“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but they ain’t never gon’ forget how they made a muhfucka feel.”
-Maya Angelou, loosely quoted
We tend to qualify greatness. Outside factors and variables matter to us almost as much as inherent talent. ‘He or she was great, BUT…’; ‘(insert generational talent) would never be as great in (insert timespan of most reverence), etc. So much is contingent on the hypothetical, we can overlook what’s happening before our very eyes. Nostalgia also skews the way we view things. At best, we’re subjective and fair. At our most typical, we hold some dearly simply because their art is representative of something special in our lives. We rarely ever produce a fair assessment of an artist OR their work, but judging from the reaction of Prince’s death, it’s fair to use his art only as a background to how the man HIMSELF made us all feel.
Even in death, there are very few entertainers held in universal reverence. It’s usually through a combination of death and eventual change in societal consciousness that we retroactively applaud our luminaries. Admiration is a minefield most of our heroes and idols fail to successfully navigate. Hindsight often serves to capture our stars at their brightest and encapsulate them at their finest and most virtuous, despite how polarizing their careers may have been. The immediacy of death tends to bring forth a collective- and selective- stroll through our memories. While we’re all mining our sadness for the nuggets of joy Prince provided us throughout the years, it’s in the varied arrivals to our solace that make him uniquely great.
So why do you love him?
Of course, the tangible reasons are all there, the music being the most obvious and, perhaps, the least important of all. We loved the music then, and we’ll cherish it even more now. His SOUND has become so ubiquitous and (poorly) imitated, the fact his own catalog remains so exclusive and inaccessible is brilliantly ironic. Few artists can ooze eroticism while largely eschewing misogyny. Fewer still can seamlessly reappear every few years with the exact same aplomb with which he captivated us all. Even fewer can do this (look at Tom Petty’s face; he’s out here hating sooooooo hard).
But why do We love him?
THEY say he transcended race. OTHERS say he succeeded in spite of it. OUR arms were wrapped tightly around him because We knew how content he was in them, to hell with who demanded anything different. He won Their awards, and still let Us know how much pride he felt to still win his own. He knew Our lives mattered, and We cherished his in earnest.
Why does she love him?
“Heeeeeeey Valentina, tell yo mama she should give me a call…”
…Because of shit like that.
Why does she AND he love him?
There was an intangible, yet definitive aura about him. Our indoctrinated concepts of masculinity got shattered underneath a pair of purple high heels. Here a man stood at 5’7”- 5’2” without those heels- both resonating with men about his Broken Heart (Again) and usurping the hearts of their women, one chord at a time. Here this man stood, clad in purple velvet pants and a white blouse, the envy of all that became enamored in his dimples and curly hair and brazen sexuality. Here stood a man so comfortable in his masculinity that he could both reassure and disappoint us all in a mere six lines. His sexuality was unarguably concrete, yet incredibly fluid. How could we ever object either way?
To hear Prince speak and act was a pleasure in itself. To see him perform was otherworldly. The man gave us everything: intrigue, insightfulness, mystery, passion, ambiguity, comedy, and utter pettiness whenever we so desired. We love him for so many reasons; we’re all hurt because of one.
Why do I mourn?
Because the one man I thought to be immortal fell. Because someone so supernatural is susceptible to the same vices, diseases, and misfortune as I. Because his death makes me acutely aware of my own mortality. I’ve always thought I could die at any time; the death of Prince only serves to force me to KNOW I could. Because someone so unaffected by the constraints of space and time as Prince could suddenly succumb to them. Because Prince never showed up to your event, he materialized. Because Prince never walked onto a stage, he floated. Because Prince never spoke, he summoned the words from the air left vacant by our bated breath. Because Prince never began, he just was. The man is magical, so there will never be an end. And because of that, he will always be.
“Everybody’s going Uptown; that’s where I wanna be…”
From my Uptown to yours in the sky, I wish you peace. A.J. Armstrong is the creator of The Fly Hobo and His World of Oddities
The Fly Hobo and His World of Oddities 