I am not going to pretend that David Bowie changed my life, but I will say that his advice in the song “Changes” to “turn and face the strange” seems like just as good advice for the new year and the changes it is bringing us, both the expected and the unexpectable, as for anyone facing the biggest change of all, as he just did a few days ago. In the end, even small changes can feel like small deaths; we don’t know what we are stepping out into and whether the ground will hold us. We think we are going out there into the future alone, but that may not be true. Anyway, for the sake of 2016 for everybody, here’s hoping!

I still don’t know what I was waiting for
And my time was running wild
A million dead-end streets
And every time I thought I’d got it made
It seemed the taste was not so sweet
So I turned myself to face me
But I’ve never caught a glimpse
Of how the others must see the faker
I’m much too fast to take that test

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
(Turn and face the strange)
Ch-ch-changes
Don’t want to be a richer man
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
(Turn and face the strange)
Ch-ch-changes
Just gonna have to be a different man
Time may change me
But I can’t trace time