“The vulgar crowd always is taken by appearances, and the world consists chiefly of the vulgar.” – Niccol Machiavelli, ‘The Prince’
NOV 27 2009. STUDIO 1A, 10 ROCKEFELLER PLAZA, MIDTOWN, NEW YORK, 14:00 PM.
“Hey Eliot, can we get the corn fields?”
“Sorry Karen?” Eliot twists towards me blinking, one hand over the mouthpiece of his headset.
“The corn fields in the screen display instead of the city?”
Eliot’s eyes flick down to his clipboard then back to me. “Uh sure…I just gotta…and then, sure.”
For non-crew personnel, time tends to move in TV studios like water over a floodplain. There’s frenetic currents of movement and sudden rushes, surrounded by gallons of intervals that pool through each day of filming.
I wait, smoothing the line of my knee-length iris skirt against my legs. I almost unconsciously crack my knuckles, but stop myself. These slackened recesses have started to breed bad habits.
“Uh Karen?”
“Oh yes?
“Yeah Dave says we can’t use the corn because it’s already being used for the ‘Prepare Your Grill For Spring’ segment after the 2nd break, sorry all we have is the city…”
“Ah right. Okay, thanks Eliot...”
“Nicholas”
“Sorry?”
“It’s Nicholas…”
“Oh Nicholas! God I’m so sorry, still getting used to everyone’s names”
“No its fine”
“Nicholas, got it, thanks…sorry”
He walks away at speed, slapping his clipboard against his leg like an Eliot. I stare at the city skyline backdrop in the screen behind the desk—it’s golden spume evoking feelings of exactly nothing. If nothing else, it’s an extension of the studio’s décor, an aesthetic that looks pillaged from some near, primitive future. The gold cubed box lights suspended above the desk gold/luminous/blue aesthetic give the appearance of a small display city having been hastily erected inside the studio, a sort of bonsai dystopia. The whole thing seems completely infertile for human connection. I crack my knuckles.
“Karen, Janine’s at the green room, says Prince is almost good to go. So if you’re ready we’ll roll in five.”
“Thanks Eliot “
[photo cred– www.underconsideration.com, taken from the private collection of Anil Dash]
“It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things” – Niccol Machiavelli, ‘The Prince’
JUNE 13 1993. SUITE 100, 38 CORPORATE PARK, IRVINE, CALIFORNIA. 12:20PM
“Lisa call for you, line 1, Minnesota.” Kayla hung through the doorframe, her features draped over her face in something close to anxiety—eyes wide, jaw hinged like a gaping door. “Prince” she mimed.
I paused and swung myself towards the golden rails of Californian sun impaling the clouds outside.
“Lisa McCormick.”
“Hi Lisa”
“Hi…”
“Its…me”
“Pri...”
“Uh!”
“Of course, sorry...how’re you...adapting?”
“mm, good I think. Feels good to shake all that baggage off you know, start fresh. But not sure, it’s all still moving.”
“Yeah it’s...quite a shift...”
“Your people said you couldn’t come to Minnesota this week so I’m just checking in. How’s the disk?”
“Uh, it’s...yeah, it’s good. I’ve been getting a lot of calls.”
I can hear him moving something as we talk, losing breath after every few words.
“Oh yeah?”
“Uh huh, Marylou Badeaux from Warner seems pissed. Chris Poole, your guy in Europe keeps calling. Think he’s convinced himself you’re joking.”
A chuckle creaks from the other end of the line. “I knew they’d hate it. People just gotta adjust. I’m cutting out the junk you know? This goes straight to my essence. People will understand. My fans will get it.”
“Well yeah we’ll definitely see. What’s your lawyer think?”
He exales, finished whatever work he was undertaking with his free hand.
“Londell? Yeah he’s got the disk. You know his people are real good. None of them are using my old name, like already. Man they’re all business down there.”
“MTV are using like a ‘boing’ sound whenever they show the symbol, did you see that?”
