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.

Meklit Jazz

I was staring at her. I mean, I was trying not to stare at her, but she looked familiar. And once I scoured my brain for who I thought she was I felt the need to confirm that she was who I thought she was. To do that I'd have to get a closer look, and given that I was staring, a closer look also meant I'd need to speak. But I couldn't remember her name. Crammed into an overcrowded room in the Turkish airport awaiting my flight back to San Francisco, with time to kill, what else was there to do.

"Excuse me, you sing don't you?" I felt sheepish and probably looked and sounded a little crazy, but I'd started so what else was there to do but dig in. The woman, short afro with coils springing off in different directions and a guitar resting by her side, offered a small- and I imagine strained - smile and nodded her head affirmatively.

 "I  love your voice," I started and then raced quickly on. "And the lyrics to I like your Afro...'sweet as tej and delicious as injera'." I was paraphrasing what I'd read the lyrics (originally in Amharic) meant.  I had watched I like Your Afro before I left for Turkey and fell in love with the song as much as the video. It was all sexy and fun. And I knew Meklit- her name, I looked up once I had access to the internet, is Meklit Hadero- from Copperwire. I fell in love with her voice in Stories. It was like the coolness of a breeze on a sweltering day, you just want more of it. 

I walked away from her after my gushing moment, leaving my crazy level where it was and not ratcheting it up any further. Imagining how strange it must feel to have someone know who you are completely out of context. Seeing her inspired me though...more live music, more fun things that keep me grounded and happy like my trip to Turkey had been.

Last night I saw Meklit at SF Jazz Center. Her big smile and lilting voice accompanied by bass, trumpet, drums, and the occasional trombone was such a delightful treat. After I settled back into my non-vacation routine (once my sickness finally subsided and I stopped lamenting the absence of Turkish breakfasts waiting for me and hours to loll away on the Aegean sea) I had looked up Meklit's performance information and tried to herd my friends into going...to no success. I went by myself.

I didn't know most of the music. Some of the songs were in other languages. But her voice was still silken- still breezy - still nuanced. And her smile was still broad. She danced and fluttered her fingers in time- or maybe to subtly direct - the other performers on stage as they took turns in the spotlight. 

A few people up in the balcony area stood up and danced. I bobbed in my seat and rocked myself back and forth to the rhythm the group was laying down. But we dancing ones were few. I stared, mystified at the statue like heads, erect ad listening but not even the faintest sway in her breeze. Did they not hear her; were they not moved by the trumpet that conjured up memories of kissing my first high school boyfriend and almost made me blush?

They all clapped. When Meklit offered us her final song the crowd even moaned their sadness that it was over…but still they didn’t dance. We all experienced her in our own ways I suppose.

I stood in line to greet her in the lobby after the show. She must have been exhausted but she held actual conversations with people, took pictures, smiled brightly. I couldn’t decide if I should mention the Istanbul airport, would that be scary would I sound like a crazed fan? Ultimately, I offered in passing that I’d seen her in the airport a while back and her face, rather than darkening in fear, brightened in recognition. “That was you?” 

I nodded. 

“Well we’ve come full circle and now I’ve met you properly,” she said. 

I came home and listened to more of her music, deciding which versions I preferred. Comparing the arrangements they’d done last night to the older ones. And I was happy to have cause to revisit my time in Turkey and to cool myself in the breeze of Meklit’s voice.