Prince, of course

This blog post is going to be a mess; you might as well stop reading now.

To be honest I didn't listen to a lot of Prince or David Bowie. Bowie was in my circle of influence; the people I looked up to liked him and the musicians I loved are clearly artistic progeny of his. Prince less so. But something about him made it feel like he was everywhere. Was he the ether itself? Given my distance from Prince I was a little shocked at how impacted I felt about his death. Perhaps I just took him for granted. Yesterday the word "institution" kept popping into my head. Institution, rock and roll, and cool.

His everywhereness makes it acceptable to leave him a good-bye song that I love even though he neither wrote nor performed it:

Tori doesn't mention him, but I can't listen to it without thinking of Purple Rain (check about minute three if you don't get how I make the connection). Today the song is touched with an extra bit of somber--it's a new farewell. May you rest in peace on some purple Jupiterian moon, Prince.

But there's more. I also had the expected ponderings about mortality, but it was pretty ambiguous. I waffled between "I need to hurry up and get shit done before I die" and "does any of the shit I think I need to get done really matter?" Anyway, thanks Prince.