Whenever someone famous and talented, someone who has made an impact, dies, people notice synchronicities. Not surprisingly, that has been the case with the death of Prince at age 57. I started noticing the color purple on web sites, clothes and cars. Maybe the colors were always out there, but I had no reason to notice. I read where someone heard about Prince’s death, looked outside, and saw a purple roadster drive by.
Robert, aka Rabbit, a longtime friend from my hometown of Minneapolis, which was also Prince’s place of birth, life and death, wrote about a synchronicity he experienced on the day of Prince’s death.
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“A while back I heard an NPR or a MPR interview with author Alan Light on a new biography of Nina Simone What Happened, Miss Simone, which I picked up today at the the Rondo public library. Looking at Light’s other titles I saw: Let’s Go Crazy: Prince and the Making of Purple Rain. That, of course, caught my attention. I’d just the news. Before I started reading, I browsed the index and found a “Prince” entry. Late in her career, considering tunes for a covers album, Simone thought about Prince’s Sign of the Times, which she eventually recorded.
“Years ago in Jamaica I was staying with Maggie and her Jamaican boyfriend Chester, who had gone to school in Texas, was in NYC during the “Shaft” years, and loved Philly soul. I can remember he and I heard on the radio that Nina Simone had died, and we talked about her career. I can’t remember what time of year it was although it certainly wasn’t summer. Randomly reading through the book now…Nina in Barbados, in Liberia, I came across…Nina Simone’s date of death: April 21, 2003! Wow, wow….today’s date, and now the date of Prince’s death.
“I’m glad I got to experience the dynamic genius of Prince Rogers Nelson in concert at First Avenue in his prime, before he did arena gigs.”
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I saw him only once, when he was 16, a year before he signed a recording contract. It was in an old out-of-business movie theater in North Minneapolis. A neighbor mentioned the show and recommended seeing the kid, that he was going to be big. I don’t remember much about his performance that day. Oddly, the only thing I recall is that my ex and I were among the few white folks in the crowd. In other words, he hadn’t been discovered yet.
While the death of a famous music icon has touched the hearts of many around the world, I would also like to mention the transition of Father Rene Robert, a Catholic priest who was killed several days before Prince died. Father Rene was a priest in our local diocese, and was most notable for assisting criminals as well as other folks who were in dire need of help. He was a beautiful Soul, generous, compassionate, with a glorious sense of humor. He was murdered, shot six times, by one of the very criminals he was attempting to rehabilitate. In the most recent photo of him on the news, taken since his death, is a picture of his casket draped in PURPLE VELVET as he lay in state in the Cathedral here. I am not Catholic, but knew this extraordinary, holy man whose smile was his signature. I suppose his ministry was more needed on The Other Side than it was needed in the physical world. I can’t say REST IN PEACE, FATHER RENE, because he was not a man to rest but was continually busy taking care of any and all who needed whatever he could offer. He will be sorely, greatly missed.
I have noticed an inordinate amount of purple in my world, too. He was incredibly talented and gifted. Such a loss. 🙁
Interesting, the sudden appearance of purple!
Two days before he died I was spinning the TV dial and came across Purple Rain. I just caught the end of it. The final image I remembered from it when I heard he had died was a head shot and he was lit up by a spotlight and smiling.
Maybe it was a glimpse of the future?
In the video above, Prince comes in at about three minutes into the song. As he’s playing, he stumbles and falls off the stage. A sound man catches him and pushes him back on stage. Amazingly, Prince never missed a beat. He just kept playing through it all. Amazing.