Goodnight, Sweet Prince

Not less because in purple I descended

2016 was a brutal year.  We lost David Bowie, Prince, Leonard Cohen.  “The art of losing isn’t hard to master.”  It’s Elizabeth Bishop’s most famous line, but it’s ironic.  There are tiers of loss. “Keep losing further, losing faster.”  Get to the bottom and keep going.  Losing is endless, a gift that keeps giving.

The death of Prince was completely unexpected for most of us.  I immediately remembered the time I gave up a press ticket to see Prince at Madison Square, around 1998.  There was a group of us waiting for tickets, and I saw Chris Rock in a hallway.  We were informed that our pairs of tickets had been changed to single tickets.  Hilton Als, who I had been chatting with, was bummed that he couldn’t bring his boyfriend.  My wife and I both loved Prince.  He was part of our origin story.  I didn’t want to see Prince without her.  I gave Hilton Als my ticket.

I was about to teach a class when the news came through, and my students and I were completely stunned.  My wife had left less than a year before, and we were barely speaking.  But we commiserated about Prince.  I reminded her of how I couldn’t have seen Prince without her.  “You were too gallant,” she wrote.  “You should have gone.”