This will be one more in the thousands of blog posts, thinkpieces, columns and articles written about David Bowie over the coming days, one which tries to explain why the news affected me as much as it did.

I bought Bowie’s new album, Blackstar, on Friday and had listened to it a number of times. It was odd, dark, beautiful and brilliant. Then I was on Twitter yesterday evening (Melbourne time) as the news started to come through.

My first reaction:

Then, as word quickly spread:

Then I saw the news confirmed by a tweet from Bowie’s son Duncan Jones, and that’s when the tears started. They didn’t stop for a long time, and I felt overwhelmed for the rest of the evening as I sat talking to people on Twitter, listening to his music, reading reports and watching clips. I have never been so emotionally hit by the death of a famous person before.

Yes, much of his musical output was sheer brilliance, particularly that extraordinary run of albums from Space Oddity to Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps), a decade of creativity and inventiveness that, to my mind, has no parallel in modern popular music. I also love Tin Machine for what it represents, and Outside for its concept and semi-industrial sound, and Heathen as an under-appreciated late great album; and Blackstar had already captured me, its significance and depth only magnified by Bowie’s death so soon after its release.

But to many of us he was also more. He was a collaborator, a seeker of new talent and ideas, a mentor, producer and restless musical explorer. He was a reader, bookish and avant-garde, and seemingly endlessly creative across multiple artforms. He was iconoclastic, bold and ever-changing yet at his core was always himself. He was skinny and weird looking, and fashionable and a style icon. He challenged stereotypes of gender, sexuality, race and more. And because of all that, as I told a friend on Twitter yesterday, he was an artist whose work and life altered and shaped the way I thought, the way I looked at the world, and the way I looked at myself.

I needed a role model like that, as someone who is bookish and a little weird. As someone who questions authority and established institutions. As a man who spent his late teens and twenties going out in skirts and lipstick and eyeliner and nail polish. As someone who plays music and explores widely through musical styles and genres. As a queer who has had relationships with men and women and doesn’t fit the ‘gay/straight’ or traditional ‘masculine/feminine’ binaries.

For me, and for so many people like me who don’t conform to what is seen as ‘normal’ or ‘expected’ in parts of our lives, Bowie was someone who told us we were okay. More than okay – that difference had presence. That it could be powerful, daring, creative, and transformative.

I doubt we will see his like again, at least in my lifetime. For all the musos and freaks and geeks and weirdos and queers who were lucky enough to be there for some or all of his life and who were inspired, we should above all else be thankful he existed at all.

And even more importantly, if you meet people over the next few days or weeks or years who don’t know about Bowie, don’t mock them for being ignorant, young or out of touch. Introduce them. Help them explore. Send them albums, songs, photos, clips, books, interviews and films.

They might need him as much as we did.