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The Place Where Prince Still Lives
On May 16, 2017, I drove five hours from my home in the middle of West Virginia to see The Revolution play at Bogart’s in Cincinnati to mourn Prince Rogers Nelson. He had been suffering from pain and addiction, and his addiction killed him on April 21, 2016.
Getting too attached to pop stars is a rookie mistake. Aside from the fact that they can self-destruct in spectacular ways, they lure you into popular culture, where, if you’re not careful, you can get distracted from the real world. I have always tried to keep popular culture at a distance, and I have always tried to be careful not to idolize entertainers, but I admired Prince. I’ll never know how much of what I knew about him was him and how much was an act; nevertheless, I found his public persona beguiling. He seemed not to care what others thought of him. I was tormented by insecurity and low self-esteem. His openness about sexuality helped me cope with my childhood sexual abuse and my simultaneous intense curiosity and severe ambivalence about sex throughout my adulthood.
In a review of the New York performance of The Revolution’s 2017 tour, Miles Marshall Lewis wrote in The Village Voice, “Every single Prince fan has a personal story behind how s/he got that way.” I know it to be true. Sign ‘O’ the Times is the first Prince album I remember listening to. It was around 1988. We had recently moved to…
