The unexpected passing of Prince - Fentanyl
What a hellish reality check of life's tentativeness and sometimes
complete senselessness of deaths. Opiates. This thunderous lightning
bolt will be felt by many. Prince's music taught me that you can live
and enjoy in the material
world but still be deeply and spiritually connected to it
simultaneously. He took away those boundaries and paved a freeway.
Somehow our health freak, vegan, non-smoker and drinker, did not make it
to be 60. Just 57 and what a full 57 years it was. Way back home was
released as the main track to the Art Official Age album in 2014. The
lyrics are haunting.
It has now been two months since our Dearly Beloved Electric Man transformed Into the Light.
When Prince first passed, I thought, like many others that he 'had known
he was dying'.
My thoughts were not of cancer, a disease or some media nonsensical
fairy tale that was floating around. It was purely because his last
weeks of tweets and behaviour were
strange. Words he chose, music and his entire attitude to the emergency
plane
landing the prior week were just weird.
Prince was a master at hiding everything. He seemed to be acting
strangely but now I realise, it was not that he knew he was physically
dying. No, he knew his spirit was dying because physically, he was playing with fire and had been playing with fire
too long. We, the public never knew anything about painkillers or his
being constantly in
pain., but he knew and being the spiritual being he was, his spirit in
the last weeks gave up. Addiction to opiates is to hard to fight
physically, it has to be done with assistance and Prince was fiercely
independent. I think, having realised he could no longer be himself, his
soul tried to drop hints for help, but insufficiently for anyone to get
there on time. Because....
In that VIP cloud he lived and his isolation in his choice to
live privately, Prince was used to getting away with everything. Hey the
man took on the entire music industry and WON! He was used to success.
So he fought his battle alone. But somewhere there was a doubt and
those were the subtle hints that he dropped in his final weeks. The
shared Secret Machines - Nowhere again lyrics "Been sleeping the day
off...Watching the night fall ..Covering nowhere... Filling my time
share...Another moon on an everyday night... Thinking the morning
looking for alright... Warming the blood flow... With poison I don't know why... Maybe the rain will stop following me... Dripping the colors... Running the daylight... Over the cloud burst ..Hoping they don't burst.. right before my eyes... Erased... Our lives... Erased.
Prince must have known his spirit, his being, his soul was lost. He
could no longer be. He needed opiates to first deal with physical pain
and at this stage he knew, mentally, physically and emotionally, they
had more control of him than he did of himself. For a control freak,
that's hard. So he shared little hints but little did we the public know
what they meant. We were used to Prince being Prince. Always
alternative, in-explainable and always in charge.
A few weeks before his passing his Twitter avatar showed a tear, for
just a 'flu.' This was after the sunglasses were removed after months
of hiding all three eyes. The exposure to the Third eye was another
sign of some kind of spiritual awakening. Prince had always married
sexuality and spirituality, it was not as if he ever needed spiritual
awakening. The Truth album with Third eye came out in 1997, this was
2016. True he had formed the 3 girl band Third Eye in 2014, but he had
said goodbye to them so why now, the sudden spiritual awakening? Was
this his moment of acceptance to his addiction problem? Our growth in
being never stops and Prince was a deeply spiritual being, for those who
see past the mask of his material showman style.
Spiritually, I think Prince had reached the stage when he knew he was in
trouble. His unmasking of the veil was in essence, the revealing of a
truth to himself. He was no longer in control of his body, mind or
addiction. What is so contradictory though is that it never affected his
creative input in the least. His performances and albums up to a week
before he died were as always, oozing in creativity.
But something was not right those final weeks. His purple pick of the week with Sidibe's I'm only dreaming... if you knew.... The
accompanying picture, the half machine like girl, addicted to sound,
wired to the unknown, sleeping with eyes open, lying next to a pond
being observed by a well camouflaged frog is a beautiful image. Just
rather creepy as were the pyschodelic images during his last and final
Piano & a Microphone concerts. So many subtle signs which sought
perhaps to dissipate the shrouded truth over the invisible. A possible
cry for help or a silent goodbye?
