Is There God After Prince?

By Peter Coviello

APRIL 22, 2016

.....A friend in England scored tickets a few summers ago to one of those impromptu solo gigs Prince had taken to performing. Despite what was for me a near fatal onset of envy, or perhaps in order to express it, I wrote her a series of badgering emails. “Tell me about the show!” I said. What was it like?

Her response was memorable.

“It was unlanguageable,” she said.

“Also, I think I might be pregnant.”

In a similar, sadder way, this too — this week’s awful, blindsiding tear in the fabric of things, Prince’s death — is unlanguageable.

There is of course the routinely undoing power of grief, in response to deaths no matter how mediated — it is, God knows, an impressive quantity. And there is, too, the familiar drift of our metaphors, in sorrow, out toward the terrain of measure and measurelessness: the too-huge influence, the too-many songs, the too-proliferating memories, the too-great quantity of joy.

I am with you, fellow-grievers, in all this. I found out in a coffeeshop in Chicago, texting with a friend. I stood for about 10 minutes on the corner of Clark and Foster, weepy and paralyzed, unable to imagine what to do next.

Was there eating lunch, after Prince? After Prince, would we talk on the phones? Take trains?

Was there sex after Prince?

¤

I want to say a small word about this, our newest burden of the unassimilable.

I want to say that Prince is hard to grieve because he is, in an only barely not literal sense, divine.

I want to say that the categories that most attend him, and that the light of his person illuminates, are not those made by the hands of men.

I want to say that for nearly 40 years Prince has served as perhaps our greatest conceptualist of religion, the one most devoted not only to God but to heterodoxy, heresy, blasphemy: to all that, in these latter days of privatized belief and well-bred “spirituality,” lends to the realm of the religious whatever ongoing vitality and incisiveness it has.

I want to say that Prince is the least secular rockstar we have ever known. Read More...

[Edited 10/7/17 18:44pm]

Great article! Click the link to read the entire thing.

kingricefan said:

Great article! Click the link to read the entire thing.

Yes!! I really enjoyed reading it. The writing is exquisite. I'm shocked that I'd never seen it before.

Loved reading this...

Unusually written, but compelling

unlanguagable...

what a GREAT way of explaining he who we cant seem to explain...

Lovejunky said:

Loved reading this...

Unusually written, but compelling

unlanguagable...

what a GREAT way of explaining he who we cant seem to explain...

Hi, Love!!!! It's been awhile. You're right: the writer's style is very unusual but quite effective. In fact, I had to read some passages more than once for understanding. Others I read twice because they were just so delicious. I particularly liked his opening story about the Prince party he threw in the middle of the winter in Maine, at which he met his future wife. He said that he would subsequently tell her, "You walked in. I woke up." I thought that was a beautiful example of the power and economy of Prince's lyrics, this time in "U Got the Look."

Here's a thought I forgot to mention: The title might make some uncomfortable, but I don't think it should be taken literally.

! Thank you for posting, Fly.

poppys said:

! Thank you for posting, Fly.

I'm glad you enjoyed it, poppys!! It's a wonderful tribute.

what a great read! made my day ... TY fly

FlyOnTheWall said:

Lovejunky said:

Loved reading this...

Unusually written, but compelling

unlanguagable...

what a GREAT way of explaining he who we cant seem to explain...

Hi, Love!!!! It's been awhile. You're right: the writer's style is very unusual but quite effective. In fact, I had to read some passages more than once for understanding. Others I read twice because they were just so delicious. I particularly liked his opening story about the Prince party he threw in the middle of the winter in Maine, at which he met his future wife. He said that he would subsequently tell her, "You walked in. I woke up." I thought that was a beautiful example of the power and economy of Prince's lyrics, this time in "U Got the Look."

lemoncrush19 said:

what a great read! made my day ... TY fly

Hey, lemon!!!! Long time!! It's great to hear from you. I'm so glad you enjoyed the article.

FlyOnTheWall said:

lemoncrush19 said:

what a great read! made my day ... TY fly

Hey, lemon!!!! Long time!! It's great to hear from you. I'm so glad you enjoyed the article.

I've reread this a few times this week. Amazing words describing Prince as an equal opportunity lover of/for us all. Great find, FOTW.

Look at that grin. It is the inward smile of someone watching indulgently as an entire world tries to imagine a set of terms capacious enough to hold him, to grasp the atomic-scale detonation of swagger and style and sex that is his person, and failing to do so.

Look upon my works, ye mighty, that smile says. Now let’s fuck.

This, friends, is the otherworldliness — let’s just say it: the divinity — of Prince. Without contempt, without pity, with louche bemusement and flirty solicitousness, he stands apart from the creaky organizing edifices, the aspirational little taxonomies, of the merely human. They address him, but they do not adhere to him. He speaks in, and as, something otherwise, but also, deliciously, near.

Put on his songs, any of them. Here, they say. Do you need a reminder of the exhilarating limitlessness of the world apart from the knowable and known? Here you go.

poppys said:

FlyOnTheWall said:

Hey, lemon!!!! Long time!! It's great to hear from you. I'm so glad you enjoyed the article.

I've reread this a few times this week. Amazing words describing Prince as an equal opportunity lover of/for us all. Great find, FOTW.

Look at that grin. It is the inward smile of someone watching indulgently as an entire world tries to imagine a set of terms capacious enough to hold him, to grasp the atomic-scale detonation of swagger and style and sex that is his person, and failing to do so.

Look upon my works, ye mighty, that smile says. Now let’s fuck.

This, friends, is the otherworldliness — let’s just say it: the divinity — of Prince. Without contempt, without pity, with louche bemusement and flirty solicitousness, he stands apart from the creaky organizing edifices, the aspirational little taxonomies, of the merely human. They address him, but they do not adhere to him. He speaks in, and as, something otherwise, but also, deliciously, near.

