Friday, April 22, 2016

Prince's Funky Momento Mori



The death of Prince yesterday at age 57 made the world --particularly my native state of Minnesota-- a lot less funky.

As I've written about before (see "Celebrities Die And So Will You") there's something odd about mourning for celebrities, who are after all complete strangers even if their art is part of our lives.

Still, I have to admit that Prince's death is bumming me out in a way few celebrity deaths have (only the deaths of George Harrison and Leonard Nimoy made me this sad).  I grew up in Minnesota, where loving Prince is practically state law.  My aunt went to school with him in Minneapolis, where he was reportedly a quiet kid.  I only saw him perform once, but it was an unforgettable show at an outdoor music festival in downtown Minneapolis not far from First Avenue, the club he made famous in Purple Rain.


And of course he was a widely respected, consummate musician who fearlessly blended genres and identities to create his own musical and sexual identities while challenging predominant notions of race, sex, and music.  His creative output is perhaps only matched by Minnesota's other favored son, Bob Dylan.  Last night I realized I hadn't kept up with much of Prince's recent work and found his 2014 album with 3RDEYEGIRL, Plectrumelectrum, which I'm tempted to describe as "funky doom metal." He wrote numerous songs for other artists, and there are probably thousands of unreleased tracks in his Paisley Park Vault.  Charlie Jane Anders points out that he was a fantasy storyteller; long before every other movie was a superhero movie, his soundtrack to Batman (1989) set a fantastic tone.


Prince's Funky Momento Mori

Although he died far too young, Prince's death, along with the other celebrity deaths in recent months, reminds us that our pop culture icons are human and like all humans, they will die.  In my post on the topic a few months ago I suggested that artists may give us the gift of a momento mori.   If a person as talented and larger than life as Prince can die, so will you.  Facing death is something many of us try to avoid these days, but doing so is part of what it is to be human.  As I said before,

None of this means that facing death is easy.  But maybe the passing of celebrities could help us accept death rather than deny it.  Contemplating our mortality is part of what it is to be human just as much as the artistic endeavors to which these people dedicated their lives.  Perhaps their final gift to us could be to help us accept the reality of death, which, like art itself, is a way to explore what it is to be human.
Prince's momento mori, like the man himself, is one of the funkiest and most original we've seen yet.




7 comments:

  1. I remember you saying in the previous post you adduced here that perhaps death is required for our lives to have meaning at all. Does that mean if there turned out to be an afterlife, you think this life would be meaningless?

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  2. I remember you saying in the previous post you adduced here that perhaps death is required for our lives to have meaning at all. Does that mean if there turned out to be an afterlife, you think this life would be meaningless?

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    1. Thanks, Jordan. Good question! I'm not sure, but I think maybe an afterlife would make this life less meaningful, at least in the sense that our activities would be open-ended: you'd never have any reason to do things now or to finish anything if you had an infinite time to do them in the future. On the other hand, if the afterlife were significantly different than this life, such that your projects in this life had no connection to the projects in an afterlife (if there are projects in an afterlife), then maybe this life would still be meaningful as a narrative whole. But then it would be worth asking if that's really "you" in the afterlife rather than a sequel or "you 2.0" if it's that different, and I guess we'd need to get into issues of personal identity. And of course some religious people would argue that having a future life as a goal is precisely what gives meaning to this life, but it's hard for me to see how that works, especially since the afterlife would either be similar to this one, which it seems to me to would lead to ennui, or it would be so dissimilar as to be nearly unimaginable, in which case it's hard to see how it can give meaning. Anyway, I'd have to think about it more. What do you think?

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  3. No pun intended, but I find myself taking a very philosophical approach to these celebrity deaths. We are all here but for a temporary moment. Some, like Prince and Bowie, simply have stars that shine so brightly (and through the gift of recording technology) they transcend space and time to touch us in ways that only few can. People react so strongly because there is something about these people, with their incredible charisma and their ability to connect with something deeper inside our souls, that makes us feel like they were a part of us. It's their singular gift. And while I weep at their passing, I am truly grateful that they shared a part of themselves with us.

    Prince, as I'm sure you wouldn't be surprised to know, is especially hard for me. He was such a part of our community, and our community was so important to him. He, unlike so many of our brightest talents, never left us. He will be greatly missed.

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    1. Thanks, Mo! I think you're right about the connection here. In a very real sense, of course, people like Prince aren't really strangers in so far as their music and persona can touch us all, which is especially true for Minnesotans since loving Prince is part of what it is to be a Minnesotan for many of us.

      I'm not surprised you've feeling this one, since you've always been the biggest Prince fan I know. I'm really much sadder than I thought I'd be even though I've never been more than a slightly above casual fan. As you say, Prince will be missed!

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  4. I've really been digging this album today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRmTyz5vJz0

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  5. A really nice piece on collective grief and Prince's death: http://www.onbeing.org/blog/to-be-yourself-completely-the-collective-grief-of-losing-prince/8640

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