Maybe every generation can make this claim, but I think Prince embodied, anthemized, and shaped the young adulthoods of me and my now quite ripe middle-aged cohorts. Just as we were emerging into the world, suddenly there was this glorious man making glorious music, celebrating all we had to celebrate: our dancing bodies, our sexuality, our voices, our weirdness, our hotness.
It feels a little wrong to feel this bad, like we're conscripting something—some pain that someone else deserves more, and that doesn't rightly belong to us—but I sense that we are all mourning very deeply.
All I've been doing all day is watch videos. Here are some that NPR posted. And one I really love, from Good Morning America, with the fabulous Sheila E. I can't stop dancing. And we shouldn't.