Messages from Bowie

"As an adolescent, I was painfully shy, withdrawn. I didn’t really have the nerve to sing my songs on stage and nobody else was doing them. I decided to do them in disguise so that I didn’t have to actually go through the humiliation of going on stage and being myself. I continued designing characters with their own complete personalities and environments. I put them into interviews with me! Rather than be me — which must be incredibly boring to anyone — I’d take Ziggy in, or Aladdin Sane or The Thin White Duke. It was a very strange thing to do."

Quartz and recycled fibers on pine

The sense i'm getting is that the persona allowed him to keep the flow open and active. Not blocked like an artist who stops creating because they can't show up for it in the way they're creativity is asking them to. David Bowie created a version of himself that could show up for what his creative flow was asking of him. Throughout his life these various pieces or personas of him integrated to become what is now probably a new constellation!