4 All Time I Am With You: The Prince Fam Experience

The Institute for Clinical Social Work

4 All Time I Am with U The Prince Fam Experience

A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Institute for Clinical Social Work In Partial Fulfillment for The Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

By Gina Shropshire

Chicago, Illinois February 28, 2020

Abstract

This project explores the subjective experiences of five self-identified devoted “fams” of superstar icon, Prince, who died in 2016. This study aims to understand their experiences of fandom, what it means to them to be fams, and how these experiences and meanings have been impacted by Prince’s death.

The participants in this study fell in love with Prince’s persona, music, and artistic productions, and they internalized him as a good object, using him in adaptive and imaginative ways. He was uncategorizable and mysterious, an excellent receiver for projections of the participants’ fantasies. Through his music, Prince fostered internal respite and uncanny connection. By creating the soundtrack of their lives, he facilitated continuity and a sense of going on being. He invited participants to play. His music is a transitional object and a transformational object. All participants felt loss when Prince died, and most mourned his death. Now many are connecting with the fam community in new ways and experiencing his death as a catalyst for change.

Each participant was interviewed three to five times. Interview material was analyzed twice. The first analysis revealed themes of significance for each individual.

These are presented in case studies in Chapter IV. The second analysis revealed themes that were significant across most or all cases. These are presented in the discussion in Chapter V.

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For my family and the Purple Family

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I’m not a human. I’m a dove.

I’m your conscience. I am love.

All I really need is to know that you believe.

- Prince

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Acknowledgements

Many people inside and outside The Institute for Clinical Social Work have helped bring this project to life, and I am thankful for each person’s support and assistance. I am especially grateful to my dissertation chair Jennifer Tolleson for believing in Prince and believing in me.

GS

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Table of Contents

Page Abstract…………………………………………………………………………....………..ii Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………....…v Chapter I.

Introduction…………………………………...……………………………1 General Statement of Purpose Significance of Study for Field Statement of Problem and Specific Objectives Research Question Theoretical/Operational Definitions Assumptions Epistemological Foundation of Project Foregrounding

II.

Review of Pertinent Literature……………………………….………….17 Introduction Prince Biographical Sketch Fan Studies Fantasy Groups Death, Grief and Mourning vi

Table of Contents – Continued

Chapter III.

Methodology……………………………………………………...……….84 Rationale Research Sample Research Design Data Collection and Analysis Ethical Considerations Trustworthiness Role and Background of the Researcher

IV.

Individual Case Studies…………………………………………………109 Christopher Freya Foster Carolyn Penny

V.

Discussion and Conclusions……………………………………………224 Reintroduction of Participants First Meaning Category: Who and What Is Prince?

Second Meaning Category: What Is the Impact of Prince’s Death?

Third Meaning Category: What Is the Fam, And How Is It Used?

Research Process Implications for Further Study vii

Table of Contents – Continued

Appendices

Page

A. Informed Consent…………………..…………………………….…….........267 B. Mental Health Resources………………………………….….……….….…272 C. Screening Interview Questions………………………………………….…..274 D. First Interview Questions…………………………………………….……..278 E. Facebook Post……………………………………………………….……….284 References...…………………………………………………………….………..286

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Chapter I

Introduction International superstar, Prince Rogers Nelson (Prince) died on April 21, 2016.

Although he’d recently suffered a brief illness, his death shocked and saddened music lovers around the world. Spontaneous expressions of public mourning erupted, and for days every news outlet broadcast images of all-night dance parties and candlelight vigils, and views of the long fence outside his famous studio home covered in cards, letters, flowers, and gifts.

A prolific, wildly talented and innovative musician with a vast catalogue of music and a seemingly inexhaustible ability to create and perform, Prince is remembered best for his work during the 1980’s (Carson, 2016; Light, 2014). Although the work of that decade sealed his fate as one of the most famous cultural icons on the planet, his impressive, productive career continued without pause until his death, all the while attended by his Purple Family, a large, dedicated, and lovingly devoted collection of fans (Hahn, 2017; Toure, 2013;Wall, 2016).

The repetition on the news of images of people flocking to Prince-related sites during the days after he died conveyed that his death was a significant cultural and historical event worthy of public observation. Cities all over the world lit their landmarks purple. President Barack Obama appeared on television and on Facebook, saying, “Today

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the world lost a creative icon. Michelle and I join millions of fans from around the world in mourning the sudden death of Prince . . . Nobody’s spirit was stronger, bolder, or more creative” (April 21, 2016). Prince’s face, his dancing image, and his music were everywhere.

On social media and fan sites fans, or “fams,” as Prince preferred to call them (Katz, 2017, online), who had never personally knew Prince talked about how much he meant to them and how much they would miss him. “I used to wake up in the middle of the night and think, ‘It’s okay. Prince is making music somewhere. . ‘ It’s just me now” (McKinney, personal communication, November 11, 2016). The impact of the superstar’s multifaceted brilliance on the lives of his fams and their devastation at his death seemed unbounded.

Almost four years later his fams still gather in person and online to share lively conversation about his music, to celebrate his life, and to consider his legacy – also to swap conspiracy theories about his death, criticize the handling of his estate, and try to shape his post-life image. His fams attend Celebrations at Paisley Park, Prince-themed academic conferences, and concerts by his reunited bands, the bands of his protégées, and tribute bands. Fams write fan fiction and books for publication, host dance parties and meet-ups, arrange international belly-dancing excursions, and go on Caribbean cruises.

The Purple Family still shows Love 4 One Another. What is their experience, and what does it mean?

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General Statement of Purpose The purpose of this qualitative research study will be to explore the meanings and experiences of the phenomenon of Prince fandom, especially since his death, as it is experienced by a small sample of self-identified individual “fams.” As this project’s aim is to identify and explore meanings of participants’ lived experiences, a qualitative framework is most appropriate. While this study is interested in the total experience of these devoted individuals, it is especially interested in the ways their experiences have been and are being affected by the superstar’s death.

This study utilizes the psychoanalytic case study method articulated by Jennifer Tolleson (1996). Founded on the belief that individuals are experts of their own experiences, which they are invited to tell in their unique voices, the method focuses on the discovery and elucidation of unconscious or latent meaning within their narratives.

Using this method, I engaged each participant in a series of in-depth, lightly structured interviews. I examined transcripts of the sessions, along with corresponding field notes and observations through a psychoanalytic lens and analyzed them to discover themes or “Categories of Meaning” (Tolleson, 1996, p. 116) that were most important to each participant. I created individual case studies for each participant, as well as a cross-case analysis that examined and compared each study for similarities and differences. This process is elaborated further in Chapter III. Fandom (perhaps particularly the fandom of a dead icon) exists in the mind of the fan, but it also exists in interaction with others (Cavicchi, 1998; Hills, 2002). My own Prince-related interactions and activities while exploring this topic provided abundant evidence that there is a thriving fam community that influences individual experiences of

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being a fam. Although my focus is on the experience of the individual fam, I recognize that this project is essentially ethnographic in nature and that I am both observer and participant (Hoey, 2014).

The individual participants in this study are self-identified, devoted fams who have engaged with Prince’s career through multiple channels, including: 

Consumption of music, movies, concert videos, interviews, and music videos; as well as books, magazines, and other writing about Prince, and of products by Prince’s protégés and affiliates.



Attendance at concerts, after-shows, dance parties and other fam events.

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Participation in online or in-person fam communities.

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Substantial interest in, and knowledge about Prince, his music, his career, and his life.

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Feelings of emotional attachment to Prince and his work and a sense of loss following his death.

The central phenomenon of this study is: Prince’s dedicated, long-time fams were uniquely devoted to Prince and to his music during his life, and his death has impacted their experiences as fams in significant ways.

Significance of This Study for Clinical Social Work Studies of fandom will yield interesting and illuminating ideas that will be of interest to psychoanalytically-informed clinicians. Although our field has overlooked the phenomenon, most people are fans of something. A study that centers on in-depth

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conversations with a small selection of highly devoted fams will expand understanding of and empathy toward clients (and others) who are fans.

Prince was (and is) a unique cultural signifier (Toure, 2014), and his fams are a particularly invested and robust fan community (Greenman, 2017). Spending time with Prince’s fams, who are adjusting to the icon’s death, elucidates a very particular experience of loss. In exploring this loss with curiosity and openness, we can learn about love, relationships, sex, fantasy, death, grief, and other topics of interest to clinical social work, especially as it is practiced with a psychoanalytic focus.

Statement of the Problem and Specific Objectives to Be Achieved When Prince died, the outpouring of grief from fans around the world was immense, and it spoke to the impact that his music and persona had on popular culture.

Casual fans around the globe knew Prince primarily from his celebrated work during the 1980’s, the decade during which he produced hit after hit, performed thousands of soldout concerts, broke new ground on album after album, and created several movies, including the landmark Purple Rain. His devoted fams knew his whole career, from 1978’s For You through HITnRUN Phase Two, released in 2015, four months before his death.

For many of his fams, Prince was an essential part of their lives. Millions of casual fans felt sad when Prince died, but many fams felt a more serious loss, one that needed to be mourned, worked through and transformed. These fams grieved Prince’s death and the end of his sweeping career, and they continue to express their love as they create ways to honor him and to influence the directions his legacy will take.

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Prince is not the only artist who has thousands of intensely devoted fans. He is not the only star who has made a unique and lasting imprint on popular culture. He is not the only superstar who invites scholarly inquiry. For example, in Tramps Like Us, Daniel Cavicchi (1998), cultural historian and Bruce Springsteen fan, wrote a detailed ethnographic study of the fans of his idol. Fine arts professor, Erika Doss (1999) wrote Elvis Culture: Fans, Faith and Image, exploring Elvis’s ongoing allure as an object of fan devotion. And social theorist and psychoanalytic scholar, Anthony Elliott (1999), wrote The Mourning of John Lennon, about the ways John Lennon has been used by fans and within culture. It may be possible to draw parallels between the fan experiences of these stars, but just as each artist’s impact is unique so are the meanings each star holds for his fans.

In recent decades, the study of fans has become recognized as its own academic field under the cultural studies umbrella. The psychoanalytic field, however, has had little to say about the experiences of fans. Many psychological descriptions of fans focus on fandom as pathology, as evidenced by the coining of a new diagnosis, “celebrity worship syndrome” (McCutcheon, Lange & Houran, 2002). Of particular significance to this study, external displays of fan grief following the death of their fan object are often belittled and disparaged (Gorer, 1955; Kemp, 2017).

