Let’s Go Crazy, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise | @MDWorld

April 24, 2016 Victor El-Khouri 0 Comments

People who star in my sex fantasies need to stop dying.

This year, 2016, has been especially rough.  Bowie.  And now Prince.

I won’t claim to be have been an original Prince fan.  I liked his hit singles, but didn’t really start buying albums until way after Purple Rain.  I can’t discuss his influences or his musical chops because, while I appreciate those things, I’m not especially educated in those areas.  Obviously, there was Jimi Hendrix and, maybe more important, Sly and the Family Stone.  Prince mixed up funk and soul and rock and probably a bunch of genres I don’t have the names for.

I just liked the way his music made me feel.

I couldn’t articulate how his music made me feel until I saw the Sandra Bernhard movie of her club act, Without You I’m Nothing, in which dances to Prince’s “Little Red Corvette” at the very end.

Look at her.  She is not a conventionally beautiful woman.  She has a big nose, big lips, and cellulite on her ass.  Her dancing is awkward, and she is performing on stage to an almost entirely empty club.  I should cringe in embarrassed recognition, but I want to both be her and wrap myself around her.

Prince’s music makes us want to dance.  We don’t have to be beautiful, or have awesome dance moves.  We just need to have bodies, and want to enjoy them.

Like David Bowie, Prince enjoyed playing with assumptions about sexuality and gender.  He loved dressing up, the more ornate the outfit the better.  He wore pants to the MTV Music Awards one year  that had windows to display his (marvelous) ass.

His band routinely included women — playing instruments! — with whom he seemed to enjoy collegial working relationships.  Imagine!  Women whose company he could enjoy while respecting their talents, just like he did with male musicians!

Maybe this is related to his attitudes about sex and gender, but Prince combined not just musical styles in new ways, but political perspectives as well.  His songs could praise God one minute, decry Hurricane Katrina the next, and praise his “Future Baby Mama” before he left the stage.  I may only like this because it agrees with me, but I think enjoying one’s body, savoring how it feels to move it through a world with other humans, is at the center of my values.

We’ll miss you, sweet Prince.  I hope you’re in a place that allows for epic future collaborations like this.

Media Goddess Martha Thomases could name a few more people who played prominent roles in her fantasy life, but this is neither the time nor place.