Although this blog post may come across as judgmental of another individual that I personally didn’t know and never came to know, I knew enough about the fruit of this person to make assessments regarding my own life.
Even Prince didn’t want to be idolized, particularly later in his life, because he knew the complexities that having such idols could bring upon one’s life. I believe he also knew himself well enough that he knew he shouldn’t have been raised up in a way that made him greater than others, but those are just my interpretations to an old interview I saw with him.
Needless to say, I had made Prince an idol. In my eyes, he could musically do no wrong. Even though I questioned a lot of his human behaviors within my mind, I still kept him elevated within my younger life because I felt I could most identify with his music. Yet, later in life, I’d come to realize that there was a lot more to my idolization than just idolatry.
It’s strange looking back though. I was a child when I first came to listen to Prince. How could a child be drawn to such sexually suggestive lyrics, let alone comprehend what they mean? This is when I realize there’s more to the lyrics than just the surface, and there’s more to the music than just what my natural ears could hear and comprehend as well.
At one time, I even felt that Prince’s music in my life was a saving grace for me when I went through a traumatic experience. I felt that listening to him was all I had and all that I could control, but what I didn’t realize at the time was that I was just inviting more traumatic experiences into my life in terms of negative frequencies and dark entities within the spiritual realm.
There’s no question that many of Prince’s songs were filled with lustful lyrics, but a lot of his music was also captivating and fun. One listen to Prince’s music, however, sent my father reeling into a rant, and Prince was banned from the house. My father didn’t understand Prince and didn’t like his flamboyant style and seemingly rebellious ways. I wasn’t allowed to use my allowance money to purchase Prince’s music either.
It made no sense for me to point out how bad some other artists were with their songs and lyrics; nor did it help to mention the names of other artists either. It just wasn’t a point worth arguing about with my dad. It was his way or the highway. So instead, I’d use my allowance to buy blank cassette tapes and create my own recordings of Prince songs from the radio. My dad seemed none the wiser, and as long as I wasn’t being my angry volatile self and was somewhere quiet, no one bothered me.
Prince and the musical groups he led were so popular at the time that I never had a problem filling up a cassette tape (front and back), but I was always on the prowl for any of his new music. In fact, I’d say I was so obsessed with having more of Prince’s songs because I knew he was so prolific an artist. Prior to the Internet, I read up on everything I could find out about Prince’s music from television guides, music magazines, tabloids, and listening to the radio. It was nothing for me to call the radio station and research what I wanted to know either.
I’d also call the 1-800 number for the local radio station and request songs not often played on air by Prince. I wanted to hear the very old to the very new. I called the radio station so much one summer that two of the radio disc jockeys (DJs) knew me by my voice and always knew that I was going to request a Prince song. A few times, they’d call out my name on the radio, saying something like, “Here’s a song request just for you, [my name]. It’s Prince!”
If I requested something out of the ordinary to be played, the DJs would laugh and make jokes about how I must have been on a Prince break or that there must not be any new music out yet (which was usually the case). Plus, I’d learned that many radio stations would only play certain songs that went over well commercially. Just because I wanted to hear a particular song didn’t mean the radio station had the song available or could even play it.
Convincingly enough, my love for Prince influenced the DJs to play songs that weren’t even commercially relevant songs, and soon, even they became fans of some of the lesser played Prince songs. I was such a major fan that the radio station even paid for me to receive a year’s subscription of a couple famous music magazines at the time, Right On! and Black Beat. The magazines were my way of not only learning more about Prince but also learning about other artists at the time too.
Needless to say, I cultivated my love for Prince without ever seeing the movie Purple Rain until I was 18. The movie originally premiered the summer of 1984 when I was 14, but because of it’s “R” rating, I knew my parents wouldn’t allow me to see it unless they were with me. By that time, I’d been a Prince fan since I was 7. So pictures in a magazine, a couple of MTV videos, and an actively vivid imagination through music kept me pretty much in the knowledge of all things Prince. If I wanted to see him in movies, I had to wait until I was 18.
