Prince is dead. We’ve now had some
time to let it settle in, but that really does little to take the sting
out of those words, for with his untimely death (he was only 57) a great
legend has passed from us.
You know what’s amazing? So few
people actually know how important he was to music. Admittedly, that was
to an extent Prince’s own choice as later in his life he rejected the
internet and all that went with it.
He had his music taken off numerous
streaming platforms, for he refused a system where profit came before
art and the artist. He predicted to the Mirror in 2010, “The internet’s
completely over. I don’t see why I should give my new music to iTunes or
anyone else.
They won’t pay me an advance for it
and then they get angry when they can’t get it. The internet’s like MTV.
At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated. Anyway, all
these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your
head with numbers and that can’t be good for you.”
And though announcements of the
internet’s death might have been a bit premature, he was willing to put
his money where his mouth is, is something we can all respect and do
more of.
Here are 5 life lessons we can learn from Prince:
1. Be true to yourself
Prince made sure his music could never get boxed into one niche or one genre, so that he would never be defined as anything but himself.
“I’m not the president of a record company.” He told Mojo in 1998, “I
don’t want to be the CEO of anything. No titles. The minute you’ve
accepted a title you’re a slave to it.”
We can take a page from his book in
that regard, because of late it’s become ever clearer that instead of
discovering and establishing our own individuality, we seem to think we
can purchase it from the rack. And that is a truly frightful
proposition. You cannot buy individuality or character. You can only get
it by fighting your inner demons and the outer critics. And Prince came
out victorious in both regards.
“Despite everything, no one can dictate who you are to other people.” – Prince
2. A strong spirit transcends the rules
Instead, he believed that we should strive to be different,
to be more than the system will let us be. He was both and there were
few in the music industry who were stronger than he. In his 35 year
career, he produced a mind-boggling 39 albums, while never getting
boring, never getting old either as an artist or as a person. And yes he
had his weaker moments, but that’s okay, as that’s how we learn.
And yes, he had his problems, which
meant not everybody liked him. He was often divisive and had, by his own
admission, a bit of an ego problem. But perhaps it was that ego that
let him be who he was.
“Why does everyone think I’m mad?” he
once reputedly asked a PR agent, “Because you do weird things and you
don’t explain them,” was the answer. “But why should you explain things?
Isn’t it the truly strong person who can do what they like without
feeling the need to explain themselves?”
So get off your Facebook, get off
your twitter and your Instagram. Don’t live life for other people, live
it for yourself, like Prince did.
3. Practice and perfection
Of course not everybody can pull that
off. If you’re just ego with nothing to back it up you’re not going to
get very far. He was not anything but just ego, however. Instead, he was
incredible at what he did. And that didn’t just come to him either. He
worked very hard to be that good, being intensely devoted to his craft.
In fact, on his first five albums Prince played nearly every instrument,
most of which were self-taught. That’s both an ode to non-formal
education and to his incredible ability, unmatched by almost all other
artists.
I myself discovered the need to excel
only later in life. For many years I believed I was entitled to a good
life. Only when that did not materialize on its own did I realize that
you can’t just sit around and wait for things to happen – you have to go
out there and take it by being better than everybody else. I just wish
I’d realized that sooner.
4. Ignore the naysayers
“There’s nothing a critic can tell me
that I can learn from. If they were musicians, maybe. But I hate
reading about what some guy sitting at a desk thinks about me.” Prince
told the Rolling Stones magazine in 1990.
He’s right, of course, because the
guys behind the desk have it easy. They are backseat drivers who can sit
on the sidelines and shout ‘boo’ at you when you fail.
To go out there and perform, on the other hand, to thrust yourself into
the limelight and give it everything, that takes guts and courage, both
of which he had and both of which we could use more of.
So do what Prince did. Ignore the
naysayers. Ignore those that snipe at your failures, but don’t call when
you succeed. They’re dragging you down because they don’t have the
courage to pull themselves up. You’ve got nothing to learn from them and
everything to gain by ignoring them.
“Compassion is an action word with no boundaries.” – Prince
5. Build character
If you’d have to sum him up, you’d
have to use the word ‘character’. Yes, he was a character, but that’s
not what I mean. I mean he had character
and even if he was slightly insane (there were times when his former
girlfriend couldn’t look at the staff and they could not look at her,
while he made her call him ‘Messiah’) he left an indelible impression
upon the world – an impression that added, that made the world greater,
that left more behind than it took.
And that is an ambition we should all
strive for. For if we all added more than we took how great this world
would be. And we can certainly all agree that he did that. Now
obviously, we don’t all have it in us to add 39 albums in a lifetime,
but we don’t need to. We just need to put more in than we take out. And
that is something we can all do.
