Dear Little Jo,
You came downstairs last, so you didn’t see the reaction the girls got. Bron in bare shoulders and shiny gold overalls and glitter in her curls. Shayna in that little skirt and all that eye makeup. I mean your sister looked like a completely different person. I guess I’m used to seeing her in sweatpants and baggy T-shirts. She comes into the living room and goes, Hey, does anyone here know a guy named Axel?
Dead silence. The adults all shoot each other these tense little glances.
Shayna put her fists on her hips and goes, Oh come on. You all know him, don’t you? So who is he?
I mean she’s not talking to me of course. I only recognized the guy’s name because of that postcard you told me about, the one she showed you and Bron at school that time.
Rich and Trudie are both looking at Lyle. Waiting for him to decide what to say. He’s pretty red in the face. He stares down at his jacket clutched in his hands like Shayna is the sun, too bright to look at straight on.
Finally Trudie goes, I don’t think your dad really wants to talk about Axel, honey.
And Rich goes, You’re freaking us out a little bit, here, Shay—how much you look like your mom in that outfit.
Rich! Trudie whispers at him.
Right then you came downstairs, last of everyone. A woolen suit and a bow tie. I asked you what you’d been doing that whole time.
Writing, you said, and you handed me a letter right in front of everybody.
I admit I was embarrassed by it. I shoved the envelope in my pocket pretty fast. How are you going to dance in that costume? I said, and Shayna said, Oh my God, yes, tell him he can’t wear that.
So we all spent some time bugging you about it: Jojo, you’re overdoing it again. Back in the 1920s or whenever your clothes were sewn, we’re pretty sure they didn’t have dance clubs. Maybe we should go find a speakeasy or a jazz hall. Et cetera.
We parked in overflow and walked forever in that freezing wind and waited forever in that line. I started having second thoughts. I mean I’m not one for crowds and standing around. Or concerts in general. I never stay up late either. It was only just after 11 p.m. and I was already tired. Shayna had said she heard Prince plays till sunup sometimes. So I’m standing there in the line thinking sunup isn’t until eight this time of year. There’s no way I’ll make it.
I tell you all that I’m not feeling that great, and maybe I’ll see if I can catch a train. That’s when Bron starts making her speech. I don’t understand how she does it. It’s like a superpower. She starts off only talking to us, our little group. Then she realizes other people are listening, so she turns and raises her voice and makes the whole crowd her audience.
This is our chocolate factory right here, she says. We’ve each got a golden ticket in our pocket. This here is our Disneyland. Our Neverland, our Nirvana. We are the chosen ones. Prince is our religion, and Paisley Park is our Mecca. And if Prince is our religion and Paisley Park is our Mecca, then this right here is our pilgrimage, people! Tonight we are lowly pilgrims!
We are the young of this earth, she’s saying. This, right here, is our revolution! I mean it’s not even making sense after a while. But even the security guys at the door are grinning and nodding along to what she’s saying: This is our time, and this is our music, and we gonna dance, muthafuckas!
Don’t go, you said, but I was already staying. I mean who could go after a speech like that? And it was as if Prince heard Bron’s speech too. Maybe he did. It’s possible, if there are as many cameras in that place as Rich said. Anyway the doors finally opened and the line went fast.
What Prince did is he thought up a magical place and wrote a song about it. Before you and the girls came downstairs Lyle played us the song called “Paisley Park.” When Prince was rich and famous enough he built the song into an actual place. I guess Elvis did that first with Graceland, but I don’t know if he hosted dance parties there.
Now that I’m thinking about it, Prince sort of reminds me of you, Jo. I don’t know. Obviously it’s not the stilettos and spandex or his little wire glasses. But there’s something. How he created himself maybe. How he invented a world to live inside.
There was this one moment toward the end (which luckily was 4 a.m., not 8 a.m.) when he was doing one of those endless guitar solos. Just tearing it up all across the front of the platform. I mean you could tell he had completely lost track of his band and even what song he was playing.
We were standing right in front of him, and Bron was screaming how much she loved him. Shayna yanked my arm out of its socket, saying, Oh my God, look at him, just look at him. Prince went down on one knee in front of us like he was telling us a story with his guitar.
Watching him it suddenly hit me how rare and amazing it was to be able to see something being made out of nothing. Up close like that. It reminded me how it felt watching you sing when you didn’t know I was in the room. Halfway between dirty and holy. I don’t know. But I suddenly found myself smiling like an idiot and looking all around the room and thinking, Anything, anything is possible in this life. This moment is everything. Right now.
I mean you must have felt it too, because when I looked over at you there were tears on your face.
So I guess I get it now. I get why the Decent Fellows and the girls and you and everyone else at Paisley Park believes this man is a god. It’s because when he’s onstage Prince believes he is a god. He is a god onstage, maybe. I mean I’m willing to say that.
Sincerely,
AK