By the time I finally saw Purple Rain, I felt it was a let down since I’d already seen and fell in love with Prince’s second movie, Under The Cherry Moon (UTCM). Plus, I’d seen so many videos from Purple Rain that I felt like I’d seen the movie. All I needed to do was to piece the clips together and build upon my imagination. I also felt that UTCM was not as dark as Purple Rain, and I found it to be funny, with great cinematography. In fact, I felt the character Prince portrayed in UTCM was more true to his personality (at least I was hoping so).
Needless to say, after watching Purple Rain as soon as I turned 18, the only thing I felt enamored by was that I could finally say that I saw it. Outside of the styles of clothing and musicianship, I didn’t like the overall misogynistic theme of the movie. Even though the music was phenomenal and I learned almost every line of the movie by heart, I found the movie to be sad and dark overall. Somewhere within me, a part of my dissociated mind wanted to shrink back from the negative parts of the movie and distance those parts as not being “real”, if that makes sense.
If this movie was true to form and loosely based on Prince’s actual life, I thought it was a sad way to live, and although I could relate to it, it was just too much to have to accept when viewing this person as an idol. Even though I’d read gory details about Prince’s possible dealings with women and other people in real life via gossip columns, music magazines, and underground news, I wasn’t sure what was true, and decided that even though I knew people dealt with traumatic experiences, I’d had enough of them on my own and just didn’t want to have to relive the trauma of someone else’s experiences.
Basically, I found it hard to justify that Prince wasn’t a mean guy with hateful issues against women in general, based on the movie’s themes. I knew that people could turn out to be very different people based on their life experiences. At the time, I was dealing with massive anger and covered trauma of my own, and I simply didn’t have the wherewithal to want to even deal with unpacking this type of trauma from a movie.
Yet, my mind would become even more confused with continuing to prop Prince up on my pedestal when I read stories about his connections with women who were my age at the time. I was still very much a teenager. Turning 18 made me somewhat emancipated, but I wasn’t quite yet a responsible adult. I still had a lot of maturing to do. In fact, I was still in a very dissociated state of my own after dealing with being molested by a 28 year old karate instructor when I was 13 and having an entire community rally against me as not only a liar about the situation but a predator who went after an older man when it was he who preyed upon and groomed me.
Although there’s a great developmental difference between 13, 16, and 18 year old girls, these are all still teenagers in various stages of development. Even though there are age of consent laws in different states, I still couldn’t understand why a grown man in his 30s would fancy any young person at those ages unless it was just about a need for lust and control over them. So, for a while, I took a step back from Prince’s music because it was hard for me to separate the music from the person. Despite me living in a world where these types of situations of age imbalances actually occurred and knowing that many, many stories existed like this in the music industry, my dissociated mind simply didn’t want to deal with any of them.
The step away from Prince wasn’t for long though. Once I moved to another state after graduating from college and found myself living within a volatile and narcissistic situation, I found myself gravitating back to the familiar patterns of soothing myself – Prince’s music. Instead of tuning into the gossip about his life, though, I just listened to his music, but knowing so many things that bothered me and continuing to attempt to find solace in Prince’s lyrics just wasn’t the same for me. Even still, though, I tried to be a supportive fan and followed Prince off and on until I could no longer justify things within myself anymore regarding my own personal battles. By this time, I was nearly 29, and the year was 1999. No, I didn’t party like it was.
Admittedly, I fell off the Prince wagon for a long period of time and never climbed back on as an idol worshiper, even though I remained hopeful that information about his personal life wouldn’t affect me so much. What did I know anyway? The reality was that I didn’t know his personal life. I only knew what I heard or what I saw reported. If Prince was speaking for himself in an interview, then I might only know what he said, but that still didn’t really mean that I knew him. In fact, even interviews weren’t giving me the full story. So, I figured it was unreasonable for me to concern myself with trying to know it. I let it all go until the years 2004 when it seemed he had mellowed out in personality and was performing at what I considered to be more interpersonal levels.
During this time in my life, I was finally breaking down many idols in my life (not just musical idols). I was also learning to love myself. I was also learning a lot about my traumas and the anger I harbored towards myself and others. Anger was a riveting emotion during this time, but I came to learn that this emotion was shrouded in lots of shame and sadness. The inner turmoil I felt inside was a cry out for healing, and I went through many stages of it. At this time, I didn’t want to listen to musical influences regarding pain anymore, and I didn’t want to listen to frequencies that harbored upon feelings of anger or hate either. I wanted to heal, and I knew I needed to heal.
