The sound of doves crying

"Stay away from the future. Don't tell God your plans" - David Bowie 'No Control'

The doves are crying. Prince is dead. And Bowie, Frey and Lemmy.  

All those great big guys of old gone within a four month period. Like the millions of other people during that time and the countless billions before them, each death of somebody we know  a milestone in the programmed march of our own lives to the drumbeat of time, the falling of yet another leaf that was green and had turned to brown. 

More of the big guys of old will follow sooner rather than later. I can't name them. My own personal big guys of old will too. I can name them but you won't know them. 

And you and I , we'll follow someday too. 

So thank goodness, man, for the music that sustains and nourishes this unlikely bubble of a planet inside the boundless cosmic vacuum. Thank goodness that the music lives on even as deaths come and deaths come again. It doesn't live on "forever" of course -  eventuallythe bubble will be pricked by the flaming points of a grotesquely engorged sun depleted of fuel and not even the most immortal music is going to outlast that.

But that , thank goodness again, is way beyond our individual time. All we can do for now is to seize this life and live it because there won't be another and to hope that our ears are functioning and the music is at hand the day our own universe comes to an end.