Anyone who knows me knows that I love David Bowie. I mean, I’ve seen “Labyrinth” more than two dozen times, have a wallet with Jareth on it, and throw random facts about David Bowie into conversation whenever possible. I once ad-libbed a whole presentation by listing out facts about his discography and theories behind his writings (Not my greatest idea ever. Please don’t do this. I got really lucky in this case) and left with an A on the presentation. I joked for weeks after that “all that useless Bowie knowledge finally proved itself not to be useless.”

This knowledge, of course, comes from research. I’m expanding my collection of so-called “Bowie books” whenever I can, and it certainly isn’t hard to find them. Bowie was always an interesting figure, seemingly otherworldly. He was an enigma, constantly changing to keep his career going as long as it did, and that, of course, fascinated people. Books on the icon date back decades, and have been coming out in bulk since his passing in January 2016.

In all of my reading on Bowie, I’ve found plenty of interesting facts and tidbits, but there’s something valuable I learned stretches far beyond the life of David Bowie.

Growing up, children are taught that biographies are non-fiction. This makes sense, considering the writing is built upon fact. When looking at biographies, it must be remembered that there is so much beyond the facts. There is a whole person behind the significant dates and family backgrounds.

Any of us know this. We’re more than just when and where we were born, and no one knows everything about us. Imagine how many inaccuracies would exist in a telling of your life. Even your best friend couldn’t get the story right. Now imagine how many are in a book written about David Bowie, a man famous for giving the press little white lies over the years. He spent most of his life in the public eye, considering his famous first single “Space Oddity” came out in 1969 and he was still famous when his final album, “Blackstar,” came out on his 69th birthday in 2016, just two days before his death.

Outside of just the media, there are also Bowie’s interpersonal relations over the years, be it personally, professionally, or even just brief fan encounters. As normal people, we are so drawn to stories about these celebrities, our heroes that feel so out of reach, whether the stories are good are bad. Without David here to give us new content to fawn over, it only makes sense that the media take this into their own hands, tracking down any association with a good Bowie story to tell now that he’s gone. Take, for example, the oral biography “David Bowie: A Life” by Dylan Jones, made up of interviews with well over 100 people who knew Bowie in one way or another.

So it’s fine to read biographies. What isn’t fine is taking them to be the absolute truth about a person. One must, instead, remember that there is more to a person that others know. Despite our attempts, we will never truly know our celebrity heroes, and David Bowie is the perfect case. Two years after his death, he still is and always will be a fantastical mystery of a man, just as much alien as he was human. May David Bowie rest in peace; he certainly deserves it after all he gave us.