The day after my father died in 1985 I turned my will and life over to the care of the only God I would be able to trust for the next 20 years of my life. The God of music. My deity that morning was Prince, my chant, his song Purple Rain. The strike of the first guitar chord hit like a flash flood. The progression guiding the flow of acute grief that had been deeply injected. A grief I still feel at times like the ache of growing bones. For that morning it gave me a path to follow. The melody, the build, the chord changes designated a place for me to realize what was happening. It gave me permission to fall apart. It allowed me to get lost, to hide and much later-resurface. The eight-minute opus wrapped up everything I was feeling. It was something I could bring into the blistering waiting room with me. When it was over, and the last cello note played out, I pressed rewind, rewind, rewind. I listened again, again, again. I can see now, life was preparing me. Teaching me about different types of transitions, powerlessness, separations, side steps, leaps into the abyss. Though there is no preparation for the sudden death of a parent, ready or not came radical change, the power of loss, the demanding call of acceptance, and the tumorous weight of self-protection, and ultimately a choice. I could accept life on life’s terms- heal and grow, or self destruct, and die on the vine. I was learning Music was trustworthy, consistent, it allowed me to grab on with a vice grip. It never complained, or asked me to let it go. It never asked me to stop eating donuts or Devil Dogs, or clean out the ash bowls from the incense I was so allergic to in the meditation room. It offered me a safe place to surrender and chant it’s many verses and chorus’s. Like Hinduism it had many faces and personalities to worship, and allowed me to explore my own. It was radical, rowdy, rebellious, rambling, raunchy, reminding, reuniting, renovating, and the greatest remedy for my troubled little soul. Song creates an instant temple, what ever occurs, where ever I am. I learned something invaluable from Prince that morning. That being authentic and unguarded with in your craft is essential. He indirectly instilled some sort of future permission for me to draw upon the power of raw emotion without abandon, or shame and to use it creatively, match it with passion, honesty and experience, and interweave into a composition. He gave me a space to transition from darkness to light through transforming pain into art. I learned that through all of this, I could carry my faith in music with me, inside me where no one could touch it. It was mine. Prince did this in a song so beautiful, and pressing, that I still put on Purple Rain whenever I have a hard time remembering what my fathers hands looked like, or begin to doubt that he was ever really here. I will do the same thing now for Prince Rogers Nelson.