(I apologize in advance if this shows up as one long blob paragraph and if it does feel free to ignore. I can't seem to format longer documents on the Org for some reason).

What is so difficult for me, and I'm sure so many of you, to wrap your head around is how much Prince was integrated into the big moments of my life. The medical examiner said something in that vein at the press conference. A lot of people have echoed that. Not to lessen other acts but I think there are only a few artists that you can say this about. It might be because he was so prolific.

From the time I was 13 to the time I was 18 I had 5 different Prince albums come out that reflected 5 different stages of my adolescence. I discovered Prince, truly discovered him in 1985 when the masses were leaving him because ATWIAD wasn't Purple Rain (it didn't matter that it wasn't brilliant in its own right). In 1986, my Dad and my Mom were basically in a trial separation and I was in an unusual place in my life and Parade was just so freaking different. My Dad would go from South Carolina to North Carolina every weekend and the weekend he came and took me and my brother to Under the Cherry Moon was just priceless; that was one of the greatest theater experiences because even though the crowd was small they were TRULY into the movie (when he called Mary Cabbagehead, the place literally shook). In 87, my family was back together, the Revolution had split though and Prince just released this amazing thing, this CD that seemed to encapsulate every style of music and was just as uncommercial as it was commercial. In 1988, I had no friends and Prince released Lovesexy which was like me, misunderstood and abandoned but yet somehow brilliant (okay Lovesexy was, I wasn't). Then Batman came out and Prince was popular again and I modeled my whole personality after him, being strangely weird and yet somehow I was making it work for me. I lost 55 pounds mostly working out to the Batman soundtrack and some of the aforementioned CDs and I got a prom date of it...who I later married. And this was just high school.

And then there was the 90s and college and Prince battles with Warners and the CD shop I would go down to and pay through the absolute butt for bootleg live CDs right off campus. And then I graduated College and Emancipation came out…can’t make a connection here but as I was driving back and forth to substitute teach I played the 3 equal length CDs so many times. And then I got married in 1998 and the Most Beautiful Girl has this huge segment on my wedding DVD (somehow they screwed it up, played half the song, started it over but I didn’t ask them to reedit…it worked).

And then I discovered the Internet and how awesome it was to actually talk to real Prince fans. And every Sunday night before I had kids my ass was on Paisley Park on the AOL chatboard. And I made as little impact there as I do here but it was still cool. (And full disclosure, I pretended like I was Prince a couple of times just because I thought it might be cool to see if anyone believed me and one time I had a couple of people convinced…I’m sorry P for the impersonation).

And then I had children and I would sing Prince songs to them, among others, to get them to sleep. The soft ones, the ones that could have been poems or nursery rhymes like Starfish and Coffee or Raspberry Beret.

And so much more; the arguments I had with my father, now gone almost 5 years about the Prince posters in my room. And my aunt who used to make Purple Rain jokes and sent me a polaroid of a purple beach house she saw and asked if it was Prince’s. She has been gone 18 years.

And 2004 when everyone discovered Prince again…and I went to the Musicology concert by myself because my wife was watching our three year old. And I was 3 freaking rows away. I had been to two other concerts, decent seats, but my ass was on the floor and I was sitting there 20 feet away from someone who didn’t know me from anyone and yet was always there, since I was 13.

And then the last 10 years…I haven’t bought everything. I haven’t been listening. I never moved on but my life was now filled with the soundtrack of my daughters, first the Wiggles, then Hannah Montana, then God Knows what rap act my 14 year old is listening to. And now, he’s gone.

This is the tip of the iceberg. I am not an obsessed fan; I think this is the experience for most of us. His music, once I discovered it, was just always there. He kept putting it out, I kept digging it, and in the meantime I kept getting older.

Prince impacted a lot of people; his charity work that we didn’t know about will keep coming out and we know what he did. But I wonder if maybe the reason he was so private is that he didn’t want this type of pressure. I think he truly appreciated his fans, even when he was standoffish, but who wants the pressure of being a soundtrack to someone’s life. Prince did it for us but he also made music because he had to, because the Muse never stopped. What a blessing and a tragic curse, to never stop being able to create. He couldn’t help or control what went on around his music but my gosh do I thank him for making it.

Day 3, still so surreal. I have tried to work out my feelings by discussing with my wife various thoughts. She is one of this spouses/partners that never really was a Prince fan but respected him immensely (heck she has seen him live with me three times and I am sure there are other places she would have rather been). By yesterday, she was even more hyperbolic than I have been. "You know, there will never be a better musician than Prince, he was the best of all time." And I'm like "Yeah, that's true," but she gains nothing from saying this (she already has me for life so doesn't have to say that on my account). I also talked a lot with a co-worker who grew up in the 60s and saw Hendrix live and Joplin live and was one of the biggest Beatle fans ever. She said she remembered everything, every detail, of the day that Lennon was killed and it took her a long time to get over it. Part of it, a lot of it, was for Lennon himself but a lot of it was also for the memories she had attached to his music. She said she did heal, that she did get to a point where it didn't hurt so much every time she listened to Lennon sing but it took a little while. The pain will go away. But she got it, she understood why I was in a funk about someone I have never met, never spoke to, but who somehow spoke to a lot of us in a very meaningful way.

Good recap. It made me recall my days when I was attached to Prince's music. I dunno why I lost interest in his music for the last 20 years but I feel a bit guilty now. I dunno, maybe I grew older and couldn't appreciate him anymore, maybe I wasn't a melancholic or an emotional young man anymore.

But the first ten years, his music intensely effected me and my soul. Those were great days and I thank him for letting me enjoy his talent. I bought dozens of LPs and CDs of him, but still I don't feel like I have given enough back in return.