about the last few weeks
is how clear it now is - how undeniable - that the freak becomes the great unifier
The alien is the best company after all
For so many more than the few

They wanted a Bowie fan to speak tonight. They could have thrown a paper napkin and hit a hundred.
I’m the lucky one, standing up to speak for all my fellow freaks anxious to win the pub quiz and
claim their number one most super-fan tshirt

I want to give thanks to the Victoria and Albert Museum for indulging us so
For laying on our dream show

For showing us - look at their advance ticket sales - that , as is
written along the bottom of this months Q magazine,
’why we all live in David’s world now’

To Gucci and Sennheiser for putting up the cash, laying on the sound and vision
To Geoffrey and Victoria for curating an entire universe so beautifully, on behalf of us all

When I think of what it used to feel like once
To be a freak who liked you
To feel like a freak like you
- a freak who even looked a little like you

And then I think of the countless people of every size and feather who are going to walk through this trace of your journey here and pick up the breadcrumbs
in the great hub of this mothership over these Spring and Summer months..

And how familiar and stamped you are into ALL of our our collective DNA

I’m just plain proud

So

Where are we now?

Well
I know you aren’t here tonight, but
Somehow, no matter

We are -
And you brought us out of the wainscotting like so many
Freaky old bastards
Like so many fan boys and girls
Like so many loners and pretty things and dandies and dudes and dukes and duckies and testicular types
And pulled us together

Together
By you
Dave Jones
Our not so absent, not so invisible, friend

Every alien’s favourite cousin
Certainly mine

We have a nice life

Yours aye

Tilly