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b'SUPPORT ME ON PATREON\\n\\nWATCH MUSIC is not a GENRE VIDEOS and MORE\\n\\nWhen we find an artist we can\\u2019t live without, our emotions attach in ways that are different from everyone else. We might all share favorite songs or qualities or the overall passion, but each of us finds miniscule facets that no one else can feel. Our overall relationship with that artist is unique. This is as true for obscure artists as it is for wildly famous and legendary ones.\\n\\nWhich is to say I\\u2019m not going to explain Prince for you. Or run through his history in every detail, or make some grand pronouncement about what he meant to the music world & society on the whole. I\\u2019m going to talk about me. About my relationship with Prince \\u2013 what he meant to me, what he did for me, and what he\\u2019ll keep doing until I\\u2019m as dead as he is.\\n\\nI grew up Catholic. I learned shame & guilt & fear. I also learned passion & faith & love. It\\u2019s all in the religion, as it is in life. When I first heard Prince, I was struggling with adolescence, with sexuality, with belief. I was trying to put the pieces together that society & my upbringing said didn\\u2019t fit. But Prince knew they did fit. He knew they could coexist despite the world \\u2013 the western Judeo-Christian Puritanical world \\u2013 telling us you had to choose. It was a revelation to me that someone else felt these things could go together, and it changed me.\\n\\nBut only on the inside. It took decades for me to reconcile all parts of myself without shame, fear, guilt or rebellion. And all that time, one of the very few refuges in which I felt safe & whole & understood was in Prince\\u2019s world. An artist like Prince doesn\\u2019t just make music, he creates a world, and then populates it with art & sound & character & a belief system & everything else a world contains.\\n\\nSo when it came time for me to express myself \\u2013 as an artist & much later as a full manifestation of my true nature, it was Prince among very few others who showed me the way. His music yes. Also his humanity. His juxtaposition of mystery & honesty. His melding of sacred & profane. His uncompromising vision & bravery. His struggle & his joy. Every step of the way I listened & watched & absorbed. I wondered & hoped, found answers & more questions.\\n\\nI felt catharsis & disappointment \\u2013 because he wasn\\u2019t mine, wasn\\u2019t me, couldn\\u2019t ever be exactly what I wanted. But the more Prince he was, the more he shed his artifice to reveal one more layer, the more I loved & respected him. We saw him approaching a period of quiet calm, stripped bare of all but the essentials. We saw him getting to a place where all that had come before was being reconciled and shaped into the white dwarf of Prince\\u2019s ultimate truth.\\n\\nThen it collapsed. We\\u2019re living in the black hole now \\u2013 full of the same energy but hiding the light that once was. We have no idea what would have happened next. He might have re-expanded, gone in a completely different direction. He might have revisited his past or surprised us with some as yet unknown facet. I hoped in these last 20 years that rumors of him forming a power trio would come true.\\n\\nAnd that\\u2019s where it stands. No answers. Only the past. He never held back. Never moved any way but forward. Now it\\u2019s up to me to continue to love what he did, to find joy in it, despite it all ending way too soon. It sucks. But it would suck way more if none of it ever happened.\\n\\nNothing I do doesn\\u2019t somehow have Prince in its DNA. Listen to everything. Start here:\\nREC \\u2013 Syncopy for the Weird\\n\\nDiscuss dammit!\\n\\n\\n--- \\n\\nThis episode is sponsored by \\n\\xb7 Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app\\n\\nSupport this podcast: https://anchor.fm/musicisnotagenre/support\\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices'