Purple a combination of blue and red.

The blue of streams, rivers and lakes that used to be lead-free because the people who were here before the rest of us showed up didn’t hate themselves or nature. Middle Passage blue. Nina Simone Plain Gold Ring blue. Blue walls of silence blue. The strangulated blue of people who know they live on borrowed time, at the expense of nature and off the backs of other humans, and who consume to suppress their fear of the end: credit cards, cars, kitchen renos, malls, zombie movies, shoes, porn, drugs, cable channels, oil, guns, More More More How Do You Like It How Do You Like It?

And red. Dust of the American South red. Coca-cola (have one and a smile and diabetes) red. Redwood tree red. Rape culture red. The red of that yet-to-be acknowledged century of mass rape to create a workforce after the slave trade was abolished. Because it was good for business red. Because old habits die hard red. Confederate flag & McDonald’s & GOP red.

Purple messy. Purple America. Purple create, it agitate, it gyrate. Purple workaholic. Purple huge. Like Brother Prince, who never mistook cynicism for intelligence and didn’t have time for it anyway because he was too busy looking messiness straight in the eye and creating something out of it, and in the process doing arguably the most important work there is to be done on earth right now: fighting off the genocide of the imagination.

The house that Prince built got room for everybody: lady cab drivers, Baltimore, the man who died of a big disease with a little name, 17-year-old boys high on crack toting machine guns, Cynthia with her mismatched socks, a waitress named Dorothy.

It’s got 7 billion rooms and counting.

No one’s checking birth certificates at the door to Prince’s crib.

It ain’t in no gated community, and there ain’t no damn wall around it that some real estate blowhard told anyone who would listen that he’d get someone else to pay for.

The house Prince built got a hook to hang your Raspberry Beret on and a nice garage for your Little Red Corvette. Breakfast Can Wait but if you hungry there’s Starfish and Coffee on the stove, maple syrup and jam on the table, and plenty of butterscotch clouds and tangerines for dessert. There’s enough to go around on Planet Prince. And there’s Space: for you to Batdance, go Strollin’, Come, or talk Musicology. There’s even room for fear and ignorance because they’re part of this cosmic hot mess just like everything else but just to be clear: they not spinning the records. Not here. There’s simply too much to do – dancing to be done, lives to be saved, ping pong to be played – too much life to be lived to be scared of everything, of anything come to think of it.

I’ll probably never figure out What Silence Looks Like, but I’m pretty clear what American genius channeled 24/7, 365 in service to all things love and messy and human looks like: it look like Prince. I loved that man’s spirit. And he loved us in all our messiness back. Something fierce.