So, I said I'd write about it.  But -

There'll be billion words written about him today, tomorrow, forever.

This isn't a tribute or in honour of his creativity, his artistry or his presence.  It's about the rest of us.  It's a single, solipsistic piece of writing, triggered by the death of someone I never met.

 - It's in the half heard guitar riffs on the radio, when you don't know what music is yet

Music made sense, when I was small.  Music made sense, and it was boring.  Sense and the explicable is just nothing.  All love songs with obvious meaning, even to a five year old.  And then - well, you know the rest.  When it doesn't make sense, when you crave understanding of something so mysterious and frightening and so very, very powerful and wonderful, when you see that face staring out at you from a ragged poster, the jagged flash, the eyes -

 - More drifting lyrics, half heard singles.  Finding this scene like solving a puzzle.  Up alone in my room on rainy days, with the library books about science fiction films that I could never get to see.  That face, Thomas Jerome Newton, lacking normal eyes no matter which disguise he had on.

 - There have always been visitors -

Eight years old and there's a clown walking on a beach and it is the most frightening and addictive thing I've ever seen.  The words stick to my memory, almost uniquely.

 - My mother said - 

Mystery and makeup.  Two years on, I'm dressed as Dracula and something associates in my mind somehow -

Oh and then.  A long, harsh time.  Growing up autistic but not knowing, assuming I was just insane.  Like walking on knives.  "Broken glass" I nearly wrote just then, didn't even spot that one.  Conformity and gender and sex roles enforced with brutality and ignorance and the determination that there must be no ambiguity.  The Great Terror in South Yorkshire.

 - Oh no love, you're not alone - 

Two years later, nine and a half stone, walking down the street in three inch cuban heels and a purple silk blouse.  Kids threw bricks at me.  Who gives a fuck?  Singing he played it left hand with a girl/friend at midnight.  Eyeliner and lipstick days, no matter what those 1990s documentaries tell you.

Years and years and years.  Twice.  Two times, synchronous events, both times driving, once in the morning, once late at night.  Both times, Life on Mars, like a soundtrack.  In an interview, he said it was a love song and he was very, very right.  Twice over for me, in fact.  Watching the dawn come up over the motorways (I'd love to call it the autobahn, but even I'm not that pretentious, even tonight) and listening to the entire back catalogue.  Driving a long way back home through unlit lanes for five hours, with just the one album looping over and over again.  Smiling at the madness and beauty of life when you just let go and be whatever you need to be.

Changing the makeup, a new role to play.  It's what I've always done.

It feels like that music has been on a loop in my head forever and I don't mind at all.