Austin Kleon — David Bowie’s notebooks

Hyperallergic on the highlights of the David Bowie Is… traveling exhibit: 

the real treasure is the stash of original pages of his modest spiral notebooks. In them, he composed lyrics and how they might be put to music, performed, and turned into video, all simultaneously. His handwritten script changes not just over the years but from page to page. The writings are often surrounded by surreal drawings: night scenes of empty cities, colored in multiple impressionistic shades with markers. The drawings are beautiful — cinematic descriptions, like a director’s notes for a film.

Here are some storyboards he drew:

I love these cut-up lyrics for “Blackout” off Heroes:

Here’s Bowie explaining the cut-up technique: 

Speaking of cut-ups, here’s a weird interview recorded in 1974 when Bowie met Burroughs for the first time.

Many of these images can be found in the David Bowie Is… catalog:

h/t @ayjay

Filed under: notebooks, David Bowie