Opinion: Prince’s death marks end of era
Tiara Holt writes a tribute to one of her favorite musical artists: Prince.
Creative Commons- penner's image on Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Prince_at_Coachella.jpg
Yesterday I sat in my Italian Cinema class and noticed that my cousin sent me a tweet. This is nothing out of the ordinary. I read the message and she asked if I remembered the days when we used to have crushes on Prince and I said, “Of course!”
I then clicked the search icon to see the trending topics of the day. I noticed that there were over 1 million tweets about Prince. I thought it was a little odd.
Nevertheless, I clicked and discovered the devastating news. I couldn’t believe it. My heart stopped. I couldn’t breathe. As I scrolled through the tweets, I knew that I had to get out of there because I felt a breakdown coming on.
I hastily walked out of class and into the restroom. It didn’t matter where, I just knew that I had to go. Of course, the restroom was occupied, so I walked back down the hall. I still couldn’t believe it. In order to rid myself of the shock, I knew I had to hear the words: “Prince is dead.”
I then clicked on an ABC News video clip with George Stephanopoulos and sure enough, I broke down. As I heard the news I clutched my mouth, held my breath and slowly sat down as my eyes watered thinking that it could not be true.
I always admired Prince not only for his contributions to music in general, but because of his eccentric spirit which influenced his way of life and how he always put his craft first before anything.
As I sit here typing, I listen to Prince. I hear his words and I remember all of the times I played his music at home, walking to and from class and in my room. I think about when he performed at the Super Bowl and the other live television performances I’ve seen. I think about how many times I’ve seen “Purple Rain” and “Graffiti Bridge.” I think abut the dreams I’ve had (yes, I’m pretty creepy).
I just think about how this day impacted my life in the sense that Prince wasn’t just a musician to me. His artistic spirit was the closest living thing I had to one of my other favorite musicians, Jimi Hendrix. I always thought, “We don’t have Hendrix anymore, but at least we’ve still got Prince.” Now I can’t say that anymore. This is officially the day that celestial musicianship has died. Hendrix, Michael Jackson and now Prince are like huge, bright supernovas not because of the aspect of destruction, but for the simple fact that if you’re lucky to have existed during the time of the star’s evolution, you’ll get a small, spectacular sight to see that can only happen once in a lifetime.
Here’s to you, Prince Rogers Nelson. Your presence on planet Earth will certainly be missed.
Featured image by penner via Wikimedia Commons, obtained using creativecommons.org
Edited by Taylor Owens
The opinion of our writers/bloggers are not a reflection of the opinion of the Tennessee Journalist as a whole.
Tiara Holt is a senior at the University of Tennessee majoring in Journalism and Electronic Media with a minor in Cinema Studies. Aside from being a rock music enthusiast and food lover, her pastimes include drawing, painting, reading and watching The X-Files.