Within hours after learning about Prince’s death, I stopped all the music. I couldn’t bare to hear Prince in those moments. Except for the news stories, my house went silent. I was silent. I found it difficult to talk, and there was no one talk to about it. So for the next two days off from work, I engulfed myself into every news story I could find about Prince’s death. I played some news stories over and over. I didn’t care about tributes. I needed to understand.
If I thought that some elements of gospel or Christian music were going to help me in the healing process, I was wrong about that too. I’d learned that just as much as music can take one higher and bring healing, various types of music can also take one lower and bring continued trauma as well. So this isn’t about “good” or “bad” music. It’s about the power behind the music. For the most part, I’d researched a lot on musical frequency and the channels in which music can heal.
I’d also learn that music directly interacts with the brain’s limbic system. The limbic system is the area responsible for emotions and memory, allowing it to evoke a wide range of feelings. The power behind the music doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the individual creating the music or their personal life as much as it has to do with the frequencies of the music itself. This might explain why I can be moved to tears by songs that someone else might not find moving at all. It also might explain why one can connect with the emotions expressed through the music on a personal level.
Needless to say, I’d catch a few performances here and there of Prince over the years, but I kept him off a pedestal. I no longer saw him as someone to idolize. I realized that he was just as human as me, and that he had his own cross to bear and healing to walk out. I couldn’t give him a heaven or a hell or anything else for that matter, and neither could he do the same for me, but I would be lying if I didn’t believe there wasn’t something special about his gift of music in my life. I felt the gift was intensely unique.
I can’t always pinpoint the reason I felt Prince’s gift of music was truly special, except for that connection of pain and loss that I so easily understood through his music. Perhaps it was his silent charisma or the unfortunate drawing of his narcissistic charms or it was my perceived thoughts that his vulnerabilities of humanness were shining through many lyrics. I didn’t know him personally, and there’s no guarantee that the things I read about him were even true. I can only base what I knew about him through his music and interviews.
Otherwise, I relatively thought Prince was a cool, but often misunderstood guy. Only the people who were around him all the time knew him, even if that. From what I saw he was a very spiritually and consciously healthy man, but I didn’t know what went on behind closed doors. I only knew the walk presented when I saw him perform or in interviews. I’d dare say he was a mystical character, but he had a life just like me, even if on some different level that I might never attain.
Needless to say, Prince’s death came as a shattering moment for me. Although I’d been expecting it in a foreshadowing kind of way, it was still one of the saddest moments in my life. In November 2015 I’d read the news that a former high school girlfriend of his, Kim Upsher, who’d he’d given a small part in the movie Purple Rain, had passed away. Reading this information prompted me to look videos up of his most recent performances, but for some reason, I didn’t have a desire to play them through.
Then, in December 2015, I recall having a moment to myself when I was about to listen to music and decided to play Prince. I hadn’t listened to anything from him for a long while. It was as if a still small voice within me gave me a nudge of forewarning that Prince wouldn’t make it out 2016. It was as if a voice actually whispered this to me in a confirming way because I actually felt jarred and shaken within. Had I heard correctly or was I just being nostalgic because of the posting about his former high school love the previous month?
In that moment, I literally shuttered at the thought that anything would happen to Prince, and even tried to distance the thought away from me. Yet, from that time on, I played every song, every video, every interview, and every sound clip I could get my hands on to hold on to the life of someone I’d never met, but a life that had meant so very much to me during very dark times in my formative years.
Prince’s life had been a life that I had followed on and off for years. I thought I knew a lot about him, but I came to realize that I didn’t know much at all. Yet, his was a life that had a playlist of songs to the background of some of the most important and even traumatic moments within my life, and I couldn’t have escaped them even if I tried to do so.
I didn’t want to lose the moments, but a fear within me knew that many things could never be recaptured once they were long out of my grasp. My mind flashed back to a brief thought about my favorite aunt who carried a stress about the sexual assault that happened to me as a child, and I tried to hold on to Prince even harder.
Almost every day from that December, I played something reminiscent of Prince, even though he was still alive at the time. It was strange, but I was already grieving him but hoping for the best. Surely when February 15 shrouded me with the sad news that an associate of his, Denise Matthews (formerly known as Vanity) had passed away, I became even more concerned about Prince. I was fearful to say the least.