Put on his songs, any of them. Here, they say. Do you need a reminder of the exhilarating limitlessness of the world apart from the knowable and known? Here you go.

and so did I. this is the freaking best tribute for prince I've ever read. ever. take this:

...

Prince, to this impulse, is pure radiant confoundment.

And if this makes him a wonder — the prophet of the holy fuck, flooding the world with these bright shards of unconverted divinity — it also makes him hard to grieve. His death is unassimilable, I mean, because it partakes of the unassimilability that he has always, in that splendid otherwordliness, carried around with him.

He is hard for us to grieve because grief, too, is a thing, a tool, made of and for this world.

It’s a sad thought: nothing — nothing in the world — can console us in this.




fly, it's been a while ... good to see u back ... hope life treats u kind

poppys said:

FlyOnTheWall said:

Hey, lemon!!!! Long time!! It's great to hear from you. I'm so glad you enjoyed the article.

I've reread this a few times this week. Amazing words describing Prince as an equal opportunity lover of/for us all. Great find, FOTW.

Look at that grin. It is the inward smile of someone watching indulgently as an entire world tries to imagine a set of terms capacious enough to hold him, to grasp the atomic-scale detonation of swagger and style and sex that is his person, and failing to do so.

Look upon my works, ye mighty, that smile says. Now let’s fuck.

This, friends, is the otherworldliness — let’s just say it: the divinity — of Prince. Without contempt, without pity, with louche bemusement and flirty solicitousness, he stands apart from the creaky organizing edifices, the aspirational little taxonomies, of the merely human. They address him, but they do not adhere to him. He speaks in, and as, something otherwise, but also, deliciously, near.

Put on his songs, any of them. Here, they say. Do you need a reminder of the exhilarating limitlessness of the world apart from the knowable and known? Here you go.

Thanks, poppys!! You have inspired me to go back and read this again right now!! It is such a loving and well-deserved tribute for our beloved Prince.

lemoncrush19 said:

poppys said:

I've reread this a few times this week. Amazing words describing Prince as an equal opportunity lover of/for us all. Great find, FOTW.

Look at that grin. It is the inward smile of someone watching indulgently as an entire world tries to imagine a set of terms capacious enough to hold him, to grasp the atomic-scale detonation of swagger and style and sex that is his person, and failing to do so.

Look upon my works, ye mighty, that smile says. Now let’s fuck.

This, friends, is the otherworldliness — let’s just say it: the divinity — of Prince. Without contempt, without pity, with louche bemusement and flirty solicitousness, he stands apart from the creaky organizing edifices, the aspirational little taxonomies, of the merely human. They address him, but they do not adhere to him. He speaks in, and as, something otherwise, but also, deliciously, near.

Put on his songs, any of them. Here, they say. Do you need a reminder of the exhilarating limitlessness of the world apart from the knowable and known? Here you go.

and so did I. this is the freaking best tribute for prince I've ever read. ever. take this:

...

Prince, to this impulse, is pure radiant confoundment.

And if this makes him a wonder — the prophet of the holy fuck, flooding the world with these bright shards of unconverted divinity — it also makes him hard to grieve. His death is unassimilable, I mean, because it partakes of the unassimilability that he has always, in that splendid otherwordliness, carried around with him.

He is hard for us to grieve because grief, too, is a thing, a tool, made of and for this world.

It’s a sad thought: nothing — nothing in the world — can console us in this.




fly, it's been a while ... good to see u back ... hope life treats u kind

lemoncrush19 said:

poppys said:

I've reread this a few times this week. Amazing words describing Prince as an equal opportunity lover of/for us all. Great find, FOTW.

Look at that grin. It is the inward smile of someone watching indulgently as an entire world tries to imagine a set of terms capacious enough to hold him, to grasp the atomic-scale detonation of swagger and style and sex that is his person, and failing to do so.

Look upon my works, ye mighty, that smile says. Now let’s fuck.

This, friends, is the otherworldliness — let’s just say it: the divinity — of Prince. Without contempt, without pity, with louche bemusement and flirty solicitousness, he stands apart from the creaky organizing edifices, the aspirational little taxonomies, of the merely human. They address him, but they do not adhere to him. He speaks in, and as, something otherwise, but also, deliciously, near.

Put on his songs, any of them. Here, they say. Do you need a reminder of the exhilarating limitlessness of the world apart from the knowable and known? Here you go.

and so did I. this is the freaking best tribute for prince I've ever read. ever. take this:

...

Prince, to this impulse, is pure radiant confoundment.

And if this makes him a wonder — the prophet of the holy fuck, flooding the world with these bright shards of unconverted divinity — it also makes him hard to grieve. His death is unassimilable, I mean, because it partakes of the unassimilability that he has always, in that splendid otherwordliness, carried around with him.

He is hard for us to grieve because grief, too, is a thing, a tool, made of and for this world.

It’s a sad thought: nothing — nothing in the world — can console us in this.




fly, it's been a while ... good to see u back ... hope life treats u kind

Agree crush! The idea about grief being of this world, unlike Prince, and so we have no tools to cope, just kills me - but it makes sense.

poppys said:

lemoncrush19 said:

poppys said:

Agree crush! The idea about grief being of this world, unlike Prince, and so we have no tools to cope, just kills me - but it makes sense.

yeah but remember poppys? that's why we should party up every time we think of him! sending him love and light ... him and everybody else ... and party up ... that's what he wants us to do ... he'd love that 💜💜💜

True true Ms Crush!

BREAKING NEWS: Prince is widely known as a "SEX GOD."

FlyOnTheWall said:

BREAKING NEWS: Prince is widely known as a "SEX GOD."