It seems easy to pathologize fans. After all, “fan,” is short for “fanatic,” and that word conjures images of religious extremism, hysterical social movements, and dangerous loners plotting to overthrow governments while living in shacks in the forest (Jenson, 1992). Psychoanalytic theorists do not take serious fans seriously.

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Conversely, fan studies scholars approach psychoanalytic theories warily. Within the field of Fan Studies, psychoanalysis is generally considered to be an elitist, ahistorical practice that marginalizes difference and doesn’t take into full account the importance of culture on the individual (Fiske, as cited in Hills, 2002). In addition, the fan experience is considered to be a social activity, existing primary within a communal context (Fiske, 1992). As the individual fan’s experience is mediated through the fan community, the study of an individual fan’s intrapsychic reality would seem to be of limited significance.

These arguments do not make sense. Psychoanalytically-informed social workers are interested in human experience, in internal and external processes, in intrapsychic and interpersonal experience, in the individual and in groups. However, popular culture has not been of particular interest to many psychoanalytic thinkers. This doesn’t make sense, either. People interact with popular culture (Grindstaff, 2008), and many people interact passionately, as fans. Their fandom is important, sometimes even essential, to their lives (Williams, 2016).

To study Prince’s fans after his death is to study a particular fan phenomenon.

Prince Rogers Nelson was a dynamic genius who forged his own path, disrupting notions about sexuality, race, and gender and who sang just as easily (and with just as much funk) about sex, life, death, and God – and his fams are a tenacious group who loved him through career twists and turns that dizzied and jettisoned many of the rest of us. No two fams are the same, but one thing every fam is, is uniquely dedicated to the unique superstar they love.

Clinical social work is concerned with the individual within the environment. To choose to study the Prince fam phenomenon is to study a person against the backdrop of

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the larger culture. This is a quintessentially social work endeavor. Many fan studies scholars posit that the fan experience is primarily and necessarily a social phenomenon, and their focus is most often on fans as part of a group. It is useful to think of fandom this way, but to start and end with the group gives an incomplete picture of fan experience.

Social work clinicians, especially those interested in the life of the mind, start with the person as the basic unit for inquiry.

This study explores the experience of Prince famdom, as it has been and is being impacted by Prince’s death, as described in depth by a small group of self-identified fams. The objective is to highlight and elucidate meanings found within this phenomenon and the ways these meanings are expressed. While the findings from this study are not generalizable to all experiences of fandom (or even famdom), they provide rich, evocative portraits of these fams in this moment.

Why does the experience of a Prince fam matter? As psychoanalytic clinical social workers we seek to understand what people mean and what social phenomena mean. We explore deeply, starting with the individual, using ourselves as tools for listening. Psychoanalytic ideas help us interpret what we hear, but the stories and meanings belong to the storytellers. This study describes a phenomenon from the perspective of its participants. It is my hope that this will be of use, not just to clinicians who see fans in their practices, but to fans, as well.

Research Question What is the experience of the devoted Prince fam, and how has it been impacted by the superstar’s death?

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Operational Definitions Prince. Prince Rogers Nelson was a singer, composer, multi-instrumentalist, dancer, filmmaker, actor, producer, superstar, icon, trendsetter, shape-shifter, modern-day Mozart, and “sculptor of a generation” (Toure, 2013, 6), who died unexpectedly on April 21, 2016 at age 57. Although Prince was best known for his work during the 1980’s, his sprawling, abundant career spanned almost four decades and yielded so much material that only a fraction of is had been made available commercially at the time of his death (Browne, 2017). Prince, also known as O(+> (an unpronounceable hieroglyph), The Artist Formerly Known as Prince, His Royal Badness, and by the names of aliases and alter egos, was a strongly independent and inventive artist and composer who sang equally passionately about raunchy sexuality and religious faith. An international superstar, Prince had millions of fans, many of whom were (and are) seriously devoted fams.

Fam. Prince disliked the word “fan,” because of its relationship to “fanatic.” He preferred to call his fans “fams” because they were like family (Katz, 2017). For the sake of this project, a fam is a person who has a dedicated and steadfast love and appreciation for Prince, his work, and his career. Fams spend money and time consuming Prince products (including albums, concerts, videos, movies, and merchandise), cultivate knowledge about Prince’s work and life, and engage with

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other fams around their famdom. Fams are also known as Purple Fam, Purple Family, and Purple Army (Jennifer King, personal communication, June 3, 2017).

Statement of Assumptions: This dissertation assumes the following: 

Prince Rogers Nelson was an international superstar and cultural icon whose life and career influenced a generation of fans and impacted popular culture in a distinctive way (Toure, 2013; Greenman, 2017).

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Prince had many millions of fans, and a portion of his fans were and are highly dedicated fams who loved and continue to love him and who were and are devoted to his music and to him (Hawkins & Niblock, 2013). Famdom has deep and abiding significance for these fams.



Fam experience, while varying from individual to individual, has some common elements at its core: devoted appreciation for and consumption of Prince’s music and other creative endeavors; sustained interest in Prince’s life and career; a sense of connection to other fams; and a feeling of loss after his death (Rachel Kayla, Jennifer King, Dawn Laveck-Palfi, personal communication, June 3, 2017).

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Prince’s death has meaning for his fams and has impacted their experiences of fandom.

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Popular culture is a worthy focus for psychoanalytic study. The popular culture phenomena of fan experience can be viewed meaningfully through a psychoanalytic lens.

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Epistemological Foundation of This Project This exploratory study is concerned with the lived experience of individual Prince fams. I’ve interpreted the participants’ narratives utilizing a hermeneutic phenomenological framework to try and understand what the nature is of their experiences of fandom, especially in the aftermath of Prince’s death. Hermeneutic phenomenology is a “philosophy of the personal” (Laverty, 2003, p. 7) that is viewed against the background of culture and history. As Laverty says, it is “interested in the world as we find it” (2003, p. 18). In attempting to describe the nature of the phenomenon, the researcher keeps in mind that her viewpoint cannot be erased from the interpretation (Gadamer, 1976).

To understand hermeneutically, the researcher uses her empathy, her personal care and concern for each participant, and her interest in the phenomenon under study (Binswanger in Van Manen, 1990). While this adds to the impossibility of arriving at a perfect, definitive interpretation of the meaning of the phenomenon, it presents an opportunity to create, “an animating, evocative description of human actions, behaviors, intentions and experiences as we meet them in the world” (Van Manen, 1990, p. 19).

I am steeped in a professional and academic culture that is theoretically psychoanalytic. Therefore, I have interpreted the texts of this study using a general psychoanalytic framework. Psychoanalysis is interested in the unconscious mind and in the lasting influence of early objects and events in people’s lives, and psychoanalytic treatment utilizes the clinician’s deep engagement with the patient to bring what is unconscious into consciousness.

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Psychoanalytic inquiry embraces ambiguity and not knowing, but it also contains culturally and historically constructed ideas about how the mind works. Van Manen (1990) says that to interpret any aspect of human experience is to attempt the impossible, but we may describe our experience, bearing in mind the knowledge that life is more complex than we are able to capture. Appreciating both the possibilities and limitations of this endeavor, I have approached this study with curiosity and openness, utilizing a psychoanalytic framework and my own capacities for listening, empathy, and understanding.

Foregrounding – Music fan Do I believe in God? Do I believe in me?

Some people wanna die, so they can be free.

I said life is just a game. We're all just the same.

Do you wanna play? (Prince, 1981, “Controversy”) I was on my way to a dissertation meeting when I heard the news. When I got into the car to drive to my committee chair’s office “Controversy” was playing on the radio. It was followed by “Kiss.” Then a long, sustained synthesizer note played, and Prince’s echo-y voice intoned, “Dearly beloved: We are gathered here today to get through this thing called life . . .” (Prince and the Revolution, 1984, “Let’s Go Crazy”). Suddenly I knew. Oh no. Prince is dead.

2016 was a lethal year for music icons. By April David Bowie and Merle Haggard were dead, and so was Prince’s early protégée, Vanity. I was reeling, feeling the fading of my life’s soundtrack.

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I heard the deejay say, “Prince is dead at 57 . . . found unresponsive in an elevator at Paisley Park earlier this morning . . .” Then a bus careened out of its lane and hit the passenger side of my car. My mirror shattered – a moment of real destruction that reflected the shock of the loss.

That night I slept with my headphones, listening to The Current, a public radio station in Minneapolis that was broadcasting all of Prince’s songs. From Thursday until Sunday I listened to song after song. On TV I saw crowds of people gathering in front of First Avenue and Paisley Park. I saw images of the fence around Prince’s Chanhassen recording studio home. I imagined people just wanted to be near his places – because what else could they do? I wondered whether I should join them, but I didn’t.

It didn’t make sense that I was having such strong feelings. Strong feelings were for real fans like Chris, my husband’s colleague who sat stunned in his apartment for days. Friends did wellness checks. His boss gave him time off work.

“We should take Chris some food,” I said to my husband, this becoming a way for me to acknowledge the strange impact Prince’s death was having on me.

I grew up surrounded by music. When I was little, my mother introduced me to the Beatles and the Stones, and my dad introduced me to Beethoven and Verdi. I sang in the church choir.

My parents bought me a record player when I was eleven, and I began to choose my own music. By twelve I had strong musical tastes. Even before my social life revolved around clubs and shows and being cool I had a music affiliation through the FM radio station I listened to, WPLJ in New York City. I chose the station because I liked

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how it sounded, and my friends did, too. I kept an index called, “good songs” in my journal. I still have it.

In high school I performed in musicals and worked on the high school radio station. My first job was at the Ravinia Festival, an historic, outdoor music venue near Chicago. My first boyfriend was a guitarist. When I met potential love interests I didn’t ask what they did for work, I asked what music they liked.

I studied music in college. I was a DJ on my college radio station, and that’s where I first encountered Prince. I liked the way he sounded, but I didn’t know what to make of those thigh high stockings and high heels. Was he putting us on? I was simultaneously attracted and repelled.

Then a guy I liked put Prince’s “Uptown” (1980) on a mix tape for me, and that was the end of my ambivalence. From Dirty Mind (1980) through Love Symbol (1992), Prince was always on top of my pile of LP’s. I saw Purple Rain (1984) multiple times in the theater and went to a couple of Prince concerts. I loved Prince, but I was a fan of music. I didn’t like just one artist. I liked music – cool music. I believed I was a good judge of this because I was cool, and so were my friends. We were a tribe, and we found each other through music.

