by J.D. Isip
Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life.
– Prince, “Let’s Go Crazy”
Somebody said, “Let’s have a Purple Rain viewing party!” and there we were, a few days later, crammed into a friend’s apartment sipping “Raspberry berets,” a candy-sweet concoction I’d dreamt up to use up my Cointreau and Chambord leftover from the Christmas shindig (when David projectile vomited on Marty’s cat; everyone thought it was the best of our get togethers). Big plastic bowls of popcorn and chips being passed around like offering plates. Pappy lecturing someone in the kitchen about who knows what. Richelle and Lenice putting whip cream on the Jell-O shots, Richelle telling Pappy, “Can’t you see he doesn’t want to hear that?” and hands our “old man” a shot, kiss on the cheek, too… that’s how she was. How we all were. A golden age, so brief and glowing, we somehow knew to lavish each moment in joy and affection. The alcohol helped. Michael and Chandra, always the main event where they went, were up at every music riff, grinding in front of the widescreen, Michael doing his tongue-out, finger snap sexy/gross thing, and Chan telling everyone at the top of her voice, “I love you guys!”
Some 25 years hence, I’m running a trail in my Dallas suburbs and “Let’s Go Crazy” shifts into the playlist. In the movie, Prince takes the stage, owns it. The fog and the backlight are ethereal, then the guitar comes in. It wasn’t long after the party when life started to happen, pick us off the scene bit by bit. New jobs, marriages, scandals, eventually some kids, more and more distance, more and more promises to get together, fewer and fewer follow throughs. Sometimes I start running and I can’t stop, I don’t notice the sun setting, skin too hot to feel the chill of the evening. Then it hits me, what effort it is going to take to get back. It’s usually a slow go of it. Or, if you’re lucky, a song will take you there.
It’s called Golden Age Thinking (according to Michael Sheen’s character in Midnight in Paris), this belief that some other time was better than the present. We were all mostly poor, infighting, I was jealous of almost everyone, we often felt lost and lonely, some of us were directionless, some suffering unknown and unspeakable wounds in a crushing silence. In other words, not much different from wherever any adult finds themselves today.
There are moments, in this new life with my new friends, when I feel that same inkling I felt back then, the desire to somehow preserve that moment. Back then, I took hundreds of pictures (most of them lost because they were physical photos), tried to write down what I remembered over hangover coffee. But the people of this life have their own Golden Ages, and we catch each other traveling back at the very moments we should be cataloguing the present. Maybe this has always been the case. Maybe I can’t recall all of the Purple Rain Party because there were instances when I was back at a high school dance getting lost in “I Would Die 4 U” or weeping over “When Doves Cry”—the chorus, “How could you just leave me standing alone in a world that’s so cold?”
Back then, there was always someone who’d answer the phone, join you for a trip to Panda Express or some other cheap excuse for company. We’d get off work, order a pizza, go to someone’s house to debate which Janet Jackson album was the best or solve our friends’ relationship problems with American Idol playing in the background, Ryan Seacrest narrating the drama on screen and off. I put the song on repeat for the run home. Let’s go crazy. I think of Adam losing it on a guest, screaming, his face getting redder and redder. Let’s get nuts. Tito concocting this scheme to sell stuff from work on the burgeoning internet market. This life, you’re on your own. I miss them all so much. Seems such a foolish thing to say. But I know so many who don’t look back with anything but scorn. They have their reasons, I am sure. Maybe the real pain comes with knowing you can’t ever go back. It’ll break you down trying.
If you don’t like the world you’re living in—
It’s not that I want to go back there necessarily.
Take a look around—
I just don’t want to lose those moments before the Afterworld (as Prince called it). To lose them, the people I picked up along the way who make it bearable.
At least you got friends.
I get back to my apartment, send a text to Pappy and Marty (the only two I keep any sort of regular contact; months pass between these messages, sometimes years): “Raspberry Berets next time we meet” attach a YouTube link to the whole soundtrack playlist. Two hearts, almost immediately.
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J.D. Isip’s full-length poetry collections include Kissing the Wound (Moon Tide Press, 2023) and Pocketing Feathers (Sadie Girl Press, 2015). His third collection, tentatively titled Reluctant Prophets, will be released by Moon Tide Press in early 2025. J.D. lives in Texas with his dogs, Ivy and Bucky.
Image: Manos Gkikas
ID: Condensation in purple light.
Psaltery & Lyre 