David Bowie is dead. I say that not to be callous but as a statement of fact. He’s dead. And I’m much more affected than I expected to be. I’m tearing up just writing this and I wasn’t even that big of a Bowie fan. Sure, I loved “I’m Afraid of Americans“, his duet with Trent Reznor that dropped at the height of my Nine Inch Nails fandom. I’ve always loved the hauntingly beautiful version of “Little Drummer Boy” he performed with Bing Crosby. His performance (and codpiece) in the movie Labyrinth captivated me as a child.

I know that without his influence so many of the artists that I love would never have existed. He made so much possible in our culture as a whole. Even the Gilmore Girls owes a debt to David Bowie – how many times is he referenced in this show? “Suffragette City“is name checked at least once. And now he’s gone. The world is a little less weird now, a little less wonderful. That’s a shame.

In Men In Black, a movie about people who police the space alien population on Earth, Will Smith makes an offhand comment about Elvis’s death to Tommy Lee Jones’s character. Tommy Lee Jones responds with something like, “Elvis didn’t die. He just went home.”  That’s how I feel about Bowie. The spaceman didn’t die. He just went home.

Good luck on your next mission, Mr. Bowie. Thanks for stopping by our little backwater of a planet and making it a little more interesting.

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