One of the last photos I’d seen of Prince was one that someone shared of him on social media at one of his final concerts, and he looked so very frail to me. Surely, I wanted the nudge I’d felt back in December to have been a mistake. However, when I’d heard the news of his overdosing on an airplane on April 15, I knew it was only a matter of time before a life I loved would perhaps be gone too soon. I just didn’t know it would be within a week on April 21.
During that week after Prince’s initial overdose, I still listened to all things Prince, but I felt a finality that I didn’t want to comprehend regarding this musician’s life. My heart ached, and I prayed, but I felt it was too late to go back. It was too late to take in any of the moments of time I’d lost listening to him and his newer music either. It was too late for me to do anything that really matter in the grand scheme of a life I didn’t even know.
Prince was so prolific in that way that I would never be able to amass the songs I’d missed out on, but I held onto the interviews … the later ones, and I cherished the first time I’d ever seen him on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand, but I already had a knowing that his life on earth was ending. I just wasn’t quite ready to say goodbye. I wasn’t ready to let go.
When the 21st rolled around, I remember the night before. I’d been on Instagram. I’d seen Prince’s cryptic post. I made a comment that I hoped that all was okay, but then I thought my comment was far too trepid for the moment and deleted it. At 1 AM, I went to bed. I couldn’t sleep. I struggled and wrestled with my thoughts; I had great anxiety.
The last video I’d watched was a TMZ news clip – one of Prince pacing in front of a Walgreens, and all I could think about was “Why are people so intrusive? Who goes to Chanhassen of all places to follow someone outside of a drugstore? I thought the cold was supposed to keep the bad people out of Minnesota (referencing what Prince had once said in an interview with Oprah). Something must be dreadfully wrong.”
I woke up the next day to hear hard rain splashing against my windows. I had to go to work. Something about the morning felt different, but I didn’t know the reason. Perhaps it was because I’d hardly slept. My drive to work was somber and rainy, but I still listened to Prince. I listened to capture the remnants of his voice through a random playlist of songs. Something about the morning felt sad and dreary even … just very different.
By mid-morning between 8 AM and 10 AM, the class I was with was testing. All was silent. Right around 9:15 AM, an odd unrest came throughout the room. It was almost like a small wind blew through the class which I could both hear and feel. Although the students remained silent because they were testing, I could feel an unrest settle over the room. Many of the students even squirmed within their chairs to the point I actually began pacing the floor.
It was still silent, but there was a bleakness that left me feeling unsettled. I assumed the kids were tired, but so was I, and I hated test days. They were a bore. Yet, I look back on this day and this time frame, and I have always felt that unrest … that wind that seemed to calmly flow through the room as if it was a spiritual goodbye, even though I was clueless of any actual news.
I’d later ask two colleagues if they felt an unrest within their classes around 9:15, but I got strange looks. The day carried on though, and there wasn’t anything I’d learn about Prince until I arrived home. In fact, on my drive home from work, it was still raining. I listened to an old interview with Prince back during the time of the release of the movie UTCM. Then, for whatever reason, I turned on the radio. There was no news … just music. The station was Prince – Purple Rain. I rocked this song loudly as I pulled into the driveway.
Upon entering the house, I immediately turned on the television. This was actually not something I normally did when I first entered the house. I always sat down first in silence to process my day – sometimes staring bleakly at the mantle above the fireplace thinking about absolutely nothing or thinking about whatever happened that day. Yet, something about this day was very different though, but I didn’t know what that difference was right away. As soon as I turned on the television, I was confused because it was tuned into a station I never watched, and on the station was a video to the song, Diamonds and Pearls by Prince.
My first thought was “Since when does this station ever play anything by Prince?” No sooner than I thought this, I saw words flash across the bottom of the screen that Prince, 57, was found dead at his Chanhassen studio/home, Paisley Park. As soon as I saw this, I tried to process the words. I watched the marquee scroll across the bottom of the screen again, and the words were undeniable. I felt confused, dazed, and bewildered. I let the music video play out until the end before turning off the television and running up to my room.
