It seemed weird to open the day with a bunch of chirpy Golden Globes posts, things we wrote before this happened, without acknowledging the loss of a man who was iconic both musically and sartorially. David Bowie has died of cancer, aged 69 https://t.co/c0KKUSguDC pic.twitter.com/vPcMjwkTBX — Metro (@MetroUK) January 11, 2016 We lost a big one. The Golden Globes parties must have gone eerily silent while everyone scrambled to confirm, read, and react. Jessica noted on Twitter that this one seems to be hitting particularly hard because the idea of David Bowie dying seemed unfathomable. It never occured to us that he would. He felt... eternal. David Bowie just dropped an album, Blackstar -- well-reviewed, to boot -- that he must have been working on while very ill. As Jessica ALSO said, if one has to go, creating cool stuff people adore right up until the very end is quite an achievement; we just wish he'd been a lot closer to, say, 100, when his time came. It's hard to pick my favorite Bowie song, or moment, or image, or reference. I mean, there's Ziggy Stardust, David Bowie, Tilda Swinton as Bowie, the Flight of the Conchords song "Bowie," among the other multitudes, many of which were contained in the man himself. But that doesn't mean we can't try to shine a light on the ones that meant the most to us. So everyone, gather 'round the campfire and reminisce about the legend, if you need a place to unload it. Me, I just trust that wherever David Bowie ended up, Freddie Mercury was waiting there for him with a jumpsuit and a warm hug. Proper obituaries and better retrospectives will be written in the coming days, covering his extensive influence on everything from music to fashion to branding to performance art, to sexuality and sensuality. He lived at the intersection of all those things, proudly challenging the world to widen its perceptions. I couldn't begin to do it justice at the stroke of noon, much less the stroke of midnight (at which I hit first publish, in a total coincidence that feels eerie in a clangy way). Still, it felt important to mark his passing with something, even if its modesty is laughable compared to the sweep of his legacy. So we cobbled together a far-too-petite gallery of David Bowie images, which I've put after a jump because I didn't want to compete with that cool GIF up there, which we first saw -- and was first shared, I believe -- on his 69th birthday three days ago. If you haven't clicked "play," definitely treat yourself. A life fully lived, yet a life too short. R.I.P., Major Tom, and may God's love be with you.