Thirty-something adulthood muted the intensity of my love for popular music. As I changed, Prince was changing, too - forming his new band, New Power Generation; fighting with his label; changing his name to an unpronounceable hieroglyph; and becoming a Jehovah’s Witness. Like many of his heyday fans, I fell away, but at points throughout the years I would become aware of him again and delight in his brilliance. In

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2007 I snapped fully back to attention when he performed the Super Bowl halftime show in a thunderstorm, wearing a dazzling turquoise suit. He was magnificent.

When Prince died I was shocked by my sadness. Of course I was sad about his death and the end of his ability to create, but there were other things, too. I was missing my younger self and dreading my own finitude. If Prince could die, so could I. And I was mourning Prince, not merely as a voice of my generation, but as a voice that spoke specifically to me.

I was curious about what Chris was feeling, so I invited him to dinner. He arrived bearing a suitcase, his “vault” filled with hundreds of Prince recordings. He was generous with his time and with his stories about Prince. And then there was the vault! Every day I listened to something I’d never heard before that was beautiful, poignant, funky, sexy, funny, weird and honest. I heard Prince’s unbounded energy and brilliance. I heard his transformative messages about the human experience and the divine. I heard his personal evolution.

What was happening to people who had been with Prince all along – like Chris – now that he was dead? In October, I loaded up the vault, got in the car, and drove to Minneapolis for his Tribute Concert. I listened to Prince music and went to Prince events for days. The fams were happy to talk and pleased that I was interested. By the time I got back to Chicago I was hooked.

I’ve visited Minneapolis many more times since then. I’ve attended Celebrations and dance parties and concerts by Prince’s former bands and associates. When I’m surrounded by fams, dancing and singing every song, I am not just a researcher. I am

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once again part of a tribe, a family that has gathered around music – “brothers and sisters united all 4 love” (Prince and the Revolution, 1986,”Anotherloverholeinyourhead”).

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Chapter II

Review of Pertinent Literature Introduction Many popular books and articles have been written about Prince’s life, career, and legacy. Two noteworthy books, Toure’s (2013) I Would Die for You and Ben Greenman’s (2017) Dig If You Will, have explored and elucidated the meanings that Prince’s life and career have had, and continue to have, on culture. New books keep coming, but no one has written from a psychoanalytic perspective about Prince or his devoted fams.

This is in line with the larger body of psychoanalytic literature, which is conspicuously light on books and articles pertaining to popular culture. Further, many references to fandom, with the exception of reference to fandom being a normative experience in adolescence (Rosenbaum, 1963), are pathologizing. Psychoanalytic writers approach high culture, the aesthetic experiences related to symphonies, poetry, great books, and famous paintings far more frequently than they do anything in popular culture (Kohut & Levarie, 1950; Faber, 1996; Cantz, 2013).

Because of this, writing the literature review for this project has been challenging.

With so little to inform the topic from within the psychoanalytic field, I had to begin elsewhere. This chapter is in three sections. In each, I made choices about what to include and what to leave out. The choices were based on three factors – the assumptions I

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outlined in Chapter I, my own foreknowledge, and observations I made of the phenomenon prior to starting research.

I begin with a short biographical introduction to Prince, paying attention to the way his career unfolded in relation to his fams. This is a rough sketch, intended only to provide background for the participants’ narratives presented in Chapter IV. I follow with an introduction to the academic discipline of Fan Studies. I have kept the Fan Studies and psychoanalytic/multidisciplinary sections separate because it seems important to present the Fan Studies discipline in its own right. I chose to focus only on elements of the discipline that reflected (as mentioned above) the study’s assumptions, my own biases, and aspects of the fam phenomenon I’ve observed. With these factors in mind several themes seem particularly salient. I write about these under four headings: 

Coming to fandom,



Fan pilgrimage,



Connotative fog and pseudo religiosity, and

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Death of the icon.

Because psychoanalysis has not studied fandom most of the literature to review came from either outside the field or outside the topic. The third section is multidisciplinary, emphasizing psychoanalytic ideas that evoke the research phenomenon and mesh well with the four themes. This allowed me to explore the topic from several angles. The psychoanalytic themes are:

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Fantasy/phantasy,



Group process, and



Death, mourning and melancholia.

After discerning the themes I read a significant amount of psychoanalytic literature on each and chose two authors to represent each concept – Sigmund Freud and Melanie Klein/Susan Isaacs for fantasy/phantasy; Freud and Wilfred Bion for group experience; and Freud and Klein for mourning. These authors seemed particularly influential to theory creation around each theme. I supplemented their work with other writers’ ideas to flesh out the ideas.

Prince Biographical Sketch When Prince was alive, there was a comforting feeling around these parts, knowing that hot flame was out in his mad scientist laboratory in Chanhassen, burning bright. (Walsh, 2016, p. xiii) To survey what has been written about Prince, Minneapolis is a good place to begin. Prince was born in Minneapolis, called the Minneapolis area home all his life, and died in his studio in suburban Chanhassen. All of the biographies surveyed for this chapter mention Minneapolis on the first page. Prince is strongly identified with his hometown and home state. “Prince was claimed by the world but returned to Minnesota,” said Steve Rushen in Time Magazine (May 4, 2016, online). Now the world goes to Minnesota to remember Prince. Since his death – when his “hot flame” went out - fans have flocked to Minneapolis and the communities around it, turning them into places of pilgrimage (Hahn & Tiebert, 2017; Willoughby, 2017; Yang, 2017, Zuenge, 2017).

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Prince died in Paisley Park, his recording studio and home on April 21, 2016, leaving behind a large catalogue of published music, a mountain of unpublished music, stunned colleagues, unprepared heirs, and no will. He left behind confusion, mystery, and rumors. He left behind the people who may have relied on his and loved him most, his fams (Tiebert, 2017).

Prince was alone when he died from an accidental fentanyl overdose. A week earlier he’d overdosed on a plane and been administered a rescue drug (Felton & Helmore, 2016). He was in contact with an addiction specialist and possibly on the verge of receiving care when he died. Millions grieved, but at first very few grasped that he was reliant on drugs he took to manage chronic pain.

Prince’s childhood has been described as lonely and unhappy (Toure, 2013; Hahn & Tiebert, 2017). Legend says his father locked him in a room where, deprived of human company, he learned how to play music (Ro, 2011; Thorne, 2012). His unpredictable parents also opened pathways to the star he would become in surprising ways. His father bought him his first guitar. His stepfather took him to see his idol, James Brown (Hahn & Tiebert, 2017).

By the time he was in junior high Prince’s priority was music. His first band, 94 East, had one competitor in the Twin Cities, a band called Flyte Tyme. At some point, Flyte Time also became Prince’s band and morphed into The Time, his most successful side project (Thorne, 2012).

Warner Brothers signed Prince when he was a teenager – a big record deal that was renewed more times than either Prince or Warner Brothers enjoyed. (Thorne, 2012; Hawkins & Niblock, 2013). Prince was a genius, an innovator, and a creative whirlwind.

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He appeared onstage wearing nothing but a trench coat and underwear. He was rude, and he wished we all were nude (Prince, 1980, “Controversy”). His music couldn’t be categorized, and neither could his persona.

His band, The Revolution, was as impossible to categorize as he was, and they became his expanded image. He wrote, produced, and played all the music (Thorne, 2017; Wall, 2016). The Revolution went with him on tour and starred with him in the blockbuster career-defining movie Purple Rain, along with The Time. Prince was already a star but Purple Rain made him a mega superstar. His light was brilliant, and it pulled everyone around it into it. He toured for two years. He won all the awards. He was arguably the biggest pop star in the world.

Unusually prolific, Prince released 39 studio albums, five soundtrack albums, four live albums, and five compilation albums during his lifetime (Azhar, 2016). He also released albums under other names and masterminded side projects like Vanity Six and The Time (Draper, 2011; Hahn & Tiebert, 2017). He mentored protégés and young musicians, serving as composer, producer, backup singer, and instrumentalist on their albums (Wall, 2016) He contributed songs to other popular artists, including Chaka Khan, The Bangles, and Sinead O’Connor (Azhar, 2016). He won scores of awards.

When he died, reports surfaced that he had enough unreleased material locked away in a vault to release an album a year for a century (Brown, 2017).

Throughout his career Prince was almost always on tour or preparing for a tour, playing to huge audiences in the 1980s and early 1900s, and consistently selling out venues all over the world (Draper, 2011). A widely accepted view is that the stress on Prince’s body from touring led to the chronic pain he managed with painkillers, but his

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pain was not evident to audiences (Hahn & Tiebert, 2017). He seemed to have boundless energy.

It would be a disservice to Prince to not explicitly point out the dialectic of raunchy sexuality and sincere religious faith in his music (and in his life). His sexual appetite and his hunger for the sacred existed simultaneously (Wall, 2016). Even as he danced around on stage, wearing nothing but women’s panties and thigh-high stockings, singing about sexuality being all you’ll ever need (Prince, 1981, “Sexuality”), he was also singing about God. Sex and spirit were intertwined, not in a tepid or vague way, but fervently and righteously (Lewis-Giggetts, 2016; Toure, 2016).

In 1985, when Prince’s “Darling Nikki” threw Tipper Gore and the Parents’ Music Resource Center into such moral panic that they caused parental advisory stickers be placed on all his albums (Schonfeld, 2015), Prince was also singing, “I’m not a human. I’m a dove. I’m your conscious. I am love. All I really need is to know that you believe” (Prince and The Revolution, 1984, “I Would Die for You”). As he aged, his urge to sing obscenely flickered, and his wish to sing explicitly about the sacred burned more brightly (Lewis-Giggetts, 2016). Dirty Mind (1980) gave way to The Rainbow Children (2001), an album about the Jehovah’s Witness faith, but Prince always worshipped both spirit and body, singing on the final album released before his death, “Extraloveable honey, don’t you wanna take a bath with me” (Prince, 2016).

Evident in his biographies and interviews, as well as in the storylines of his movies, are Prince’s independence, non-conformity, desire for control, perfectionism, and solitary, colossal productivity. Long before he finished one project he moved to the next (Toure, 2013; Wall, 2016). While he was imagining Purple Rain, he was also writing,

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performing, and producing his popular side artists. While he was making the movie Purple Rain, he was imagining the album Around the World in a Day. When he was on tour for Purple Rain, he was thinking about his next movie and about the dissolution (still years away) of The Revolution (Hahn & Tiebert, 2017; Toure, 2013).