Another weary laugh rattles through the phone “No I didn’t see that”
“You might be starting a brand new thing, sounds instead of names”
“haha, that’s great. My drummer Michael said he read some Vanity Fair thing, said they got a guy from the Met to analyse my name...called it a rare Minneapolis rune. Or a glyph. Anyway.
“Haha, really?”
“Yeah...But you know the symbol, what Mitch did was perfect, he got this mix of male and female, there’s this conflict...as soon as I saw it you know, it was me.”
“So who got them, the disks?”
“I don’t know...everyone from Rolling Stone to...I don’t know. Anyone who might wanna write about me.
“Everyone who is going write about you? Shit...Warner really will be tearing their hair out”
Another quiet laugh rasps down the line.
“The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the [wo]men he has around him.” – Niccol Machiavelli, ‘The Prince’
JUNE 17 2015. PAISLEY PARK, CHANHASSEN, MINNESOTA, 11:14AM.
Caked next to highway 5 is a huge white mansion, though it looks like almost anything else. It looks more like a government hangar or a server farm, or the kind of distribution warehouse normally buried in regional industrial parks. It’s retail-grade carpark daily lies practically empty, silently absorbing the Minnesota summer.
Hannah Welton hasn’t seen the carpark in a few days. Sessions unfurl with merciless reprise under the unwavering gaze of a multi Grammy-award winning musical demi-God. Beneath who Hannah’s own husband, a relatively fresh silhouette in the producer’s chair, presides.
Before Joshua Welton tagged along to Hannah’s drum audition he had a job at a Chicago security firm and a record contract with Columbia that never quite worked out. Now he sits with Prince in Studio A, hunched over a console, finessing a series of sample loops—a process that appears–at least to everyone else— almost alchemical. This is the Prince way—he is able to draw wild and often submerged potential out of the unlikeliest collaborators. He rarely wastes phone calls to book celebrity guests, preferring to shape from uncut stone than remould or borrow from existing forms.
Hannah looks around Studio B, kicking her feet heavily in front of her, looking at her own monolithic face mounted on the wall behind glass. Beside her own portrait are her other 3rdeyegirl bandmates—Ida Kristine Nielsen (bass) and Donna Grantis (guitar) suspended catlike in their respective frames. A friend from Chicago asked her a few months into her tenure with Prince if she was allowed to wear stuff that wasn’t black, shiny and as tight as an additional layer of skin. Hannah told Prince and he had laughed that low, sly laugh.
When Hannah finds him, Michael is standing in the hallway outside the Knowledge Room about to prod a gold record with his index finger.
“Oh maybe don’t do that…”
He visibly jumps as Hannah speaks, pulling his hand behind his back and grabbing his own wrist.
“Sorry, I got like mesmerised. Sorry.”
“It’s okay, you’re not lost are you, Mike, is it?”
“Yea Michael. Nah, not lost. They just don’t need me right now. Taking a walk.”
“Uh huh. You got sent out?”
“Yeah, I was done setting up his guitar, so I was just watching him play, just got sucked in. He looked at me and then I got asked to leave after the take. I don’t know. I think it’s okay, we were chilling before—told him about this freaky guy in Minnasota who writes Prince fan fiction, we were laughing you know.”
“You look him in the eye while he was playing?”
“Yeah I guess, I didn’t even really mean it. We should be cool though, right? It’s not like I beat him at table tennis or anything”
“Yeah I don’t know that anyone could actually do that though” Hannah shrugged.
There was a too-long pause. Like the entire mauve walls of the deserted corridor were just gushing waterfalls of silence.
“Man’s a trip” Michael raises his finger towards the gold record again. “It’s like he’s living in a museum of himself. The murals…the photos…the records…that sign everywhere. Purple Rain bike just out there. Crazy…There’s like no doubt in him or something.”
