Brief thoughts on Bowie's death, almost two weeks later

I'm a little late to add to the David Bowie remembrance train, nor do I have any good stories about how Bowie inspired or saved me when I was young. I remember seeing the rerun of his 1979 SNL appearance with Klaus Nomi and Joey Arias when I was 16, and had somewhat of an awareness of his importance to music, but my appreciation didn't really flower until adulthood. Since his passing, I've listened to the three Bowie albums I own copies of (Ziggy Stardust, Station To Station, "Heroes"), as well as the rest of his discography on Spotify; I didn't give Blackstar a play until after he died, but wonder what it would have felt like to have those early impressions of the album suddenly change shape as Bowie's true intentions for the work revealed themselves. As I said before, I don't really have much else to add to the conversation, but I strongly recommend Jacqueline Valencia's moving and nuanced look at how important his music was in her life. 

Bowie's death has me wondering whether I would mourn any musician's death on that same level. About ten years ago, when my friend Wilson was starting to get into Bob Dylan, we had a discussion about whether his inevitable passing would be one of those events that spawns a massive collective mourning: Wilson didn't think so; he theorized that Dylan had so long ago become a mythical figure that news of his death would almost be anti-climactic.  It would still be a bummer, but I can't really disagree with that assessment.