Dig
if you will the picture of a teenage girl on the way to her first
midnight movie. She's clad in purple stiletto's, a cropped leather
jacket & a mangled homemade tanktop with the word “Prince”
spray painted across the front. She's doused in enough Aquanet to
practically make herself a fire hazard & her makeup is perfect.
The cinema is dingy & hasn't been updated since it was built.
It's the kind of place where the marquee looked nice, but inside
you'd have to contest with rats running across your feet after the
lights dropped, but none of these drawbacks meant a damn thing,
because Prince Rogers Nelson's first movie was having its debut
screening in town to a packed house long after the kind of
conservative parents she grew up with had gone to bed. She sat there
with her best friend Sherrie, her running mate, who'd lounge around
with her in the mall on weekends with nothing better to do than steal
lipstick and cassette tapes. What they would see that night would end
up being the story of legend for their daughters. Children who didn't
need fairy tales, because they had Minneapolis Royalty. The woman in
the stiletto's was my mother & that midnight screening of Purple
Rain tantalized my childhood
mind. The 80s itself were enough to capture my imagination with its
bombastic fashion, bright colours and androgyny that bordered on
alien, but Prince was something altogether different. Prince was
messianic & like the crosses that were scattered around my
childhood home so too were the sounds of this man's music. The
memories of my childhood are hazy at best, but as far back as I can
remember Prince was present. Nearly thirty two years after that
midnight screening of Purple Rain
I'd text my mom a sentence that simply read “I am not okay”. I
tried to catch my breath outside my apartment, but I couldn't stop
sobbing & in a moment I'll never forget it gracefully started to
snow on a cool April day. I took a picture & sent it to my mom &
we tried to say goodbye to Prince, but if this year has taught us
anything it isn't necessary to say farewell to someone who was such a
catalyst for happier times. We could hold on, like we always have, to
this person who unites us as mother and daughter.
