When Doves Die

Prince died today.

This, of course has nothing to do with my departure from Philadelphia, but in a way it does.

Almost 50 text messages passed through my phone with my friends' reactions to this event. Personally, I didn't feel any particular way about it; no tears... kind of an "aw man." But that was it and I kind of wondered if there was something wrong with that. Mentally I made excuses for not feeling devastated and then told myself I didn't need an excuse to feel nothing... or so little that an emotion didn't register; unless you count "numb" as an emotion.

I don't know if this is an oddball reaction or not; however, I was very curious as to how my friends would react to this news via social media and a more personal type of media, which is text message threads.

It seemed as if a family member had passed away and there was a call for us to come together and celebrate his life and his music and heal from this loss. It made me wonder, if at our age, when a contemporary entertainer dies, we start to feel our own mortality. Do we feel the splintering that has occurred when we experience some kind of loss, or disappointment in our lives? And use it as a reason to get together?

The passing of Prince seems to have affected my cohorts more profoundly that those of David Bowie, Maurice White, Fife Dawg or any of the other entertainers who've checked out in 2016. Probably because we grew up with his music. His songs provided the sound track to our most awkward years. Maybe because he was a rebel... he wrote and performed songs with risque lyrics and themes. It was his song Darling Nikki that led to the controversy that eventually led to warning labels being put on records, which ironically became a successful marketing strategy.

57 is the average life expectancy for doctors and Philadelphia police officers. I'm waiting for the first rock star to hit 100 years of age. It might be Chuck Berry, it might be Keith Richards, or maybe Bono... who knows? I toss that statistic out there because Prince was 57 when he died.

It's cliche... but R.I.P. You were indeed great. Your talent will be missed and the world may not see the likes of it again for many, many years.