The World Without Prince

I didn’t think this day would come. He’s younger than me and he has always lived clean and healthy and full of his faith. I figured he’d be around singing those songs with a devilish smile and still making us feel kinda raunchy no matter how old we all were. He was like that.

I guess I took it for granted that he would be there. I thought I’d be 70 years old still going to Prince concerts even if they were small affairs in clubs. You know, the unhooked kind. I was all right with that. I was all right with almost everything Prince did.

You know, I feel sorry for people who just don’t seem to love or feel music the way I do. I am aghast at these folks who ask why we mourn these musicians so deeply. We didn’t know them, after all, they say. They are just musicians. I just shake my head.

Creative people make the world we live in just that much more tolerable. 

We need to look at the architecture to see where we have come from. I mean we lived in huts and caves in the beginning and now look what we have? Look at the bridges and buildings and be amazed at what we have been able to do to make our planet that much more livable.

Art has brought us more magic than we ever dreamed. We have beautiful soul stirring paintings and sculptures and drawings that we cherish and love through the years. Just go to museums and art galleries and see what we breathe life into that captures our minds and souls.

I think writing and music roll hand in hand a lot. I mean we have lyrics that we will never forget set to music that takes us to another realm of reality. But as a writer, I understand what that really means. It’s not easy to put those words together and make them mean something that everyone can feel as much as you do.

My hat is off to people who can create the music and then find the words to pair with it and make it another entity altogether. That can only be described as magical. When

we have people who can do that, of course we look at them as special. They seem to find just the right words and music to touch our hearts and evoke all sorts of emotions in each of us. That is not an easy thing to do.

When that one musicians finds that place inside you – when they tap those feelings and bring them rippling to the surface – it’s wonderful. It can be painful, it can be joyous, it can be almost orgasmic or it can make you laugh. And the really great thing is hearing that music brings it back to you every time. You can hear a song you loved 30 years ago and still feel the same way when you heard it the first time. It becomes a part of your life, doesn’t it?

Prince was a magician. He was so many things rolled into one that it seemed unreal. I mean he could be funky as all get out, then he could be romantic, he made us get up and dance, he played it like the blues and then turned around and rocked the damn house.

He sang and he danced and he spun around on stage and there were only two other humans that had that same gift. We were lucky enough to have all three of them among us at the same time – the Godfather of Soul, the Hardest Working Man in Show Business, the man who moved like no other – James Brown. 

I think of the T.A.M.I. Show when he hit that stage and folks had never seen anything like him. They didn’t know what to think. Mick Jagger mourned that he had to go on after James Brown. Nobody could dance like James Brown. My man surely had “the good foot.” And he did it to death.

Then we had Michael. You know who I mean. Michael Jackson of the shy smile and the movements that set peoples’ souls afire. Remember the first time you saw him do the Moon Walk? I do. I still watch that video in amazement. Or that lean in “Smooth Criminal.” Lord, yes, he was special.

And there was Prince. Unlike either of the others, he could pick up that guitar and make it talk to you. When he hit the stage in those high heels, he turned you inside out. Wherever he went, we went there too and we loved it and we loved him. We knew him just like he knew us.

These musicians reach down inside themselves and pull up their emotions and their thoughts and feelings and bravely share it with all of us. We know their joy, their pain, their angst, their fears, their hunger and their wonder. We know it cause we feel it too and we wonder how they knew how we were feeling too. They share themselves in a very intimate way and we love them for it. We feel close to them because we know they must feel close to us to touch our souls the way they do. We go to their concerts and we scream and laugh and cry and hold our hearts because we feel that connection more than ever when we see them and we know they feel us too. It is a wonderful feeling, isn’t it?

Prince shared his heart, his soul, his mind and his magic with us and we adored him. We didn’t mind when he got down to that part of us that was kind of nasty and hot and erotic. He was just putting words to how we felt too. So ok, some folks got upset and offended. Most of us knew just what he meant and it was all right with us. I mean, who among us hasn’t looked at someone who set our blood boiling and thought or said, “….you sexy motherfucker.”

You know you did. Don’t lie.

So we took him for granted. We just assumed he would be here with us. I remember he said he had enough music saved to keep us going for years and years and I was satisfied that he would be a part of my life as long as I lived.

Yesterday all that came crashing down. We didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t. I screamed when I read it, but at the same time, I knew it was true. I had been worried since I had heard he had been sick and they had taken him to a hospital in Moline, Illinois. I knew he would never not perform unless something was really wrong and I figured something was. I hoped he would still be there.

This year has been exceptionally unkind. We lost Natalie Cole and David Bowie and Glen Frey and Maurice White really close together. We have been staggering and sad for most of the year. We are losing our musical icons far too quickly this year and we are afraid and angry.

So no, I was not ready to lose Prince. I pulled out the program from the last time I saw him and looked at the pictures. I thought of the one time I was in his presence. I was backstage at the Essence Festival in New Orleans. 

It must have been 2003 or 2004, I’m not sure which year. Anyway, I was walking along with friends and we stopped to talk to someone and I felt the presence of someone looking at me from behind. I turned and there he was, in all his Badness, wearing skin tight black pants and a tank top with a shirt over it.

I am used to being in the presence of musicians – I have in one way or another all my life, so I quickly gathered myself and smiled and said, “Hello Prince, how are you?”

He gave me that not quite naughty smile and said, “Hello baby, I’m fine, how are you?”

I said, “I’m fine, thank you.”

His eyes took the slow tour up and down my body and that smile got even more naughty and he said, “Yes, you are. I can see that, baby.”

You know I walked around with the big head for a long time. How often do you get someone like Prince to not only give you The Eye, but tell you that you are fine? Yes Lord. My life was complete.

But yes, I loved Prince. I loved a man who dressed whatever way he wanted, purple jackets, white lace shirts, skin tight pants with buttons down the legs and high heels. I loved a man who wore his hair like his crown. He wore his mascara and he walked like he owned the whole world.

What did it matter that he was short? Who cared? He might have been small in stature but he was huge in our lives and in this world.

He did just what he wanted to do and we might have joked and laughed but we loved him. I knew no other man that could pull off wearing pants with cut outs showing his natural ass.

And did he show them who he was at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame playing “While My Guitar Gently Weeps?” He rocked it like a boss and then threw that guitar and walked away leaving us all in awe.

There was so much to Prince and we loved it all.

And now he is gone.

We will live and we will go on but we will sit down and hear “Little Red Corvette” or “When Doves Cry” and we will smile and sing along and we will think of the man with those beautiful eyes and that shy smile and that devilish demeanor and we will still love him.

He is, after all, our Prince. And so he shall remain. Go in Peace, Prince. Rest in Paradise. You will always be a part of us.