Prince, like Bowie before him, came at the wrong time to be really important to me. Too late to be what my parents raised me on, too early to be what I raised myself on. And unlike Labryinth, Purple Rain did not run in heavy rotation on rainy days at summer camp. I know some of his songs, of course, because I don't live under a rock, but I never owned a Prince album. But I still mourn.
Prince released over 40 albums, which is an incredible amount of work. And he died at 57, which is so young. And he clearly had more to say. He was an incredibly influential artist, and if you pay attention, you'll hear his influence in much of what is being made today, and he wrote a number of songs beyond those that he recorded himself. He mentored and encouraged other artists, including many women.
He was also a huge cultural influence beyond his music. He gave us an alternate model of what it means to be masculine and to be sexual, and in a world filled with fragile and toxic ideas about what it means to be a "man", Prince provided an antidote. He also fought, hard, for his right to own his creative output. And while I'm sad that YouTube isn't full of Prince songs because of his aggressive copyright lawyers, I can respect where he was coming from, for himself and other artists.
Whenever someone like this dies, social media fills up with people sharing stories of what that artist meant to them, and it is honestly one of my favorite things about social media. We get everyday fans talking about how someone's art changed their lives, in ways big and small, and we get the people who knew them sharing more intimate stories. We get to mourn together, to gather and "get through this thing called life", to celebrate a person's life and deeds and to mourn their absence.
There are people who don't get this. They don't understand the mourning over someone we never met. What I think those people fail to understand is that when we mourn, we are mourning for ourselves. We are sad because we have lost someone. Maybe it's someone we knew personally and loved as family, and we are mourning that we will never again hear their voice or hold their hand or see their smile. Or maybe it's an artist and we're mourning the loss of all the art they didn't get around to making. Or maybe we've been reminded of our own mortality (or the mortality of someone we love). Or reminded of our common humanity, and we mourn a stranger because we know that no man is an island.
When musicians die, I am reminded of how lucky we are to have the technology we have. Some art - literature, sculpture, architecture, is designed to last, by its very nature. But music is fundamentally ephemeral. And yet we found a way to capture it, so that we can listen again and again, so that the perfect song is there for us when we need it, so that generations to come can listen to "Purple Rain". We are so lucky.
Prince was famously a Jehovah's Witness. I don't know much about how they conduct funerals, but I hope that at his funeral, they read Matthew 5:16: "Likewise, let your light shine before men, so that they may see your fine works and give glory to your Father who is in the heavens." (New World Translation). Prince did that. He was generous with his time, his talent, and his resources - he mentored and lifted up other artists, he gave to people in need. He let his light shine and he created transcendent experiences for many people. I hope that as we mourn, we can also take inspiration. To be ourselves, authentically and without fear. To live our truth, to put our art into the world, to let our freak flags fly high and our lights shine as brightly as possible for as long as we are given in this life.
