A rush of wind nearly knocked me over as the real kids zoomed by me. The furious action of the football game they were playing put me right in their path. The first one had the ball. His proximity made me realize where I was, but I couldn't move. His pursuers and blockers, another dozen or so, passed me on both sides. A few of them close enough that I braced for impact. Once out of danger, I was a twelve year old watching a Saturday morning music video countdown show. Prince had two songs on the list, 1999 and Little Red Corvette. I sang along, more aware of what I was listening to than I had been a few years before, but still not fully comprehending what I was saying. A few short months later, I heard that not only was Prince making a new album, but it was to be the soundtrack to the movie he was starring in. It was to be called Purple Rain. My thirteenth birthday passed, the movie is out and I'm standing in a long line with my mother and younger brother waiting to buy tickets. We finally get them just before the show was to start. The theater was so full, we had no choice, but to sit in the second row. I watched the entire thing leaned back as far as my seat would go with my head cocked sideways. By the time we left the theater my neck hurt, but I couldn't be happier. Shortly after, I had the much coveted album. I'm back in the same living room, but sitting on a chair I had pulled as close to the speaker as possible. The album cover was opened like a book on my lap where all of the lyrics were printed in purple script. I studied it word for word as the songs played. The title track played last. When it ended I started over, still studying. Within a few days I had every word committed to memory.
Cheers and jeers erupted from the throng of boys and girls using this unmarked field as their gridiron, awakening me once more. I noticed that the music teacher had wandered out to speak to another of our colleagues. Rudely, I summonsed her away from her conversation and informed her of Prince's passing. She let out the kind of prolonged 'no' I imagine many people did. Her eyes watered, but she didn't cry. She pulled out her own phone and said "I hope this is a hoax." She went online and had my story confirmed. We chatted a moment about how great he was. It felt strange referring to him in past tense as it always does when someone has just left us. She went back into the building, obviously shaken. I looked up at the kids playing football. The action was moving in the other direction. I stood still, but traveled farther than they could imagine. I was sixteen and had the house all to myself. My girlfriend was over. I had already learned that a good slow jam tape was essential to one's love life. Sticking with the classics was advise I took to heart. I had combed through my mother's record collection plus my own, and made a musical landscape inhabited by Marvin Gaye, Luther Vandross, Teddy Pendergrass, The Isley Brothers, Freddie Jackson, and others. I knew I had to have the right song as my opener if I wanted to set the proper mood. I had Prince's other masterpiece album, Sign O' the Times, in heavy rotation and knew that there was only one song that deserved to be my opener, that album's final track "Adore." The reason? I was already a budding writer, but knew I would never write anything as romantic as that songs chorus:
Until the end of time, I'll be there for you
You own my heart and mine, I truly adore you
If God one day struck me blind, your beauty I'd still see
Love is too weak to define just what you mean to me
Because of this song, it will forever feel inadequate to me when I tell someone I love them, particularly my wife. That's a feeling that took years to develop as the lyrics nestled in both my head and heart and made me realize that when I declare my strongest feelings I mean something much more than my words could encompass. But I was only sixteen and not quite that deep, yet. It was merely part of my ploy to get some. It worked masterfully. It worked lots of times with this girl over the course of the next year and change. With my eighteenth birthday on the horizon, I take her to see the movie that I talked up for months, leaving her no choice but to crave being in a theater on its opening weekend, like I did. It is none other than Tim Burton's Batman. A handful of celebrities show up to the same show as us. It's fun picking out people we had only previously seen on TV. A bigger highlight than that is what happens during the opening credits. The names of the director and the film's stars pass silently. Applause and cheer erupts when these three words appear on the screen: Music by Prince.
The whistle blew to end recess. Once more I was back in the present. Walking back into the building, I shared the news with a couple more co-workers. Both expressed the same shock and disbelief that I and the music teacher did a few minutes earlier. Both of these young ladies were many years my junior, growing up well after what would be called Prince's heyday, yet, they had the same reverence for him that I had. One of them quickly texted her aunt to relay the news. I sneaked peeks at my own phone while the kids were busy working as if I needed to reconfirm it myself. I got through the rest of the work day numb to whatever was happening around me. My body was there, perfunctory in its actions. The journey in my head carried on. I revisited many more moments in my life, big and small, where Prince was somehow involved. There were two week stays in the hospital in 1984 where I had my mother bring me any magazine she could get her hands on with Prince on the cover. There was the SuperBowl party at my father's house in 1985. The game ended and a mini-party broke out as Let's Go Crazy snatched us all from our seats. There was another lyric studying session the day I rushed home with my copy of Around the World in a Day and being totally blown away by the song America. I could go on. I will go on, but not here. I'll just type these last few words, add some pictures and hit "Publish" while his music swims into my head through the headphones I have turned up way too loud. Then I'll shut off the computer and drift off to sleep as those songs do laps around my soul.
