Prince

I was really hoping it was just a hoax.  Now it appears to be real.  How can you be gone?  Do you have any idea what your music did to me?  How much it moved me?

I have the most vivid memory, a collection of them actually, of my 14 to 17-year-old self, night after night, lying in bed in the dark listening to the Purple Rain soundtrack.  It was our time alone together.  I never met you, but you were speaking to me alone.  There was The Beautiful Ones, my favorite, which simultaneously made me weep and turned me on.  Purple Rain and When Doves Cry.  Physically, you did things to my body without ever having touched me.  How on earth did you do that?  How did you incite such intense, frenzied feelings of lust and loss, things I was too young to have experienced yet?  Your shrieks and screams were like a wild animal, but at the same time, gave voice to the human experience.   As an artist, you were the real deal.  Everything about you was androgynous and strange, yet still aggressively masculine.  You didn’t need a loud voice or even size to convey your power.  It emanated in tsunami waves.  I can’t believe how much I miss you already.