Aside from the fights between mom and dad.

Like "I choose to live with my dad'' and ''The space was too small with my dad so I got to live somewhere else''

I don't understand your question? What was Prince pretending didn't happen?

Also, keep in mind he only got to write a draft of the first few chapters before he passed. He obviously planned to write a lot more. Had he lived and continue to write, it's entirely possibly he would have addressed whatever issues you believe are missing.

I can't really blame Prince for glossing over the more traumatic parts of his childhood in his own memoir, nor am I surprised that he did considering how guarded he was through his whole life as a public figure.

Your mistake is believing what Prince wrote in his memoir to be true. Prince protected himself and his privacy largely by lying about himself, his past, etc. I'm not saying that he lied to be a big ol' liar, but why would he want to divulge his personal traumas to strangers, fans or not, when he wouldn't even share deeply personal things with friends? He kept a lot of people at a surface level, even if they were with him for years, didn't like to talk about his past.

So yeah, just maybe don't assume the memoir is an actual autobiography and accept it for the Prince penned fantasy it is?

RODSERLING said:

Him alive, I think this project would have never come to fruition, as always. Or else it would have evolved in something completely different, not rue memoirs by the letter. Maybe it would have turned into an album.

They were paying him big bucks.

bozojones said:

I can't really blame Prince for glossing over the more traumatic parts of his childhood in his own memoir, nor am I surprised that he did considering how guarded he was through his whole life as a public figure.

I don't think he wanted to hurt people.

Especially fans, his young proteges, or Tyka/family. he wasnt into doing that.

[Edited 9/10/24 14:12pm]

Clearly, Prince was very suspicious of some form of healthy self-reflection.

That's what's more and more clear to me.

This is probably why he fled all his life into all kinds of (weird) religions, embarrassed himself publicly with whining about the truth, etc.

We all know that the only truth (about ourselves and how we deal with others) is within ourselves.

(You just have to dare to undergo it, and be open to the hard and fair facts of what you are and what you do. Anyways...)

Prince was always trying to figure out how to be a good person, without having to dig deep within himself, to be able to clean up his problems with others, for instance.

As it turned out, most of his friendships remained rather superficial after his fame, as he apparently always lived aloofly behind a curtain of distrust. Well... but for sure he had a good hear, no doubt about that. Generous as well on many many levels.

-

Of course, he translated many of his imperfections and unresolved problems with others into his lyrics. But just as often that was either particularly cryptic, or very unclear, and relatively frankly superficially named. Let's be honest about that.
Just as often he expressed sense dissatisfaction cryptically that people misunderstood him.

He also often sang about those who allegedly hurt, abandoned, or misunderstood his good intentions. Actually, it seems that Prince rarely sang or wrote with a clear word of self-insight, or self-knowledge.

That's what I think.

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

He was a self mythologiser

My experience is most artists are. Hell, most everyone is to an extent (one always wishes to project a certain image), but becoming a public figure takes it to another level because of exposure and, most importantly, the fact that your persona becomes an extension of your work and affects how the audience perceives it. Sometimes your persona even becomes a literal part of your work.

.

It's not necessarily always planned and deliberate. Sometimes you come up with a self-agrandizing or thought provoking strategy because it pops-up in your mind and sounds fun or like a good marketing idea, but most of the times it's initially reactions, things you reflect from others: you realize they tend to react to, or interpret things you do or make or say in a certain way that's convenient to your narrative or image, so you start encouraging it more or less consciously, or sometimes it's counterstrategy: you realize people attack you or your image, or react to things in a way that's the opposite of what you hoped, so you adjust your narrative to counteract or distract.

.

I've often wondered how it would be if artists were anonymous, if we had no way of perceiving them beyond their work itself. How much bullshit could artists spare themselves if they didn't have to worry about how their person is perceived, just their work.

.

It's happened that I've heard people say "I don't like such or such musician or filmmaker or author" (in context, clearly formulated in the sense of "I don't like their work"), then asked them what they'd listened to, watched or read by said artist, and it turned our they were not familiar with their work at all, but they were upset by their image, behavior or political opinions, so they condemned their work without knowing it. Oppositely, I've met people who had a completely distorted perception of an artist because of their work, who assumed such or such artist must be a really unhealthy person because they created upsetting, disturbing pieces of work, but when you know them a little, said artists actually seem to be the sanest people ever, just artists with an interest in the morbid.

databank said:

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

He was a self mythologiser

.

It's happened that I've heard people say "I don't like such or such musician or filmmaker or author" (in context, clearly formulated in the sense of "I don't like their work"), then asked them what they'd listened to, watched or read by said artist, and it turned our they were not familiar with their work at all, but they were upset by their image, behavior or political opinions, so they condemned their work without knowing it.

.

Oh my, how many times I've been told by various people (including professional musicians) that they don't like Prince simply because they didn't like P's image! (And of course the only image of Prince they remembered was from the Purple Rain era, with heavy makeup and lace shirts.) No amount of suit and tie photos of Prince could change their minds – for them "he's gay" forever so they don't even give his music a chance.
Oddly enough, the same people can be far more forgiving when it comes to white artists who once performed in makeup and sexy clothes...

Vannormal said:

Purpleone4Eva said:

Your mistake is believing what Prince wrote in his memoir to be true. Prince protected himself and his privacy largely by lying about himself, his past, etc. I'm not saying that he lied to be a big ol' liar, but why would he want to divulge his personal traumas to strangers, fans or not, when he wouldn't even share deeply personal things with friends? He kept a lot of people at a surface level, even if they were with him for years, didn't like to talk about his past.

So yeah, just maybe don't assume the memoir is an actual autobiography and accept it for the Prince penned fantasy it is?

He wrote about obvious trauma. Did you read it?
His mother stole his babysitting money.
His mother dumped him on his father's doorstep hours before she was supposed to.
How he saw religion as "so complicated" in the marriage of an aunt and suffering uncle.
What he didn't write about was the two men (father and stepfather) who physically abused him. He portrayed his father, a taker from the start, as his "hero". It doesn't make sense knowing what we know now.