Prince is dead. Devastated. Mess.
And I am naked except for the underwear I just put on and need more clothes because I feel so naked but also need to call her. I want to be dressed. Because I will remember this moment and want to be dressed. I don't want to be crying in my room, which I am now doing near hysterically, as I fumble for the TV remote and the phone. I reach my sister and the news channel at the same time and she is saying yes but I don't see it on TV so maybe it is not true. Because why would it be true. Because it can't be. And I keep putting on my clothes but also a blanket over my still wet head to wait for the news on TV.
It's there. A still of Prince from Purple Rain and that 1958-2016 at the end. The marker of time. I think, "I'll die in your arms under the cherry moon." I think, "Until the end of time, I'll be there for you. You own my heart and mind, I truly adore you." I think, "Baby, baby, baby...what's it gonna be tonight...." The first songs that coming from my subconscious to my head. He's gone.
The moments, hours, days, and now weeks that follow I move in a slow jam of molasses. I am going through life's motions but the pull at my throat and the corner of my eyes and my solar plexus and my chest don't let me forget that I feel profound loss for someone I don't know but who helped me discover myself. The journey he led me on at various stages of my life by sharing his cannot be overstated. I've heard it said that when one is, say, tripping on psychedelic mushrooms or acid, a good guide, someone who has already experienced the effects and visuals, can help navigate the emotional roller coaster, the drama of the alternate universes, and the mind-blowing imagery of that sojourn. My life with Prince's music has been such a trip.
Some nights I react to his passing in the lower chakras. I actually drop to my knees with ache and longing. I feel untethered and disconnected, empty and ungrounded. Prince gave me license to be in possession of myself and to connect to the energies, physical and psychic around me. I felt the hair stand up on my arm, my heart beat faster, my head spin, my legs go weak in the landscape he created. I dared not be ashamed of my otherness, my sexuality, the magnetic pull and attraction between souls.
"They feel the heat, the heat between me and you."
There are no words for what the 15 year old me felt when she first heard those lyrics. I felt like I'd been told a secret, that something lurking inside would be impossible to hide when I discovered my soul's mate. I don't think I'd ever stood face to face with a boy at that time, let alone felt his heat, but I knew something wicked and delicious and terrifying would happen when I did. Songs of love and longing had not been so visceral for me until that moment. So much of Prince's music took me through the full range of emotions, love, sex, heartbreak, pleasure and pain. The sacred and the profane. The spiritual longing, the seeking, and the command he took on stage, in the studio, on the screen made him both pilgrim and guide.
I loved that Prince did not apologize for his blood, sugar, sex, magic (to quote the Red Hot Chili Peppers). He was all those wicked things and a vulnerable man cub. He was music's Mowgli walking through the jungle of the human psyche in all its dank, dark, delicious earthiness. He was sexy and naked and sweating and sweet and looked at us all with those wet eyes and everyone fell. He was so real as to be surreal. So truly enigmatic that no matter how often he was asked to define himself, he believed in not doing so, he was. That he is gone in a blink takes away a pocket of that magic.
I'm haunted by his passing as much because I loved him and his music at a time when I was flowering into my own being as that I, and so many others, had no idea how he was suffering. I am haunted by the man alone, by the tunnels I imagine him passing through to get from studio to studio, the corridors and chambers of his secret spaces. I feel stunned by all the work amassed, the work never heard, the work, the work, the art, the music that he kept making even when his fans still connected to the tried and true, the music that we knew. I imagine him alone, in the quiet, with his god and his muse, creating and hurting, and being distinctly human on a quest for the divine. I consider my own pain, my own loneliness, my own torment and compare it though I know I shouldn't. I think of an artist in physical pain and addiction and imagine the sorrow. And then the lyrics flood me and everyone in my life really for infinity because we have to listen to his music until I say stop and I have not yet.
And in this moment in my life, waiting at a stop light, mindlessly folding laundry, sending a message, reading, or dreaming, the songs come back, pop into my head like mile markers. You've come by here before, they say. Remember when you ached, longed for that boy, fought your own demons, wanted, needed. Do you remember when you were alone? When it was another time? Another place? And it was quiet and you were naked and out of the shower and had no idea which way the day would go?
I feel guilty for taking so long to let go. My mood is revealed by what's playing. One is warned whether or not to ask the question, show me the Beanie Boo, or ask for another something by my dancing or my silence. After the call, I slowly, silently finished getting dressed. I'd turned off the TV at some point probably to hear my sister better as we talked. The house was still.
If I gave you diamonds and pearls
Would you be a happy boy or a girl
If I could I would give you the world
But all I can do is just offer you my love*
Would you be a happy boy or a girl
If I could I would give you the world
But all I can do is just offer you my love*
(Prince and the New Power Generation, Diamonds and Pearls)
It hadn't been one of my favorites but there it was. And I sang it out loud to break the silence. And as I'd felt so many times before listening to his music, I wanted someone to offer their love.
RIP, Prince Rogers Nelson
(c) Copyright 2016. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
No comments:
Post a Comment