On Leaving Room for Magic
Superheroes, Prince, and the truth
The hardest thing for me about the death of the musician Prince was accepting that he was human.
My friends were into superheroes growing up. They collected comic books and wore t-shirts with Superman, Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk. My brother’s heroes were baseball players. He collected their cards: George Brett, Eddie Murray, Rickey Henderson. He amassed a complete set in 1980. Every player.
My superhero was Prince.
On Christmas in 1982, I was gifted my first two record albums—American Fool by John Cougar and Prince’s 1999. They were a study in contrasts both musically and visually. John Cougar looked like guys from my rural hometown—young white guys in work boots and denim who worked on farms or in the hunting rifle factory where my dad made his living. Looking like a regular blue-collar guy—that was his thing.
Prince, on the other hand, appeared otherworldly. Like a comic book character, he wore costumes, patent leather boots and floor-length (cape-like) jackets. He was possessed with musical superpowers and shrouded in mystery. In his record sleeve photos, he was surrounded by smoke, as if moments before the photo was taken, he had materialized out of thin air.
Until the end, Prince’s mystical aura never stopped expanding, from his infamous Love Symbol name change to rumors of a secret stockpile of unreleased recordings to reports of his innate ability to pick up any instrument and play it like a virtuoso.
In my favorite television interview with Prince, he claimed he never wore a watch or kept a clock in his house. The interviewer asked how he managed to navigate the practicalities of daily living without keeping track of the time.
Prince’s response: “I keep track by the truth.”
There was only one Prince, and that's as it should be. Most of us don't lead lives that allow us to ignore the time—at least not all the time. But it comforts me to know that someone lived that way—or at least tried to.
When I learned that Prince had died of an accidental opiate overdose in 2016, a little of what remained of my innocence—my childlike capacity to believe in magic—died along with him. But I am grateful.
I didn’t know I had any of that innocence left.
Mine too. He was so very different from other artists. I saw him live at the Oakland Colosseum around this time (pre-Purple Rain, after which his popularity soared) - my friends and I seemed to be the only caucasians in the audience! His performance was magical.