{"id":932377,"date":"2026-05-02T06:52:17","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T06:52:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/932377\/"},"modified":"2026-05-02T06:52:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T06:52:17","slug":"princes-death-made-me-upend-my-life-and-move-to-his-home-town-prince","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/932377\/","title":{"rendered":"Prince\u2019s death made me upend my life and move to his home town | Prince"},"content":{"rendered":"

I distinctly remember the first time I heard Prince<\/a>. I was a dreamy, artistic child growing up in 80s rural Australia, feeling completely out of place. One day, I turned towards the cassette radio in my bedroom, hearing something totally different to the rock music I had grown up with \u2013 something electric and alive. It was Prince. My body moved. From that moment, he became my secret soul friend, his music carrying a powerful mix of sexuality and spirituality that I didn\u2019t yet have the language for. Songs such as Controversy and Purple Rain felt like permission to be fully expressive, and fully myself.<\/p>\n

My love for Prince remained as I grew up. I moved to New York to pursue a career in the arts, but never quite fully managed it, ending up as an arts administrator. I supported other artists, organised programmes, lived alongside creativity rather than inside it.<\/p>\n

Throughout my life I had wanted to see Prince live, but always hesitated. I\u00a0came close, hovering over tickets for a show at Madison Square Garden, but didn\u2019t go. After his religious conversion in 2001, I think I was afraid of seeing him changed, diminished from the exciting vision of liberation I held in my imagination. It\u2019s a regret that shaped everything that came next.<\/p>\n

When he died in 2016, I was in a\u00a0subway station. I read the news on\u00a0my\u00a0phone and physically stumbled\u00a0backwards, catching myself against the tiled wall. The grief was overwhelming and immediate. I went home and cried for days, consuming everything Prince-related I could. I\u00a0combed the city looking for a purple item of clothing, eventually sourcing a\u00a0purple sequined gown, which became my armour. I wore it from the store straight into the subway, which felt both absurd and right. Within a week, cinemas across the city were showing Purple Rain. For about a month, I took myself to screenings every\u00a0few days after work. Sometimes they were packed, other times it was just me and\u00a0Prince in the room.<\/p>\n

Within weeks of his death, the idea of visiting Minneapolis<\/a>, Prince\u2019s home, began to take hold. It didn\u2019t feel logical \u2013 Prince was gone, what could I possibly find there now? \u2013 but I couldn\u2019t shake it. So I booked a\u00a0ticket. From the moment I got in the\u00a0taxi at the airport, people began telling me their Prince stories. I visited his estate, Paisley Park for the first time, where strangers had gathered at the fence, leaving offerings \u2013 flowers, letters, artwork \u2013 speaking to one another with refreshing openness. The whole city began to feel enchanted by this shared love and experience.<\/p>\n

double quotation mark<\/p>\n

I thought: What if I just listen to this call this time, and see where this mysterious journey leads?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I went back to New York, but couldn\u2019t settle. I returned to Minneapolis again and again. Within months, I had decided that I was going to relocate. Unlike the rest of my life, where I\u2019d become an administrator rather than an artist, I thought: \u201cWhat if I just listen to this call this time, and see where this mysterious journey leads?\u201d Finally, about a year after Prince\u2019s death I quit my job, and left my life in New York. I didn\u2019t have a clear plan. I was in the middle of a PhD, researching the role of artists in society, and I\u00a0shifted my focus entirely towards Prince and his legacy. In that way, Minneapolis became both my subject and my home.<\/p>\n

I started collecting stories, noticing the way people were creating their own tributes, their own forms of memorial. That became The People\u2019s Museum for Prince,<\/a> a grassroots museum I founded, which traces Prince\u2019s transformational impact through the memories of those whose lives he touched.<\/p>\n

Around the same time, friends connected me to a man who needed a\u00a0housesitter for his Minneapolis home while he travelled for the summer. The moment we met, we fell in love. I moved into his house while he was away. When he returned, I\u00a0didn\u2019t move out. It was intense and overwhelming, and the emotional acceleration mirrored everything else in my life. For a while, it felt like Minneapolis had given me everything at once.<\/p>\n

Then the relationship ended, in an intense and devastating way. In the wake of that, I left the city, eventually returning to Australia during the pandemic. But Minneapolis still felt like a second home. Now, at 55, I live between Australia and Minneapolis, continuing the museum, making films \u2013 including a documentary short, Dearly Beloved<\/a>, about my journey connecting with Prince \u2013 finishing the work that began there.<\/p>\n

I came to Minneapolis looking for Prince, tracing the places he had lived, researching his life. Instead, what I found was community and, most importantly, a\u00a0rediscovery of my artistic self. I went searching for Prince and found a way back to my own life, and the artist I always dreamed of becoming.<\/p>\n

Dearly Beloved is currently screening at\u00a0festivals. A feature film based on the\u00a0short is in development.<\/p>\n

Share your cultural awakenings<\/p>\n

Share your experiences<\/p>\n

You can tell us how a cultural moment has prompted you to make a major life change by filling in the form below or emailing us on\u00a0cultural.awakening@theguardian.com.<\/p>\n

Your responses, which can be anonymous, are secure as the form is encrypted and only the Guardian has access to your contributions. We will only use the data you provide us for the purpose of the feature and we will delete any personal data when we no longer require it for this purpose. For alternative ways to get in touch securely please see our tips guide<\/a>.Show more<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I distinctly remember the first time I heard Prince. I was a dreamy, artistic child growing up in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":932378,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3940],"tags":[4080,77,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-932377","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116503664913904579","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=932377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/932378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=932377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=932377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=932377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}