Warner Brothers didn’t like this about their prolific recording genius (Draper, 2011; Wall, 2016). Prince wanted to put out multiple albums (or albums with multiple discs) every year, but Warner Brothers worried that he would over-saturate the market and tried to rein him in (Wall, 2016). Prince launched a campaign to free himself from the record company. He declared that he wouldn’t release any new music for them, only old songs he’d stored in his vault. He changed his name to O(+>, an unpronounceable symbol (Thorne, 2012; Toure, 2013; Walsh, 2017).

All of this alienated Warner Brothers and millions of casual fans (Thorne, 2012), but during this period Prince solidified his Purple Family (Katz, 2016), changed the rules for music distribution, and redefined ways that artists interact with their public (Hogan, 2016). When he was released from his Warner Brothers contract in 1996 Prince immediately put out ten albums of new material, some through subscription online downloads directly from the studio to the fams (Thorne, 2012; Hogan, 2016, Walsh, 2017). For the rest of his life, Prince had full control of his output and was, essentially, an independent artist (Ro, 2011; Thorne, 2012).

Prince never recreated the commercial success of Purple Rain and never recaptured many of the fans he alienated during his battle with Warner Brothers (Toure, 2013; Greenman, 2017b). However, in gaining control over his music and career, Prince could do what he wanted (Draper, 2011; Katz, 2016). His long innovative career was

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recognized in the 21st century by the deep devotion of fams, sellout tours in Europe and Japan, and recognition by the Grammys and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (Draper, 2011; Wall, 2016).

Prince opened Paisley Park for parties and Celebrations (Draper, 2011). He played spontaneous, secret concerts for fams and friends. He invited fams to sound checks. He played surprise all-night post-concert parties in small clubs all over the world.

He did these things because he wanted to do them. He used his freedom fully – filling his portfolio with accomplishments that were sometimes incredible (like the groundbreaking online subscription site, NPG Music Club) and sometimes awful (like the rock opera, Glam Slam Ulysses). As Ben Greenman says in Dig if You Will the Picture, “I came to realize that even Prince sometimes had to get up on the step stool and, sighing, reset the ’Days Since Last Accident’ sign” (2017a, p. 5).

It appears that as his musical star ascended almost all of Prince’s energy went into creating, making, playing, and promoting music, while other aspects of his life receded (Hahn & Tiebert, 2017). Biographers know about Prince through his music, through the persona he created that went with it, and through the impact he made on popular culture (Toure, 2013; Greenman, 2017a). His personal life is more obscure (Ro, 2011). He loved to be with beautiful women, and he married twice, but Prince seems not to have been close to many people.

As Tiebert and Hahn stated in their 2017 book The Rise of Prince: 1958 – 1988, “Part of him wanted to be more revealing, but another part just wanted to withdraw to the literal and figurative cocoon that was Paisley Park” (p. 15). In difficult times, such as when his son was born with severe birth defects and died within a week, Prince

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manipulated the truth, counteracting reality with public denial, and retreating into his studio and onto the stage (Draper, 2011; Wall, 2016; Garcia, 2017). Along with his brilliance and seemingly super-human energy, he had many defenses to protect him, including an omnipotent fantasy that he could control his world. (Toure, 2013).

Prince didn’t eat meat because the body is a temple and killing is a sin (Garcia, 2017; Wall, 2016). He didn’t drink alcohol or smoke marijuana, and he didn’t permit drinking or smoking in his home. He had a huge sexual appetite (Garland, 2016; LewisGiggetts, 2016; Nelson, 2016; Garcia, 2017; Greenman, 2017a; Greenman, 2017b), and he celebrated this about himself, fitting it into his beliefs about the sacred (LewisGiggetts, 2016; Toure, 2016). Prince liked to play basketball and ping pong, and he liked breakfast and baths (Jones, 2016). He loved Minneapolis (Riemenschneider, 2016; Rushen, 2016; Zuege, 2017). He was charitable (Draper, 2011; Zuege, 2017). He was raised in an evangelical church, always had a strong spirituality and then, through conversation with bass player Larry Graham, became a whole-hearted Jehovah’s Witness (Lewis-Giggett, 2016).

He was an enigma. Co-existent with his generous acts and kind beliefs, Prince trashed relationships and knocked down his old houses (Draper, 2011; Thorne, 2012; Garcia, 2017). He failed to pay creditors (Draper, 2011) and sued fans who got out of line (Hogan, 2016). In spite of this, fams, friends, former colleagues, and even his ex-wife, speak reverently about him (Garcia, 2017; Hahn & Tiebert, 2017).

What is clear, reading biographical material or talking to fams is that Prince was almost universally admired for being a multi-talented genius, a cultural “force of nature” (Hillary Clinton, as cited in Yoo, 2016, online), an innovator, an icon, and the voice of a

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generation (Toure, 2013). He was not well known for being a person, but he was incredibly well known for being a symbol – the symbol (Hahn & Tiebert, 2017).

For the last twenty years, whenever I was up at five in the morning, I knew that Prince was up, too, somewhere. When Prince went away, five a.m. felt different. It wasn’t a shared experience anymore. It was just a lonely hour, a cold time before the sun came up. (Questlove, as cited in Greenman, 2017, p. xiii) An often repeated sentiment – from Questlove’s Rolling Stone remembrance after Prince’s death, to Hahn and Tiebert’s book, The Rise of Prince: 1958-1988, and to Mick Wall’s 2016 biography, Prince: Purple Reign – is that Prince was always out there. At first, when he expressed his dirty mind in controversial ways, he was out there on the edge of fams’ fantasies about race, class, gender, sexuality, and desire. Then he was out there another way – as a containing, seemingly eternal fantasy object, an externalized, “comforting feeling” (Walsh, 2016, xiii).

Since Prince died, many people have written about him and, recently, about his post-death legacy (Katz, 2016; Andrews, 2018; Heller, 2018; Petrusich, 2018). What happens now that Prince’s living person is no longer in Chanhassen, Minnesota at 5 a.m.?

Paisley Park has opened as a museum and is hosting Paisley Park after Dark dance parties, as Prince once did (Draper, 2011; Petrusich, 2018). Prince’s bands are touring (Kot, 2017). Prince’s heirs sponsor large-scale events – including annual four-day, starstudded Celebrations (Bream, 2017; Reimenshchneider, 2017; Zuege, 2017; Bream, 2018). Last year’s Celebration highlight was a concert in a large Minneapolis venue where, backed by living members of his band Prince’s gigantic image towered over the

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stage and performed for three hours (in a concert film). More than ten thousand fams attended (Andrews, 2018; Bream, 2018).

Fan Studies Literature Anyone in academia, especially those who have written theses or dissertations, can attest to the emotional components of supposedly rational activity. A figure or topic can become the focal point of one’s life; anything even remotely connected to one’s research interests can have tremendous impact and obsessive appeal (Jenson, 1992, p. 22) The academic discipline of Fan Studies, has attracted researchers for more than thirty years. Related to Cultural Studies, the historical focus of Fan Studies has been on phenomena of fandom in popular culture rather than on the meanings of fandom for individual fans. Although some fan theorists utilize psychoanalytic ideas in their conceptualizations of fandom (Hinerman, 1992; Elliott, 1999; Hills, 2002, 2016; Stacey, 2003; Sandvoss, 2005), many regard psychoanalysis with suspicion. Conversely, psychoanalytic writers often disregard the experiences of fans, or when they do write about them, pathologize them (Elliott, 1999; Stacey, 2003).

To construct a study about fans, I cannot ignore the sizable body of Fan Studies research. That said, I am not a cultural theorist. My interest is on the individual fan, even when that fan is part of a larger fan community. It is important to recognize that the languages and intentions of psychoanalysis and Fan Studies are different (although they do sometimes overlap). When we describe the same situation I can’t assume we are

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looking for or seeing the same things within it. However, if the field of psychoanalysis has not yet found fans to be worth studying, I am grateful for those who have.

My knowledge of the Fan Studies discipline is rudimentary, so this introduction is brief. I focus on general background concepts and on writers’ observations of fan phenomena that I have also seen in preparing for this study. Although I have read many Fan Studies books and articles in preparation for writing this section, I rely primarily on Matt Hills’s comprehensive, Fan Culture (2002), Cornel Sandvoss’s thoughtful Fans (2004), and Zoe Fraade-Blanar and Aaron Glazer’s accessible Superfandom (2017).

Introduction to fan studies field.

Fan studies comprise an area of scholarly research focused on fans of popular media and on fan culture. Although it is common to be a fan, it is difficult to develop a single theory of fandom. Fandom defies easy classification. In Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture, fan theorist Henry Jenkins offers this definition of fans: Fans are broadly defined as individuals who maintain a passionate connection to popular media, assert their identity through their engagement with and mastery over its contents, and experiences social affiliation around shared tastes and preferences. (Jenkins, 1992, p. 1) Jenkins defines fan culture as, “The social and cultural infrastructures that support fan activities and interests” (1992, p. 211). He, along with many authors who followed, posits that fandom has commercial activity at its core. The fan object is almost always a

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money-making enterprise. (Bacon-Smith, 1992; Jenkins, 1992 and 2016; Hills, 2002).

However, as Lawrence Grossberg points out in his foundational article: There is no necessary reason why the fan relationship is located primarily on the terrain of commercial popular culture. But it is certainly the case that for the vast majority of people in advanced capitalist societies, this is increasingly the only space where the fan relationship can take place.

(Grossberg, 1992, p. 63) The productions of our idols are for sale, but as Jenkins and others point out, fans do considerably more with their fan objects than merely purchase and blandly consume them, and fan objects mean more to fans than the products they provide.

Different writers locate the beginning of modern popular fandom at different times and in different places. For example, Bruce Springsteen scholar Donald Cavicchi (2017) places it with young, middle-class music fans (sufferers of “musicomania�) in the 19th century (p. 109). Jenkins, however, places it in the hands of enthusiastic readers of mass-produced science fiction books in the early 20th century. These readers’ descendants were the Trekkies, the enduring fans of the mid-1960s TV show Star Trek. (Jenkins, 1992; Bacon-Smith, 1992).