Thinking retrospectively over the last years, there have been some severe uncharacteristically hard critics who have crucified Prince for almost everything he did. Could it be, that some in his small circles were aware of some kind of pain killer addition and saw changes in Prince's moods? Is this why they tried to bring Prince back to earth by nailing him in character and output?
Maybe Prince was running out of creative steam and needed a boost. God knows the man had been a continuous out-stream of creativity his entire long career. No human can keep that up. If painkillers create euphoria (just from being put out of pain), it's perfectly understandable that he become dependent on them. One only has to watch a few concerts of Prince in his youth to see how he pushed his then young, fit body. Prince was always extreme in performance, pushing any boundary there was to push. Minimal sleep for years and the stage is almost set for a bad ending.Add the years of heels, growing older, I mean wow he was nearly 60!! He too must have read up on opiate addictions and known that the chances of his making it to to 80 were slim. Hence his stoic devotion to performing, his devout religious beliefs, overly healthy lifestyle etc. He had to compensate somewhere else.
Prince might have been able to keep up appearances to the world (he had done that since a young age) but he was authentic and I think he was true to himself. He did what he felt and it's true in recent months he looked thin. Maybe it was was the fro, but it was also the clothes. Uncharacteristic, very loose and flowing, but then can hide a lot. Journalists always wrote about him looking so young, but Prince was also vain and like all celebrities, would have had work done, not to mention the make-up. In the last pictures where he looked tired, he was probably just without make-up. Another sign almost that he was perhaps tired of keeping up appearances.
I never would have thought Prince would die like this. In character especially, after the plane incident so soon after a concert never would I have thought he would be so nonchalant over his health. In that sense he hid things well. But it all goes to show once again, how deceiving appearances are. Everyone is struggling with their own personal battles and we live in a world where appearances are everything. Although I feel angry with him, it doesn't stop the love and respect that I always had for the man. He was a genius and he shared his gift with the world freely, his way and completely. If I had known though, that it was going to cost him so many years of his life I would have been much harder on him, but Prince listened to few people.
I praise the people who in the last days tried to do something to help him. But as he sang in Third Eye, "the only one that can save you is you." To conclude, in that sense I think Prince 'knew he was dying'. Meaning, not physically, but spiritually. He did not want to fight the battle. He had spiritually given up. It would cost him his pride and damage his career if he were to be placed in a clinic and Prince was too proud for that. I really think the dying in an elevator somehow was a subconscious planning. If he was using Fentanyl patches he knew the risks. The accidental overdose the week prior would have given anybody a huge fright. Fentanyl's first side effect is repressed breathing and a true press release concerning the emergency landing 6 days prior to his death, he wrote off as laughable, when he tweeted 'controversy' with huge smilies. What a humongous understatement now that we know and how we blasted us off, those of us who know the lyrics full well and the Lord's prayer within them. But Prince wasn't stupid he would have done his homework so this is why I feel perhaps he was just ready to go. Time never concerned him. Attached as he was to the physical world, in outside appearance, to please the public, Prince was also pure spirit. This shone through in his art and he truly was wise. Attachment was not Prince. In his pain addiction he must have somehow lost himself.
ARTISTS AND SOCIETY ARE CULTURALLY DRIVEN
Society loses its artists far too soon. Is this the artists reflecting
society and our need for perfectionist role-models who are never free to
display flaws? Or is it our society, reflecting the artist who is lost
in a world of isolation because their genius generates feelings of
godlike ego where they feel they are untouchable? I think it's both.
Prince was the story book to many lives. We grew from puberty into
sexual adults with his music. His lyrics of wisdom, tunes of beauty and
incredible stage energy, took us on spiritual journeys of discovery. He
merged society's unthinkable with the possible, breaking boundaries and
prejudices, creating harmony and energy for all to share, which only
music can do. My favourite composer and lyricist has left us and damn I
will miss him. Yes Prince I will miss you.
From the album Chaos and Disorder - I will
