Day 2,047: Nothing Compares 2 U

The world is filled with people who will not be allowed to live out the promise of their lives. The world is also filled with magical thinking, and fantastical dreams, and celebrity worship. It is somewhat disingenuous to mourn those we don't know personally. After all, we are all placed here in a world where everyone we love and hold dear will die--hopefully after we do, but life is rarely that generous. To waste tears on a person we've never met seems false, selfish, bizarre.

Except today, when Prince died, at the young age of 57. I learned this, and all I could think was: No. Just...no.

I could say a lot of things about Prince, and about how his music and his personality were a constant focus and influence on my life. I was born in 1975. I didn't listen to Prince's debut album until I was a teenager, and I bought a cassette version of it that was dusty even then. Purple Rain was released when I was in 4th grade, and I listened to it over and over. I saw the movie countless times. I asked my parents what the words to Darling Nikki meant and though they didn't tell me, they never stopped me from singing along. I thought even then that Purple Rain would be an excellent song for a funeral, that The Beautiful Ones was the perfect example of a man who couldn't deal with how amazing he was by the time he got to the end of the song. I remember my brother's little league team singing Prince songs on the bench. I went to a party when I was 17 with a guy I would fall in love with months later, whom I would be with for years and years, and the only song we listed to was Kiss, on repeat, while we all danced for hours. I went to college in Minnesota in the mid-90s and Prince permeated the culture of the entire music scene there. My roommate senior year got a job as a cocktail waitress at a club and she served drinks to Prince. I rarely envy anyone for anything, but that one came damn close. My husband and I never go to concerts because we can't accept the cost, the ego, the sensationalism. We went to a Prince concert over 10 years ago, and it was one of maybe four concerts we've gone to in our 13 years together. It cost $50 per person and everyone received a free CD--even 10 years ago, that was the equivalent of buying a Porsche at a Honda Fit price. We had to wait hours for Prince to be bothered to come onstage, but when he did, he brought it. That concert must have lasted four hours. He had a bed on the stage where he would sit to calm down. He played every instrument, he just exhausted himself, the crowd was the best crowd I've ever been a part of for any type of show. I force my kids to listen to Prince on every road trip. I get angry when people are unaware of all the hit songs Prince wrote that he just gave away to other artists because he didn't need them for himself. I will live the rest of my life believing that If I Was Your Girlfriend is the most romantic song a man has ever written for a woman.

I could say all those things, and I guess I have-- and I could say more. But it's not the legacy and influence of Prince and his music that led me to turn to this blog while I am sitting inside on a beautiful, perfect Gulf Coast day on my vacation in Florida.

I really, really, wanted to watch Prince grow old.

I can appreciate that there are some aging rock stars out there who are still doing their thing. Mick Jagger is old, Keith Richards has died and come back to life or is still hanging out somewhere halfway in between, movie stars and athletes I admire get old and keep on trucking. That's a great thing to witness.

But just imagine if Prince had been able to grow old. Here's a man who was short and skinny and androgynous and made everyone assume a sexier person had never lived. Here was a teenager from a troubled background who just went out and decided there was no reason he shouldn't be a rock star, so that is what he did. Here's a man who was famous for 40 years, and never was embroiled in a sex scandal, never was in prison or accused of violence of any kind. Here's a guy who changed his name to a symbol and expected the rest of the world to recognize. And we did, and began referring to him as TAFKAP because we couldn't "say" his name anymore.

Prince never gave a damn. He wore purple before any of the old ladies had ever thought to try. Sometimes, when Prince talked, if you stopped to think about what he was saying, you might get confused. But you didn't stop to think about it, because you took him at his word. Prince wore an orange-sherbet jumpsuit just months before he died and glared at all the fools around him like they were the ones not making sense.

I wanted that man to get old, to stop giving a damn about anything, to show us all how it's done. Contrary to the selfish idea that such a dynamic artist and person is best remembered in his youth and heyday, I'd have given anything to see Prince with grey hair, or no hair, or in a wheelchair or using a cane or relying on a walker. I'd have loved to see Prince bringing us along with him into that good night, in all his eccentricity and glamour and cantankerousness. Even if I am not a concert goer, I have this image in my mind of Prince as an old man, sitting on a stage by himself, wearing an outrageous outfit, bringing his own self to tears with his song. Can you see it?

Life always ends too soon if you've done it right. But this time, it really did end too soon. The world needed a Prince who had the opportunity to grow old. I'd have admired Prince from afar for another 30 years, or whatever he could've been bothered to give us. If Prince had disappeared into the comforts of his old age and we never heard from him again, I would've appreciated that too; I could picture him there in this imaginary self-imposed isolation, shaking his head at our frustration, always in on the joke.

And when we wondered where he had gone, we would mean to be angry with him, but we would not be able to bring ourselves to do it. We would just go out into the world, older and wiser and content but just a little bit sadder, and we would think to ourselves: "It's been so lonely without you here."

But that fantasy is not to be. Thank you for what you did for us, Prince Rogers Nelson. Nothing Compares 2 U.