Jenkins published Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture, about Star Trek fans in 1992, the same year that Camille Bacon-Smith published her own book about Trekkies, Enteprising Women: Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular Myth. A number of other theorist also published important books and articles about fans and fandom around the same time. Pieces from these works were collected in The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media (Lewis, 1992).

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Decades later, the academic study of fans is riding its third wave. The first was focused on popular culture fandoms as creative expressions of resistance to a dominant capitalist culture (Fiske, 1992; Sandvoss, 2004; Fraade-Blanar & Glazer, 2017). During the second the emphasis shifted significantly to fans as participants in the cultural status quo and to fandom as a reconstruction of larger society (Fiske, 1992, Hills, 2002).

The third wave has been concentrated on fandom as a form of personal expression and on fans as cultural producers (Sandvoss, 2005; Jenkins, 2016; Fraade-Blanar & Glazer, 2017). Over time, the perception (both within the discipline and in mainstream culture) has generally shifted away from fandom as a marginal pastime undertaken by disempowered people to fandom as a widespread, ordinary activity undertaken by most people for myriad pleasurable reasons (Jenkins, 2016, Fraade-Blanar & Glazer; and others).

There has also been a shift in the attitudes and approaches of fan theorists. Early theorists (who were often fans themselves) were eager to present fandom in new, nonpathologizing ways and were writing to build theory within their discipline. As accessible as they tried to make their work, they were academics writing for other academics, speaking a scholarly language and making observations from an authoritative distance (Lewis, 1992; Cavicchi, 1999; Hills, 2002; and others).

In an approach that attempts to humanize fandom, it seemed unethical to me to simply translate fans’ voices into academic jargon or to absolutely impose my worldview on those people who have trusted me enough to give their time and open up their lives to me. Instead, in the text, I have

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presented my experience as a fan, other people’s experiences as fans, and how those come together in fieldwork. (Cavicchi, 1999, 20) As the discipline took hold, Fan Studies theorists challenged their own authoritative distance from their subjects (Lewis, 1992; Cavicchi, 1999; Hills, 2002; Sandvoss, 2004; Fraade-Blanar & Glazer, 2017). Now writers tend to bring their subjective experiences into the field, deliberately approaching their research as simultaneous academics and fans, or “aca-fans” (Jenkins, 1992; Cavicchi, 1999; Hills, 2002 and 2014). This attempt to narrow the gap between academic authority and fan experience is ongoing (Hills, 2002 and 2014), and it comes with caution. Matt Hills, a scholar who is also a fan of many things, including The Who, Donald Winnicott and the X-Files, writes in Fan Studies (2002) that aca-fans must approach their research carefully, as they may be simultaneously too subjective because of their fandom and too outside their fandom by virtue of studying it.

The shift from physical to digital media is transforming perceptions and experiences of fandom (Hills, 2016; Sandvoss & Harrington, 2017). Fans are difficult to distinguish from ordinary audience members, and many fans are involved with multiple fandoms (Zwaan, Duits & Reijinders, 2014; Jenkins, 2016; Fraade-Blanar & Glazer, 2017). Fan cultures are more participatory, close-knit, and impactful (Jenkins, 2016).

Fans find friendship and homes in the “communities of imagination” (Hills, 2001, p. 190) of social networking groups (Hills, 2002 and 2016; Fraade-Blanar & Glazer, 2017).

Through social media, fans can share information, organize pilgrimages and other events, and make plans to meet, buy, sell, and trade their collections. They can connect through

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their shared love of their fan object, night and day, without ceasing (Hills, 2002; Jenkins, 2016; Fraade-Blanar & Glazer, 2017).

In some cases, fans also have more access to fan objects. In addition to expanded avenues through which to socialize and to purchase, trade and share products associated with their fan objects, fans can now critique and comment upon their productions, creating a somewhat reciprocal relationship between fan and fan object. (Fraade-Blanar & Glazer, 2017). Some artists interact directly with fans via Twitter and Instagram.

Sometimes these interactions impact the artists’ productions (Zwaan et al., 2014; Jenkins, 2016; Fraade-Blanar & Glazer, 2017). For example, in 2014, the same year Prince was interacting with some fans by suing them for sharing his music illegally online, he was also looking on social media and fan sites for inspiration. What he saw gave shape to the songs, “This Could Be Us,” and “Breakfast Can Wait” (Hogan, 2016).

Digital media can make being a fan easy and rewarding (Hills, 2014). Bingewatching TV shows, streaming favorite movies and music, and passionately critiquing and reviewing objects of our interest online have become widespread, ordinary activities.

The picture of the pathological fan has been painted over with an image of someone more mainstream (Jenkins, 2017). However, the idea still lingers that, in fandom, there can be too much of a good thing.

As a culture, we’re used to looking down on fandom. Our biggest critique, like that of the Victorian social reformers, is often a question of quantity.

Fans love what they love too much. (Fraade-Blanar & Glazer, 2017, p. 18)

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It is a matter of degree. Even particularly dedicated fans will sometimes downplay the extent of their passionate devotion for their fan objects, lest they appear fanatical, hysterical, too fan-y. (Fraade-Blanar & Glazer, 2017)

What next?

As in the rest of this review, I have chosen to concentrate on aspects of Fan Studies that resonate with this project. I share the perspective of third wave Fan Study theorists that fandom is a form of personal expression. I will focus on researchers who are open to using psychoanalytic ideas in their conceptualizations of fandom, and I’ve reviewed research about popular music fandom. Finally, I highlight literature about fan practices that I have read about or seen among fams since Prince’s death. Concentrating on observable activities in this section leaves ample room for analysis and interpretation in the chapters that follow.

Fans, fan objects and fan practices.

As stated above, although the phenomenon is commonplace, it’s not easy to define what it is to be a fan (Hills, 2002). Reiterating simply what has already been reported, a fan is someone who loves a fan object and for whom the fan object has special significance. In popular culture, fan objects are commodified or available for sale. Fans consume the products associated with their fan object, but the consumption, although important, is not as important as the meanings the fan object has for the fan. Sandvoss states that the fan participates in “regular, emotionally involved consumption” of the productions of the fan object (2005, p. 8).

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The fan object is a popular text, such as a celebrity, artist, book, music composition, or movie that provides the focus for the fan’s attention. The fan object is a commodity that is prized for personal reasons (Hills, 2002; Sandvoss, 2005). It is loved by the individual fan and shared with others. It becomes a “center of gravity that pulls a group of people together” (Fraade-Blanar & Glazer, 2017, p. 33). The fan object is a multivalent symbol, capable of containing myriad meanings (Doss, 1999; Hills, 2002; Sandvoss, 2005; Jenkins, 2016).

Fans do things with their fan objects and by observing their fan practices we can understand things about them and about their fandom (Sandvoss, 2005). Fraade-Blanar and Glazer describe fan practices as fan-created (as opposed to commercially created) activities that give fans “a sense of belonging and bind fans closer to a fan object by helping them incorporate it into the rhythm of their lives” (Fraade-Blanar & Glazer, 2017, p. 40).

Fan practices illustrate who the fan is through what the fan does (Fraade-Blanar & Glazer, 2017). Cavicchi says that Springsteen fandom contains a universe of participatory activities in which fans take part – including listening to Springsteen’s music, attending his concerts, making pilgrimages, and connecting with other fans through storytelling, shared experiences and gift giving (Cavicchi, 1998). Many writers describe the common elements of music fandom: listening to music (Duffett, 2017), performing rituals and enacting traditions (Doss, 1999; Zwaan, et al., 2016; Fraade-Blanar & Glazer, 2017); spending money and consuming the products of the fan object (Fiske, 1992; Jenkins, 1992; Hills, 2002; Sandvoss, 2005; Fraade-Blanar & Glazer, 2017, and others); collecting displaying, and sharing items associated with the fan object (Marcus, 1996; Cavicchi,

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1998; Doss, 1999; Fraade-Blanar & Glazer, 2017); and bringing others to fandom (Bacon-Smith, 1992; Jenkins, 1992; Marcus, 1996; Cavicchi, 1998; Doss, 1999; Hills, 2002; Sandvoss, 2005; Fraade-Glazer, 2017).

Becoming a fan.

How do fans become fans? Donald Cavicchi reports that the Springsteen fans he studied generally came to fandom one of two ways, both of which he describes as “conversions” (Cavicchi, 1998, p. 48). In the first, friends introduced the future fan to Springsteen’s music, which became positively linked with good times. Fandom grew out of pleasant associations. Cavicchi calls this “social first” conversion (p. 46). In the second, fandom hit out of the blue. The future fan heard a Springsteen song at just the right moment, it struck a chord, and that was that. Cavicchi calls this, “bolt of lightning” conversion (p. 48).

While fans often have trouble articulating exactly why they became fans, in their stories they dramatically portray the process of becoming a fan as a journey from one point to another. They indicate that it is a lasting and profound transition from an “old” viewpoint . . . to a “new” one filled with energy and insight. (Cavicchi, 1998, p.59) Cavicchi states that whether the becoming-a-fan phenomenon occurs as a consequence of having fun with friends or as the result of a spontaneous moment of surrender, coming to fandom involves a liminal journey in which the individual fan leaves behind the person he was and becomes someone new (Cavicchi, 1998). Hills similarly posits that there is a moment between non-fandom and fandom in which the fan

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is unable to account for his transition but is aware in the aftermath that something irreversible has occurred. Fandom changes the fan (Hills, 2002).

He [Prince] was sprawled on a bed, and a thin blue satin sheet was just barely covering him. He was looking right at me . . . On the floor was a large neon heart. This picture – and the sounds I was hearing – completely altered the trajectory of my music taste in a heartbeat. It was summer 1983. The record was 1999, and I was twelve years old. (Willoughby, 2017, p.3) Matt Hills writes that, in spite of the popularity and general acceptance of Cavicchi’s conceptualization, the transition from non-fandom to fandom is still not adequately understood (Hills, 2014). Hills feels that continued privileging of fan communities over individual fans skews the picture of fandom. A self-avowed fan of psychoanalysis, Hills expands Cavicchi’s vision of becoming-a-fan experiences utilizing Christopher Bollas’s idea of the transformational object. In the aesthetic moment of becoming a fan, the fan’s experience evokes that of the infant’s “symmetry and solitude” with his mother (Bollas, 1987, p. 31). Such a moment may feel like religious conversion or artistic reverie (Hills, 2014). It is unexpected and profound, and it awakens a new dimension in the fan.