Of all the things to turn to, I searched to find news on YouTube, and I was sadly bombarded with so much news about Prince’s death that I couldn’t take it all in. There were posts everywhere. I even looked up information to confirm his death on other social media and could hardly catch my breath. From that moment, I went mute. In fact, I felt paralyzed, and I was unable to process the news of Prince’s death even though I already knew within me that Prince was physically forever gone.
Although I’d already been prepared for months in advance that this day would come, I was still in shock. I just wasn’t ready to say goodbye, and I wasn’t ready for Prince, the musician, to be gone for good. I’d wondered how an accidental overdose could have happened practically a week from the previous one. My mind was jarred and perplexed. It felt almost reminiscent of the day I learned Michael Jackson had died.
The day MJ died, my dad called me. MJ had been the musical soundtrack to my dad’s life and even my mom’s, but I heard from neither of them when it came to Prince. Prince had been a banned musician in our family home when I was growing up, despite the remnants of purple in my wardrobe, the lace gloves I snuck and wore that seemed more like an ode to Madonna, the heeled boots I wore that revealed that I was a rather petite individual, and the black eyeliner I’d sneak to put on once I got to school everyday.
I was at a loss, and I didn’t know what to do. Although I didn’t personally know Prince, his death affected me in a major way. His life had ended, and I had no control over it. Time seemed to stand still, and I could still hear the rain outside my windows. I sat on my bed waiting for tears, but I was pressed into a mode of needing to know why? I didn’t understand. All the stages of grief seemed to hit me at once.
Then two days later, when I’d gotten my fill of the stories, I realized the finality of Prince’s life. My heart ached terribly, and I found the need to cry about it all within that time. I cried a long guttural cry. It was the first sound that I’d made since I heard the news of his death, and I was in pain … terrible pain. I bellowed over in pain, and I cried for a very long time.
I cried so much regarding Prince’s death that I didn’t think I’d be able to stop. It was a hurt that I could neither comprehend nor describe. I felt shattered, and my mind felt completely torn. Then just like that, I couldn’t cry anymore. The tears dried up so quickly that I realized I had experienced some type of release, and afterwards I just went numb and silent.
For almost an entire year, I stopped listening to all music. I needed to avoid hearing anything with Prince. So, I didn’t turn on the radio. I didn’t watch television, and I shielded myself from songs for as much as possible. If I entertained social media, I was on a news binge. I went ballistic finding every angle about Prince’s death. I didn’t need to understand it as much as I needed to make sense of it and make peace with it. Even though I had a foreknowing that it was going to happen without understanding how I knew, I still needed to make sense of it.
I remember exactly where I was the moment I’d learned that Michael Jackson had died and I vaguely even remember the day of Elvis’ death even though I wasn’t really even a fan of his, but their deaths didn’t affect me in nearly the same way that Prince’s did. Prince’s death affected parts of my life that I had long buried and dissociated myself from, and my mind felt split into smaller fragments that were getting pieced together like a puzzle.
I remember feeling as if somewhere deep within my mind that there was a pain I didn’t quite understand, and I not only felt those fragments seemingly snap into place, but I saw those fragments come up from where they had been compartmentalized to, and I couldn’t handle it. I COULDN’T HANDLE IT AT ALL! It wasn’t even that I felt emotional about anything. It was that my body had kept a long score and stored pieces of a deep trauma I had dissociated myself from into different compartments within my brain.
My aunt also came to mind as well. This was the same aunt I’d spent the summer with when I was sexually assaulted at nine, the same aunt who’d died of cancer later in that same year, and the same aunt who’d bought me a walkman so that I could listen to as much Prince as I wanted to in an effort to get through the rest of that horrible summer. Although I didn’t know it then, my mind was splintering back into place, and as much as I had idolized Prince, he somewhat became the catalyst to a long needed healing.
So much regarding the past trauma of sexual assault at a young age came to the surface that I hadn’t anticipated, and I wasn’t ready. Dethroning Prince was less about his death than it was about breaking down all the idols within my life at that time. He’d been an idol because of so much pain and suffering I’d endured, but it was more than that. What I came to understand about myself over the year that followed was far more than I wanted to handle, but it was time. It was time for me to deal with the past, and it was finally time for me to heal, and I can reiterate without a doubt that Prince was used as a catalyst to all this.
Stay tuned for more …
My Voice Unchained 