David Bowie | Slow Burn

Today I woke to the news that David Bowie, aged 69, had passed away.

I'm not entirely sure how I feel, how exactly I am reacting. David Bowie is not my favourite musician, but his music is inexorably tied and bound to my life in so many little ways. I feel like I need to get these little memories and moments down somewhere, to make this real.

1. I'm about 5 years old and I'm sitting in the back of our family car. The park is out the right-side window and we are on our way to school. My dad is playing "China Girl" and he is singing along, he is singing to me. I am his China Girl, and I am giggling like a maniac.

2. I'm somewhere between 8 and 10. My parents have had a fight, my dad has gone in to his study and shut the door. My mother is sitting at the kitchen bench with her head in one hand. For jusst a moment, she does not know I am in the room. She is listening to "Life On Mars", volume up. She is crying.

3. I'm 14, and walking up the sloping concrete driveway to school. I have my new iPod headphones in and I'm blasting "Rebel Rebel". I am certain that I am the only person in my grade ever to have listened to this song. I am so alternative. I have a spring in my step, and I march in time.

4. I'm 17. My best friend is battling a codeine addiction. I have just watched a German film called Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo, about heroin, addiction and Bowie. I am listening to "Heroes" and I feel like there is a blackness racing through my blood. I am dead behind my eyes. I am numb.

And finally, today, I am 20. I'm listening to "Ashes To Ashes" and I'm reflecting on all these moments, on all the many more that are too indistinct to formulate in to words - emotions, tears. The memory of a feeling. David Bowie gave us so much in his life, pushed so many boundaries and created a whole world that hadn't existed before him. He could be a million people at once, and make you feel twenty things in two minutes. For that I will always thank him. For now, I will listen to his music and reflect on just how ridiculously connected we all are, that the same few seconds of harmonised sound can make us all feel something deep inside.

Vale, David Bowie. You will be missed.