Whether the conversion is solitary (as in bolt-of-lightning experiences) or communal (as in social-first experiences), Cavicchi (1998) believes that fandom inevitably becomes a social experience. Within a fan community, the recounting of these stories is an important activity that connects fans to one another and helps define the meanings of that fandom (Cavicchi, 1998; Fraade-Blanar & Glazer, 2017).

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Fan pilgrimages.

Fans often want to visit the places associated with their fan objects. Many fan theorists describe the geographical (or sometimes metaphorical or imagined) journeys as pilgrimages (Cavicchi, 1998; Aden, 1999; Hills, 2002; Sandvoss, 2005; Jenkins, 2016; Fraade-Blanar & Glazer, 2017). In Superfandom: How Our Obsessions Are Changing What We Buy and Who We Are, Fraade-Blanar and Glazer posit that pilgrimage “describes a journey to a place, not because of its beauty or location or any other intrinsic value, but for what it represents,” and they call the journey’s sought after quality “holiness” (Fraade-Blanar & Glazer, 2017, p. 34). In Fan Studies, Hills states that a fan pilgrimage is less tourism than a sacred journey. Fans undertake pilgrimages out of a desire to experience the fan object more deeply and to feel something special or unknown (Hills, 2002).

Hills asserts that fan pilgrimages do not indicate a breaking down of the barriers between what is imagined/fantasied and what is real, but, like other aspects of fandom, are evidence of fans’ abilities to play between the two in a third transitional space (Hills, 2002). Fans seek out the sites of their fan objects to both imagine themselves inhabiting the fan object’s world and to ground their fandom in lived experience. Hills state that the pilgrim’s gaze is “uncanny,” turning a mundane space into something meaningful (Hills, 2002, p. 148).

Sandvoss expands this, stating that pilgrim journeys “transform physical spaces into places through human interaction” (2005, p. 59). In Sandvoss’s formulation, fan pilgrims gather or meet at the sites of pilgrimage, “occupy” them and transform them

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through their emotional involvement (p. 59). It’s through shared meanings and experiences that the pilgrimage becomes significant. Through the “transformative bond of communitas,” a term associated with ritual theorist Victor Turner, fans create sacred spaces (Turner, 1982; Sandvoss, 2005, p. 59).

Cornel Sandvoss claims that “devotion” drives fans to make pilgrimages (2005, p.

61). Pilgrimages draw fans together. However, when the fan pilgrims arrive at their destination, each has their own experience. Sandvoss would say that a fan goes to Paisley Park, not to find the materially real Prince, but the Prince of the fan’s heart and imagination (2005). This means that places like Paisley Park contain many conflicting and divergent fan ideas and ideals. The material reality of the pilgrimage site is less significant than its symbolic meanings (Doss, 1999; Sandvoss, 2005).

Writer’s agree that pilgrimages are important to fans, but they have different ideas about how they work, and even in some cases about what they are. As noted above, Sandvoss states that a pilgrimage is significant when it takes place with other fans and also that it is a singular experience (Sandvoss, 2005). Cavicchi agrees that the existence of other fans is important to the pilgrimage, but he suggests that what draws pilgrims together is the recreation of the epic journey through storytelling after the pilgrimage has ended (Cavicchi, 1998). Cavicchi also agrees with Roger Aden, who states that these quests don’t have to be shared, and they don’t have to be physical journeys to geographical locations (Cavicchi, 1998, Aden, 1999). For Aden, a pilgrimage can be an internal experience – a deepening of the connection to the fan object in the fan’s mind through “textual roaming” (Aden, 1999, p. 93). Cornel Sandvoss (2005) further states that

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pilgrimages can be real, imaginary, or virtual. Fans can travel and find each other through electronic mass media and other imagined spaces shared by the fan community.

The girl on the seesaw is laughing for love is the color This place imparts (Paisley Park). Admission is easy, just say you Believe and come to this place in your heart. Paisley Park is in your heart.

(Prince and The Revolution, 1985, “Paisley Park”) Finally, Sandvoss suggests that fan spaces are physical or imaginary places that reflect “one’s place in the world, in which place and community become an extension of one’s self, and the self a reflection of place and community” (2005, p. 65). A pilgrimage to a space where fans can connect and “inhabit the world” of the fan object can create feelings of relatedness, reliability, and warmth and provide a sense of emotional safety (Hills, 2002, p. 144). For fans, this can feel like coming home (Sandvoss, 2005).

Pseudo-religiosity and connotative fog.

Whatever fans believe about their experiences of fandom and connection to their fan objects, many Fan Studies writers observe that fans’ devotion can appear religious or pseudo-religious. This does not mean that fans believe their fan objects are gods or angels (although some do), but that fandom arises out of a network of personal needs that includes “a search for values” (Cavicchi, 1999, p. 187), a need for “a modern mythology” (Fraade-Blanar & Glazer, 2017, p. 122), an “exhilarating yet comforting” feeling that we are part of something greater than ourselves (Fraade-Blanar & Glazer, 2017, p. 124), and a desire for something to fill the spaces inside us where religious feeling once resided (Hills, 2002).

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In Popular Stories and Promised Lands: Fan Cultures and Symbolic Pilgrimages, Roger Aden (1999) states that fandom fills the void created by the lack of a utopian, perfect world in which to believe. Cornel Sandvoss is careful to state that fandom is not religion, but he borrows an idea from Emil Durkheim’s The Elementary Forms of Religious Life and states that fandom provides a sense of the sacred apart from the profane everyday world (Durkheim, 1912/1995, Sandvoss, 2005).

While religion and fandom are arguably different realms of meaning, they are both centered around actions of devotion, which may create similarities of experience. (Cavicchi, 1998, p. 51) Cavicchi states that fans he interviewed were aware of the parallels between religious devotion and their devotion for Bruce Springsteen, but most believed that those were different kinds of devotion (Cavicchi, 1998). Sandvoss (2005) notes that, while most fans don’t think of their fan objects as gods or of their fandoms as religions, religious fans for whom faith is important may tend to frame their fan object in more divine ways. Elvis scholar Erica Doss (1998) backs this up when she observes that some Elvis fans vehemently deny that he is God or Jesus, while believing that he is able to intercede directly with God and Jesus on their behalf.

Many fans do not believe or state that their devotion to their fan object is religious, but the way that fans describe their experiences does frequently present fandom as outside the realm of ordinary experience. Several articles in The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media feature extensive quotes from fans that reveal their fantasies about the fan objects and fandoms (Hinerman, 1992; Vermorel & Vermorel, 1992). In these narratives, fans express desires and wishes of many kinds – to love and be

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loved, to be saved and to save, to be like and be liked (Hinerman, 1992; Vermorel & Vermorel, 1992). These fans love and sometimes hate the fan object. They want to possess and be possessed by the fan object (Vermorel & Vermorel, 1992). They fantasize that the fan object will come close to them, while relying on the objective reality that the fan object will never truly do so (Ehrenreich, Hess & Jacobs, 1992).

Fans’ feelings about fan objects and fandom can be difficult to comprehend.

Authors frequently refer to the narratives of fans as vague and lacking in self-reflexivity (Hills, 2002). Fans are often unable to articulate what they love about the fan object or what the fan object means to them (Cavicchi, 1998, Hills 2002; Sandvoss, 2005, and others). This makes fans different from other types of consumers. (The vacuum cleaner owner values the machine because it cleans the carpet.) Cavicchi notes that the Springsteen fans he studied had difficulty speaking objectively when asked what they loved about Springsteen and his music. “Fan accounts,” he said, “can be described as strikingly self-absent,” like transcendental states in religion (Cavicchi, 1998, p.50).

Sandvoss says that a “connotative fog” surrounds the object of fandom (2005, p. 136).

Hills suggests that this is because the fan object’s status hinges on “undecidability,” with opportunities for endless interpretation and the potential for fantasy that can’t be shut down by facts or proof (2002, p. 143).

It always happens that the latest single or album that comes out from him [Springsteen] in a way matches up with how I’m thinking. It’s almost uncanny. He expresses something that I’ve been thinking all along but haven’t really known how to say it, you know? (Cavicchi, 1999, p. 52)

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Sometimes fans describe a belief that the fan object is inside their minds – not literally reading their singular thoughts, yet somehow uncannily providing material that they need at just the moment in their lives that it presents itself (Hinerman, 1992; Cavicchi, 1998; Fraade-Blanar & Glazer, 2017). Hills describes this as a transitional phenomenon a la Donald Winnicott – did my views of the world come from this music, or does this music describe my view of the world? Does the fan create the fan object, or is the fan object waiting to be found (Hills, 2002)? Whether an author calls this a transitional phenomenon (Hills, 2002), something uncanny (Cavicchi, 1998), or some kind of pseudo-magical experience (Fraade-Blanar & Glazer, 2017), there is something beyond comprehension and objectivity about the fan’s relationship to the fan object.

Elvis: Death, religiosity, and the fan object.

Religion constitutes those practices and attitudes that imbue a person’s life with meaning by linking him or her to a transcendent reality: that which is beyond purely immanent, or secular, experience and understanding.

Assertions of affinity between religion and the generally privatized spiritual beliefs and practices of Elvis fans stem from their similarly supernatural and inexplicable character. (Doss, 1999, p. 76) When considering the religiosity of fandom, it’s instructive to consider the phenomenon of Elvis. Elvis was an extraordinarily famous cult icon, superstar and fan object during his life. He was both a commodity and a desired object – a symbol of dominant culture and resistance to it. He was sexy and saintly and responsive to the wishes and desires of his many devoted fans. He was ambiguous and available –

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accessible and otherworldly. Even after he was using drugs, eating too much, behaving bizarrely, and wearing shapeless white jumpsuits on stage, his fans adored him (Marcus, 1991; Doss, 1999; Hills, 2002).

When Elvis died he became an even bigger star than he had been when he was alive. In death, the symbol he’d already been during his life became impossible to contain (Marcus, 1991). Hills (2002) compares Elvis to a mythological hero who shows his mortal limits, transcends them with his death, and becomes immortal. In Elvis Culture (1999) Doss states that Elvis was the undisputed king of rock-and-roll in life, but in death he transformed from royal to angelic.

Marcus (1991) suggests that the idea of Elvis as god is simultaneously rejected and nourished by fans, and Doss more assertively claims that, “a veritable Elvis religion has emerged” (p. 72). Fans may dismiss this, but their actions say otherwise. Fans speak to Elvis and believe he helps them in times of trouble. They create rituals, relics, and sacred spaces, all evidence that suggests that fans’ love for Elvis has similarities to religious devotion (Marcus, 1991; Doss, 1999).

