The next day continues

So this is weird. Downright odd, actually. Five days ago I was listening to a brand new David Bowie album for the first time and four days ago writing a review of it. And, then, two days ago I was coming to terms with his death.

Hard to take it all in, and not just from the perspective of grief. How incredible - if that's the right word - these last few days have been. The euphoria of a record reconfirming the continuation of an incredible canon of work and a career that had seemed lost, then news that its author was gone.

Cute as it may be to suggest that Bowie's death was as cleverly stage managed as any of his artistic endeavours in life, the reality is that we won't ever know whether nature just took its course, or that, somehow, reaction to Blackstar being released, along with almost exclusively glowing reviews generated in advance, would prove to be the final inhalation.

"He always did what he wanted to do," wrote producer Tony Visconti, who first worked with Bowie on his 1969 David Bowie album. In a Facebook post he said: "He wanted to do it his way and he wanted to do it the best way. His death was no different from his life - a work of Art. He made Blackstar for us, his parting gift."

In the same post, Visconti revealed that Bowie had taken him into his confidence early about his life expectancy: "I knew for a year this was the way it would be. I wasn't, however, prepared for it."

No one was. No one is. Even taking the cod philosophy of Gerry O'Driscoll, the Abbey Road handyman quoted on Pink Floyd's The Great Gig In The Sky: "I am not frightened of dying. Any time will do, I don't mind. Why should I be frightened of dying? There's no reason for it – you've got to go sometime", you don't lose the sting of it.

On Monday night I went out for a walk down to the Flamme de la Liberté, the unofficial memorial to Princess Diana above the Pont D'Alma tunnel where she died, not out of any morbid fixation, but that I hadn't actually been out of my apartment since the news about Bowie had broken, needed to stretch my legs, and Pont D'Alma is only a ten minute walk away.

But when I got there it dawned on me how Bowie's abrupt death was, almost, sort of, kind of like that of Diana. A bit. In a way. Not to get too Daily Express about it, Diana had been enjoying a new lease of life when she died in that tunnel, indulging the good life of Paris and doing so with her new(ish) love. So when the news, that Sunday morning, hit the world so unexpectedly, it was like a punch to the solar plexus and the "outpouring of grief" (© all news organisations) that followed was accentuated by the unexpected shock. Because we think celebrities are immortal, right? I remember when Jim Henson died, people were grief stricken: "What will happen to The Muppets now?". OK, bad example.

With Bowie it was the same or similar or not far off it. As enigmatically as he'd lived his life, his expiration came without warning. We were all on a high because a) he was back and b) he'd produced something so satisfying and nourishing that he couldn't possibly just exit stage left like that. But he did.

So this post marks the start of a new blog. The old one, What Would David Bowie Do? was, as I've oft pointed out, never actually about Bowie. It just seems ludicrous to maintain a blog with his name in it - regardless of the reason why his name is in it - when he's no longer around. It just doesn't.

Thus, What Would David Bowie Do? ends - after, appropriately, five years - as it should: like Miss Havisham at Satis House collecting dust in her wedding dress or a watch stopped at the exact moment of an alien encounter, with the final post being that review of Blackstar.

New adventures abound (and no apologies for the new title - it was indeed the best I could come up with and, yes, it does cover pretty much anything I might post on it, and, yes, it is a nod.