Rest in Purple

People have been sending me condolences all day. I didn’t realize how much I talk about Prince, but I must. I must talk about him all the time. 

This morning, late to work as I am every Thursday, I didn’t have time to look at my phone. And instead of putting it face down as I usually do (it is always on silent) I had it face up as I typed furiously, attempting to catch up on the mountain of work that awaited me. 

The face lit up. Once. Twice. Five times. The flashing light caught my peripheral vision and piqued my curiosity. I never get that many messages.

A single swipe of my index finger and life is different. A single swipe and the world is forever changed. 

I remember where I was when news of Tupac’s death reached me, and I can see myself, more voyeur than participant, as people melted down around me when Michael Jackson died. But I never really understood. It never felt personal. It never felt like my loss, rather a thing that happened, a thing that happens. 

But this feels like I am missing something…or will be missing something. This feels like a slight. I flirt with the idea of full on temper-tantruming to show my dismay that there will be no next time to see or hear the genius that was and remains, Prince.

A Prince biography finally showed up in my library cue and, stuck on a cross-country flight last week, I eagerly cracked it open with Prince blasting through my earphones to properly set the mood. Mostly unimpressed with the book, it gifted me the inspiration to listen to more than the familiar songs on the 15 Prince albums I have on my phone. 

I’ve been listening ever since. 

Hanging out with my high school best friend in DC, driving in my car, plowing through research at work. Prince accompanied me through the week’s routines.

He sings to me with lyrics so familiar they could be my own name, and with undiscovered gems I didn’t know I would love.

And then he died. 

Just like that.

Last month I was screaming into the din of Oracle arena with 20,000 other purple lovers and today…today we collectively mourn the man who crafted the soundtrack to generations. 

A friend who I share a tacit agreement that if I ever had the opportunity to touch prince (or possibly pick him up, put him in my pocket, and run) that she would bail me out of jail no questions asked (except maybe, “what was it like to touch him?”) and who, after the Piano and a Microphone performance agreed to join me in Minneapolis this summer to go to one of his Paisley Park parties, wasn’t mourning with me today. Her eyes are firmly trained on what remains.

“He left so many gifts,” I could hear her smiling through the phone, “he gave us so much.”

I know she’s right. I know. But greedy I am…I want more.

I want the opportunity to sit in a crowd screaming so loud for him to return for an encore that the noise actually begins to sound like silence, like it did when I saw him at the American Airlines center 14 years ago. I want to wait (screaming and) patiently as he exits the stage for what feels like 5, 10, forever minutes before returning to regale me with encore after encore, like he did in Curacao at the North Sea Jazz festival. I want to watch him flirt with 20,000 people and forget that he isn’t actually flirting with me as he throws back his head, kicks over the piano bench, and marries random songs as if they were destined lovers because music is his language.

Music is his language.

He communicated love with his music…and prayer. He delivered the freak and the god in me. My soul weeps that I will never again stand among strangers pulled together by a purple thread of music beckoning us to go crazy under a cherry moon even as I am thankful that I once did.