Elvis is also undeniably commercialized and commodified (Doss, 1999; Hills, 2002; Fraade-Blanar & Glazer, 2017). Nowhere is this more apparent that at Graceland, but, says Doss (1999), this is no different than sites of religious pilgrimages such as Lourdes and the Basilica of the Virgen de Guadalupe, where “devotional practices, material culture and commercialism are typically mixed” (p. 93). Is Graceland a theme park or is it a sacred site for fan pilgrims? Yes it is (Marcus, 1999; Aden, 1999; Doss, 1999; Hills, 2002).

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His fans’ reverence turns Elvis into an object of devotion and his home a sacred site. Fans have visited Graceland since Elvis Presley was alive, but on the days immediately following his death thousands of grief-stricken fans poured into Memphis and took up a vigil outside his home (Doss, 1999). In memory of Elvis, and of this spontaneous public outpouring, Elvis Week came into being. Held in Memphis every August, Elvis Week is an impressive memorial ritual for an icon who died more than 40 years ago. Every year, thousands of Elvis fans from all over the world gather at Graceland (Marcus, 1991; Doss, 1999; Hills, 2002; Sandvoss, 2005; Fraade-Blanar & Glazer, 2017). There are formal and informal activities ranging from concerts, to scholarly lectures, to raucous hotel parties, and solemn, gravesite observations.

The final and most famous event of the week is an all-night vigil next to the stone wall that runs along the busy street in front of Graceland. This vigil has many secular elements, including a “Bic-flicking encore summons,” but it also feels strongly religious (Doss, 1999, p. 95). A solemn processional files along the wall, up the driveway, and to the Meditation Garden where Elvis is buried. The vigil ends at his grave. People leave offerings – notes, candles, photos, money, flowers, art, teddy bears, domestic animals, crutches, wheelchairs, and women’s panties. Whatever Elvis is to his fans – friend, lover, intercessor, angel, god, all of the above, or something else – it is clear in that moment that he is very significant. The Meditation Garden on that night is indistinguishable from a devotional pilgrimage site on a high holy day (Doss, 1999; Hills, 2002; Fraade-Blanar & Glazer, 2017).

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Fantasy, Group Experience, Death and Grief Although psychoanalytic literature has largely overlooked popular culture we can still learn things about culture – and about individuals within culture – from psychoanalytic literature. Freud wrote about culture (Freud, 1913, 1921, 1930) and about groups of all sizes, from groups of one (the ego and the ego ideal), to large public institutions (Freud, 1921). Later, post-Kleinian theorist Wilfred Bion took up the topic of groups from his own perspective (Bion, 1955, 1961). These and other psychoanalytic writers approached the culturally binding phenomena of religion, music, and art as cultural experiences, the importance of storytelling, mythmaking, and the cultural role of the poet and the prophet (Freud, 1913, 1921; Arlow, 1986; Reynoso, 2016).

Some psychoanalytic authors have written about patients’ and communities’ emotional reactions to the deaths of public figures like King George (Fairbairn, 1936), President Franklin D. Roosevelt (Sterba, 1946) and President John F. Kennedy (Kirschner, 1964-1965). Most important, psychoanalytic writers, beginning with Freud, have explored the fantasy-laden erotic/loving and identifying transferences patients and members of groups have developed for their analysts and leaders (Freud & Breuer, 1895; Freud, 1912, 1915).

This chapter utilizes the organizational strategy of funneling – moving from literature that is related to the phenomenon of fandom but not psychoanalytic, to psychoanalytic literature that evokes the central phenomenon of Prince fandom. In this section of the literature I look at psychoanalytic writing about fantasy, groups, death, and mourning supported by relevant vignettes from other fields, most often from fan studies, but also from music history, feminist theory, and death studies.

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I want to be your fantasy.

Under the bright stars of a cool Memphis night, we consummated our love. It was more than just making love. Elvis’ body washed away all the shame and dirtiness I had known before. He elevated me from a degraded child to a woman who knew the ecstasy of submission. (deBarbin, 1987, p.

45) The word, “fantasy” is used widely in both psychoanalysis and fan studies. I will look at the concept in the section that follows, beginning where the last section ended, with Elvis. I will focus on Freud’s concepts of fantasy/phantasy1 and also on Melanie Klein’s, as articulated by Susan Isaacs (1948, 1952). Examining the idea of fantasy/phantasy – from Freud’s Oedipal child adapting to reality to Isaac’s infant making sense of the world - will open up related topics of interest to a psychoanalytic study of fandom, including daydreamers, creative writers, and poets, the uses and functions of groups, and loss and mourning.

According to Stephen Hinerman, Elvis Presley, who has been materially dead for decades, lives on “in the fantasy life of almost all who live in the Western world” (1992, p. 115). In the Fan Studies text, “I’ll Be Here with You,” Hinerman uses the stories of two heterosexual couples and three individual female Elvis fans to explore fandom psychoanalytically. Hinerman presents the fantasied Elvis interactions compassionately,

1

Regarding the spelling of “phantasy/fantasy,” James Strachey, editor of the Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, said, “The spelling of this word causes a good deal of annoyance” (Strachey, 1966, p. xxiv). I’ll use “fantasy” for conscious fantasy and “phantasy” or “unconscious phantasy” for unconscious phantasy. In quotations I’ll use the spellings used by the authors.

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stating that fantasy is ubiquitous, largely adaptive, and essential to human existence (1992).

Hinerman introduces his subjects by stating the psychoanalytic perspective that it doesn’t matter whether a fantasy correlates with objective reality. Fantasies have their own, psychical reality and are outside of the categories of truth (Freud, 1887, 1911, 1916; Isaacs, 1948, 1952; Klein, 1952; Spillius, 2001; Steiner, 2003; Hinerman, 1992).

Hinerman and many other Fan Studies scholars assert that stars like Elvis are obvious ready-made fantasy objects (Ehrenreich, et al., 1992; Vermorel and Vermorel, 1992; Marcus, 1994; Doss, 1999; Bloland, 1999; Cowan-Jenssen & Goodison, 2004; Reynoso, 2016). Objectively unknown to fans their images and products are everywhere, and they are available to be used by fans and to receive fans’ projected longings and desires (Cavicchi, 1998; Cowan-Jenssen & Goodison, 2004; Sandvoss, 2005). A star becomes “a distant object intimately related to” (Reynoso, 2016, p. 185).

Hinerman proposes that his subjects’ Elvis fantasies serve two purpose. First, their fantasied relationships with Elvis provide ego support and tools for coping in an unsatisfactory and unsatisfying world that has disempowered them (a woman who feels unable to leave her house finds the strength to do so when she feels Elvis’s presence).

Second, moments with Elvis “suture” traumatic threats to psychological well-being (a couple whose child died is comforted by their belief that Elvis has taken her to heaven) (Hinerman, 1992, p. 109) Hinerman asserts that his subjects need their fantasies of Elvis because culture prohibits them from expressing their sexuality, oddness, or unquenchable grief. The subjects’ fantasies work around their internal prohibitions and enhance their self-concepts (Freud, 1930; Sandler and Nagera, 1963; Hinerman, 1992).

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In one fantasy, a woman trying to quietly mourn the overwhelming loss of both Elvis and her stepsister in the same year uses imagined conversations with Elvis to help her through her secret grief: I would ask him what he was doing, and where he was, and things about his life, personal things mostly, and then I would imagine him giving his answers back to me. I would try to imagine what his voice would sound like as he gave his answers back to me. (Grant, in Hinerman, 1992, p.

121).

In another, a troubled and scared teenager who is disconnected from her family reports that Elvis appeared and calmed her at the birth of her baby: The doctors and nurses were all around me in these white gowns, looking at me. Tight there among them, Elvis Presley appeared. He smiled and winked at me. He said, “Relax, Bess, it’s O.K. I’ll be here with you . . .”

Then, when the baby came it was he who said, “it’s a boy!” For an Elvis Presley fan there can’t be a bigger thrill than hearing Elvis himself telling you you have a new baby. (Carpenter in Hinerman, 1992, p. 128) The stories in “I’ll Be Here with You” are conscious fantasies that have been verbalized in narratives. Some are like daydreams or delusions. Some might be based in material fact (deBarbin, 1987). However, as stated above, that misses the point. These fantasies are psychically real to those who have them. Elvis is a comforting, containing, helpful presence that supports, protects, and cares for these fans.

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Freudian phantasy.

At last came the reflection that, after all, one had no right to despair because one has been deceived in one’s expectations; one must revise those expectations. If hysterical subjects trace back their symptoms to traumas that are fictitious then the new fact that emerges is precisely that they create such scenes in phantasy. (Freud, 1914, p. 17) In 1897, Sigmund Freud wrote to his friend Wilhelm Fleiss that he’d had a realization. During the course of analysis his hysterical patients were consistently revealing that their fathers seduced them when they were children. At first he took as fact that these seductions had occurred and were responsible for his patients’ illnesses. But when he heard it over and over he began to doubt. Freud wrote to Fleiss, “such a widespread extent of perversity toward children is, after all, not very probable” (Freud, 1897, p. 259).

If the seductions hadn’t happened, but his patients weren’t lying, what was happening? Freud hypothesized that his patients had, in childhood, fantasized their seductions, forgotten them, and then “remembered” them. Their fantasies had been banished to the unconscious, where they were unfettered from material reality. When they appeared as content during psychoanalytic work, they may not have been factual, but they were physically true.

When I had pulled myself together I was able to draw the right conclusions from my discovery: namely, that the neurotic symptoms were not related directly to actual event but to wishful phantasies, and that as far

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as the neurosis was concerned physical reality was of more importance than material reality. (Freud, 1925, p. 34) In his early writing, Freud indicated that fantasies were like daydreams, romances, and fictions, and like the secondary revisions of dreams (Freud, 1916). They were conscious and generally not confused with reality (Freud, 1990). Like dreams, fantasies (daydreams) were compromise formations – wish fulfillments benefitting from the relaxation of censorship (Sandler & Nagera, 1963). When Freud first used the phrase “unconscious phantasy,” it wasn’t clear what he meant – a hypnoid state or reverie (Freud and Breuer, 1895), or a psychotic delusion (Freud, 1907).

