David Bowie is dead.

I am still having trouble getting my head around that. I don’t know why. He was 69 and many people die before then. I knew he had been battling cancer. And heaven knows he’s not the first. The past decade has been a parade of loss, so many of the cultural icons of my youth dead and gone.

Each one of those deaths has had me pondering my time of growing up, my time of formation. But for the most part, most of them had stopped being relevant to me on a day to day basis. They quietly faded into the woodwork of middle-aged complacency, repeating the same themes and at times, even becoming a parody of themselves.  The truth is, I rarely listen to the music of my youth, or even the music of my middle age.

But I have never stopped listening to David Bowie. I never stopped buying his music. Some of it was amazingly good. Some of it wasn’t. But he was never boring. He was never the same. He was creatively fearless. He was unrelentingly curious.

Critics often refer to Bowie as a musical chameleon. And perhaps he was. Certainly his looks and his sounds were all over the map. Never quite in the center of the pop world, yet influenced by it and influencing it at the same time, you never knew what the next album would bring. You only knew it would be new. I don’t have all of his music, but I have a lot of it, far more than any other artist. Far more.

I listen to Bowie on road trips. I listen to Bowie when I was creatively stuck. I listen to him when I am down, letting his energy feed mine. Years ago, when I lived 30 minutes from my church, I used to warm my voice by singing to “Bowie live at the BBC”.  Just last week. I ordered his latest album, Blackstar. It will likely arrive today.

I have no idea what kind of person Bowie was. He may have been vile. He may have been a prince. I don’t care. Creatively, he has been my inspiration, my example of what it means to continue to grow, to be unrelenting in growth. Unlike literally every creative influence of my youth, he has remained vital, challenging, inspiring, a part of my life.

And now he is gone. Blackstar, with its jazz influences and new twists will be his last album. I will not get my semi-regular shot of inspiration, my musical reminders that curiosity and courage is not an event, but a way of life.

Now, what will I do? Beyond mourning, I mean.

I have no idea. But I will do it with a lifetime of his music playing in he background.  Cue “The Young Americans.”  Time for a road trip.

Tom