One of the sad facts about gaining years is that, with every day, there's an ever increasing chance that someone you know, love, appreciate, admire or respect will disappear. It's one of the choice parts of the human condition, a happy/sad twist that makes you reflect on what you have, what you've missed out on, what hours there are in the day to make something new or maybe just that it's high time that you bought that new shiny thing that you'd promised yourself. It may be that someone you know has passed on, or it may be that someone you've never met, but to you has had an equally important impact on your life, has died; the writer of a book you can quote offhand perhaps, or an actor who's work you enjoyed, the painter who's way with colour makes the juices in your brain fizz or the performer who's music lifts your soul. If life is like a box of chocolates, and you never know what you're going to get, there's a likelihood that some days you'll be handed the Peanut Cracknel and not the Noisette Triangle. Today was one of those days.
David Bowie is dead and, not to put too fine a point on it, it's bummed me right out. It bummed me out when I woke up to the news, half-dreaming the report read out on the radio, and it's continued to do so as the day has progressed. It's bummed me out, it's pissed me off, it's made me sad and, from the tweets I've read and the items I've seen populating my newsfeed in Facebook, unsurprisingly I'm not alone in how I feel. Today may be beyond Peanut Cracknel, today was a big bar of Marmite chocolate, chewed with a grimace. David Bowie is/was a genius, an artist, a chameleon, a creator of beautiful music and, by most accounts, was a really nice chap to boot. Part of me thinks that this is just another way of him reinventing himself, that he'll reappear as a new creation tomorrow, but that's just the dreamer in me. Bowie has left the planet. The body may be gone but the body of work remains and will always be with us. He really made the grade, and for that I am thankful.
RIP David Bowie (1947-2016)
David Bowie is dead and, not to put too fine a point on it, it's bummed me right out. It bummed me out when I woke up to the news, half-dreaming the report read out on the radio, and it's continued to do so as the day has progressed. It's bummed me out, it's pissed me off, it's made me sad and, from the tweets I've read and the items I've seen populating my newsfeed in Facebook, unsurprisingly I'm not alone in how I feel. Today may be beyond Peanut Cracknel, today was a big bar of Marmite chocolate, chewed with a grimace. David Bowie is/was a genius, an artist, a chameleon, a creator of beautiful music and, by most accounts, was a really nice chap to boot. Part of me thinks that this is just another way of him reinventing himself, that he'll reappear as a new creation tomorrow, but that's just the dreamer in me. Bowie has left the planet. The body may be gone but the body of work remains and will always be with us. He really made the grade, and for that I am thankful.
RIP David Bowie (1947-2016)