“Yeah I don’t know…”
Hannah was readying a food-related excuse to leave when footsteps clicked against the hallway floor. Michael was clenching and unclenching his fists, swallowing deeply. It was Jeffrey.
“Cool we’re ready for you again.”
Everyone started to move off and Jeffrey turned.
“Oh uh just Hannah. Sorry man.”
“The best fortress which a prince can possess is the affection of his people.” – Niccol Machiavelli, ‘The Prince’
NOVEMBER 19 1996. PAISLEY PARK, CHANHASSEN, MINNESOTA, 10:42PM
And what happens approaches the miraculous. It begins like a storm blooming on the horizon, something that begins in the distance and engulfs you before you can find shelter. Emancipation. Surrendered cellphones, cameras, notetaking devices and writing instruments. Movement like liquid across the stage—limbs spilling in unison. He spins, drops to the floor, sways towards the drum kit before flowing back to the mic. A voice that unwinds from his throat without being caught on his breath, without any need for pause. Something savage that beats through the bones of the music, however buried in flurries and drifts of silk. There isn’t a face not craned towards the stage. There isn’t a body without motion. There isn’t a person who can name precisely what is transpiring.
“Men judge generally more by the eye than by the hand, for everyone can see and few can feel. Everyone sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are.” – Niccol Machiavelli, ‘The Prince’
NOV 27 2009. STUDIO 1A, 10 ROCKEFELLER PLAZA, MIDTOWN, NEW YORK, 14:30 PM.
“Where is he?”
“Sorry Karen, Janine’s in the green room now…”
“Still?”
Nicholas shrugs, wincing apologetically as he turns. I turn back to the desk, continuing to direct my focus on the ring pull on my Jolt cola. I spin a copy of LOtUSFLOW3R in front of me and don’t notice a tide of people drift towards the entrance to the green room. When I look up he’s already stalking towards the cameras wrapped in a close-fitting black suit, light splitting in rays off his vertiginous shoes. He runs his fingers over the black wheel belted around the camera’s centre, smiling at Danielle on camera 2 whose eyes start to glaze.
“These look like they should be in a dentist’s surgery” he laughs to some of the elderly guys oozing out of the backstage in NBC sportcoats. The ceiling above him seems aptly extraterrestrial—colonised with screens, all suspended at slightly different directions like space junk. He walks impulsively from equipment to personnel. He stops by the bench on wheels reserved for the Prepare Your Grill for Spring segment—everything arranged in fastidious chronological order atop wood laminate: 1 x salt shaker (white) 1 x pepper mill (red) 1 x light blue mixing bowl and canary-yellow mixing spoon. I x cutting knife (black handle, not for on-screen use) and tongs (stainless steel, also not for on-screen use.) He picks up the mixing spoon momentarily and gently replaces it before drifting towards the desk. I crack my knuckles.
“Hi, how you doin?” He’s smiling. I have no idea what my face is doing. I try a smile.
“Hi, great…got to meet some of our crew?”
“I never met such nice people in my life…” I try not to let surprise fracture my fixed smile—Prince drawls. There’s nothing close to the high, mousy voice I was expecting, there’s no complex strings of demands.
“Have you listened to the album yet?”
His sentences tumble out like marbles out of a velvet glove. It’s distracting. I feel myself wanting to crack my knuckles.
“Uh yes, there’s three though, right…in one?”
“mmm yeah. Two of mine, and one of Bria Valente. You listen to her?”
“Yes, a little. It’s, um…amazing…”
Prince nods—tolerating, possibly appreciating my nervous lies. He breezes on. “Her music is soothing. Listening to her is…heavenly”
Nicholas bends over the desk, clipboard held against his chest. “Uh sorry guys, so we’re gonna go to you, seven minute block, then we’ve bumped up Courtney’s segment on the grill until after the first break, then back to you for another block. We good to go?”
“All good.”
Words by Paul Cumming, illustrations by Kelly Walsh.
