David Bowie died. It's a sentence that feels like a contradiction somehow. As if silver died, or the rain. Bowie was once asked which historical figure "he most identified with." "Santa Claus," he answered. As Bowie receded more and more from public life, he came more and more to feel like a story someone told you - like folklore or myth. Ziggy Stardust, the Thin White Duke, Starman, Sailor, Aladdin Sane...

But Bowie was born David Robert Jones, in London, in 1947. He died of cancer, in New York, on Sunday. In between, he released 25 albums. He had two children and uncounted lovers. He was punched in the face and thereafter one of his eyes looked different. He played saxophone, mouth harp and guitar. He renamed himself after a famous knife, something to "cut through the lies and all that." He was clever and kind and stylish; he was shapeshifting and beautiful.

The last time I was falling in love, I listened to little else than David Bowie's song Sound and Vision. I drank it down like water, again and again. When you are falling in love the main thing you cannot bear is the thought that this ardour may fade, that it may leave you. Sound and Vision was my antidote. I drank it like a tonic, treating all the old dreads, soaking my heart.

Read the rest at the Globe & Mail.