This is what it sounds like...

“I love how a song can bring back so many memories” – a tweet from the loveliest person online.

Everyone reacts differently to their hero dying.  I have strong memories of me as a child watching my older brother sitting next to a speaker in a pub in Porthcawl and him crying as the DJ played Elvis tune after Elvis tune; the blank eyed despondency of my mate writing in the margin of a page “Kurt Cobain is dead.”

Two years ago, I woke up in a hotel in Wellington and my phone flashed messages expressing sorrow about the news and concern for me.  I turned on the telly and every other story was telling me somebody died.  Prince.  Knowing full well this is the single-most melodramatic phrase you will read today, tomorrow and the next day, I still write: joy stopped that day.  I didn’t understand at the time simply how fragile my state of mind was.

Prince Rogers Nelson 

Prince was my hero.  His music and his attitude made everyday brighter and lighter. Knowing there would always be new music and tours and ideas meant the world was functioning properly. See, just watch.

From two years’ distance it is easy to see the trigger this was.  I was constructing an image of me that presented as together, happy, content, without worry or stress.  My partner at the time could see that I was not right; she could see I was unhappy, that I was struggling with the distance between my child and me and that I was masking.  I could not see that.  I would go so far as to say that I would not have acknowledged it even if I could have seen it, I think.

I wrote about the physical, psychological and emotional space taken up by the boxes, last week.  The space occupied by Prince died on April 22^nd 2016 and it is still dead.  April 22^nd, of course, because we woke up a day ahead in New Zealand – we get to the future first. I didn’t realise it that day, although I certainly felt it, but the stop that was keeping me level was kicked away.  I became, from then on in, unbalanced.

I was waking up in a hotel because I was on a weekend break away.  As we wandered around the city later on, a picture of Prince from Purple Rain kept appearing, stuck to the walls of buildings around the harbour area.  People were obviously moving it around and placing it in more visible and visited locations as the evening wore on.  It was a lovely commemoration but simply served to make me more morose.

I used the word “crashed”, last week, to describe how I am.  Music is not joy anymore and it used to be vital.  Now, it’s a mountain of memories and moments and visceral reactions to the past, frustrated by ongoing agony created by other songs by other artists.  I try to listen to music and have fun.  Janelle Monáe sweeps in with purple flourishes that stir the heart but those fleeting feelings fade.

The week before Prince did die, he sort of died, was resuscitated and taken to hospital.  At the time, I wrote this.  “I Wonder U” is a short and sweet piece of genius, the kind of which he was producing in his sleep back in his heyday.  It holds in its hands a beautiful blend of hope and of melancholy.  I like the fact that I can still see that there is hope there.

I appreciate this is navel gazing of the worst kind and I am not entirely sure what it is I am trying to achieve through publicly articulating this.  Vocalising these thoughts and feelings haven’t helped before, I know there is still some way to go.  On the face of it, I’m fine. I function. But, I know I am not the complete picture, not functioning wholly. That frustrates me.

So there we are.  Two years have past.  Prince was a creator, an inspiration, a funny man, a musician, an altruist, and a memory.  I want to end writing “and his music lives on…” I won’t: I fucking hate the fact that Prince died.