In “Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning,” Freud described a child’s satisfaction-driven inner world, powered by illusion upon which reality is gradually imposed (Freud, 1911; La Planche & Pontalis, 1964). A baby, first held and fed by the breast/mother, longs for the breast when it is absent. The baby desires to feed and feel the pleasure of sucking. He hallucinates the absent breast and forestalls unpleasure.

Fantasy is linked to pleasure and desire. Freud (1908) said, “The motive forces of phantasies are unsatisfied wishes, and every single phantasy is a fulfillment of a wish, a correction of unsatisfying reality (p. 146). Desires form around memory traces set down in infancy of satisfaction, wholeness, and merger with the breast/mother.

The pre-Oedipal child doesn’t have words to express the perfect satisfaction she has lost, and she is driven to seek and re-enact her earliest, undifferentiated pleasure (Sandler & Nagera, 1963). The resolution of the Oedipal phase however requires that she fit her drives into socially acceptable forms – language and self-control. Her desires are forbidden, so she imagines a wish-fulfilling scene that allows for some instinctual

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discharge. She can’t get what she wants, but in fantasy she can. She represses her desire for pure pleasure into the unconscious, where it lives as unconscious phantasy. Desire is not gone, but it is disguised (Freud, Introductory Lectures, 1917, Sandler & Nagera, p.

167).

Over the many years of his career, Freud returned to the ideas of fantasy, daydream, and unconscious phantasy again and again. Daydreaming, Freud said (1925), is a universal activity. Everyone has fantasies and everyone uses fantasy and daydreaming throughout their lives (Freud, 1916). As previously stated, fantasies are compromise formations and wish-fulfillments, and they are most often about sex or power. (Freud, 1909, 1916). Fantasies arise at the end of the Oedipal phase when the reality principle comes into ascendancy, and they provide a way to get around prohibitions regarding instincts (Freud, 1910). They are dynamic and economic (Freud, 1916). If a fantasy is too intense and unleashes too much libido, it is repressed into the unconscious (Freud, 1917). If a fantasy is too “luxuriant,” it can lead to neurotic illness (Freud, 1909, p. 148). Fantasies are revealed through the transference (Freud, 1901).

In Introductory Lectures, in the lecture about dreams, Freud (1916) gave a concise description of daydreams. Both dreams and daydreams are psychical as opposed to material reality; both are tied to the drives and benefit from the temporary relaxation of the internal censor. In daydreams, however, reality testing remains intact and the course of the daydream is within the conscious control of the daydreamer. “The hero of the daydream,” Freud said, “is always the subject himself, either directly or by an obvious identification with someone else” (Freud, 1916, p. 51). Although rooted in the erotic or in ambition, a daydream can have any plot the daydreamer can imagine. Daydreams shift

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and change with the moods and life circumstances of the daydreamer. Each daydreamer has her idiosyncratic ways of daydreaming – from monetary vignettes to heroic, epic adventures that continue to unfold from childhood to death (Freud, 1916).

Freud claimed that, “As people grow up, then, they cease to play” (1909, p. 145).

Adults fantasize and daydream, laugh at jokes, and savor good music, and these activities are like play in childhood (Freud, 1909, 1924). In “Creative Writers and Daydreaming,” Freud (1909) looked at a particular relationship between play and adulthood. Unlike an ordinary grown-up who hides his daydreams in his imagination, the creative writer brings his daydreams into the open, presenting them as fiction for other people to read and enjoy. Instead of using them as a temporary escape or losing himself in them and succumbing to neurotic illness, the creative writer is able to use his daydreams and his imagination to create art and entertainment for his audience.

The creative writer does the same as a child at play. He creates a world of phantasy which he takes very seriously – that is, which he invests with large amounts of emotion – while separating it sharply from reality.

(Freud, 1909, p.144) Creative people of all kinds, including artists, writers, musicians, scientists, and other people who do work that they love, Freud said, use their fantasies to create (Freud, 1909, 1910, 1916, 1925, 1930). People with less overt creativity, he said, could also use fantasy in pleasurable, socially acceptable ways – in humor, in enjoyment of the arts, and in engagement with culture (Freud, 1930). As Freud said in An Autobiographical Study, “It is only a step from the phantasies of individual neurotics to the imaginative creations of groups and people as we find them in myths, legends, and fairy tales” (1925, p. 69).

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Kleinian phantasy.

The principle importance of Isaacs’s paper, it seems to me, is to be found in her idea that phantasy is the process that creates meaning, and is the form in which all meanings – including feelings, defense ‘mechanisms,’ impulses, bodily experiences, and so on – exist in unconscious mental life.

(Ogden, 2011, p. 940) British psychoanalysts from the late 1920s on have been strongly influenced by Melanie Klein. Affected by her pioneering work psychoanalyzing children, Klein’s theory focused on tension, anxiety, aggression, and other strong emotions that she believed colored an infant’s experience (Klein, 1946; Klein & Riviere, 1964). It also focused on the defenses enacted to manage these powerful self-states, and on the ways these states persisted over time and were tempered by the child’s life experiences – especially her earliest experiences with the mother and of feeding (Klein, 1946, 1957; Klein and Riviere, 1964). Phantasy is one way a child understands herself and defends against anxieties (Isaacs, 1948; Klein, 1952). The child utilizes primitive defenses such as projection, introjection, projective identification, and splitting, and their use contributes to phantasies that objects are either persecuting or benign (Klein, 1952).

Klein’s theories alarmed continental psychoanalysts, whose interpretations of Freud’s work were taking them in different directions (Grosskurth, 1986; R. Steiner 1991). Her concept of unconscious phantasy was particularly controversial. In “The Nature and Function of Phantasy,” psychoanalyst Susan Isaacs sought to clarify the ways Klein and her followers were expanding Freud’s theory (Isaacs, 1943; R. Steiner, 1991).

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Isaacs emphasized the significant impact that psychoanalyzing children had on conceptualizing phantasy. Earlier theories had been built on the basis of the reconstructions of adult patients. Moving forward from Freudian drive and structural theories into a theory of internal object relations, Isaacs wrote about the infant’s mental life happening within the infant, almost from birth. The actual person of the mother is critically important to the infant’s well-being, but the most significant relationship to the mother is an internal, phantasied relationship. Phantasy exists from earliest infancy and forms the basis of all unconscious life, throughout life (Klein, 1946; Isaacs, 1948; Spillius, 2001; Steiner, 2003; Ogden, 2011). Regarding the reality of phantasy, Isaacs said, “To understand unconscious mental life we have to let go of our prejudice for external reality” (1948, p. 80). Isaacs asserted that unconscious phantasy isn’t simply, as Freud said, an unconscious mental process, but is the “psychic reality of the unconscious” (1952, p. 81), and, as her colleague Joan Riviere had asserted earlier, the whole of “the subjective interpretation of experience” (Riviere in Isaacs, 1948, p. 41).

Unlike adults, in whom there is usually a sense of body and mind and who symbolize experience using language, infants phantasy in the body and have no sense of a distinction between inside and out, body and mind (Isaacs, 1948). Phantasies, Isaacs said, begin in body sensations and feelings that are tied to libidinal and aggressive drives.

Later they become defenses and symptoms, as well as more adaptive ways to inhibit drives, such as daydreams and creative work, as described by Freud (Freud, 1915, 1925, 1930; Isaacs, 1948).

The first phantasies are wish-fulfillments related to feeding and the breast (Isaacs, 1948). Isaacs stated, “Phantasy content is always ultimately traceable to thoughts and

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feelings about the workings and content of one’s own body in relation to the working and contents of the body of the other” (1948, p. 86). The baby seeks to find herself – her own body – in every object she encounters. (Klein, 1926), and this primary identification eventually leads to symbol formation, creativity, thinking, and a sense of what is real (Isaacs, 1948).

Although early phantasies are omnipotent and subject to primary process, material reality “forces itself upon the attention of the child, in one way or another, early and continuously” (Isaacs, 1948, p. 93). As the baby interacts with the external world – touching, mouthing, seeing, and reaching for it – inner and outer experiences inform one another, and she begins to learn from experience (Isaacs, 1948). Phantasying supports the need to learn about the real world (Ogden, 2011).

The child’s make-believe play is thus significant not only for the adaptive and creative intentions which when fully developed mark out the artist, the novelist and the poet, but also for the sense of reality, the scientific attitude, and the growth of hypothetical reasoning. (Isaacs, 1948, 96) As Freud said, Isaacs agreed that adults’ fantasies follow from child’s play, and creative orientations toward living and working begin in phantasies (Freud, 1909, 1910, 1930). Freud, however, was speaking (mostly) about conscious fantasies (daydreams), and Isaacs was speaking about unconscious phantasy. Phantasy and material reality are “qualities of a unitary experience” (Isaacs, 1948, 94). Knowledge about and investment in the material world would not unfold without a foundation in phantasy (Isaacs, 1948; Ogden, 2011).

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Is fandom pathological?

Fan theorist Matt Hills (2002) seems to echo sentiments of both Isaacs and Freud when he says that fandom is like child’s play, and that it facilitates both creativity and investment in the world. Through engagement with their fan object, fans are able to “play across the boundaries,” between fantasy and reality (Hills, 2002, p. 134). A Freudian daydreamer, Hills’s fan maintains reality testing while indulging pleasurable fantasies.

Hills declares himself a fan of Donald Winnicott, and states that the concept of the transitional object could further illuminate fan phenomena. The transitional object is a child’s first possession – the first “not me” – experienced as both internal and external to the child (Winnicott, 1971, p. 1). The child does not know whether he has created or found this object, which seems to exist both inside and outside him. Navigating this transitional space between internal and external reality, the child develops the capacity for playing, a capacity he maintains throughout life, although the ways he expresses it may change. Winnicott (1986) claims that adults enter this transitional realm when they engage deeply with art and religion. Hills says adults also enter it through fandom.

Adults, like children, Hills says, have some difficulty navigating inside and outside, reality and fantasy throughout our lives. Fandom is a kind of play, a way to exist inbetween (Hills, 2002).

Psychoanalyst and cultural theorist Anthony Elliott feels differently about fans and the boundaries between reality and fantasy. As a Kleinian psychoanalyst, he believes that the boundaries between inside and out, self and other are very fluid. “The self may need to keep inside and outside apart,” he says, “but at the level of the unconscious one is inserted into the other, and they become all mixed up and tangled” (Elliott, 1999, p. 25).

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Most of the time, fandom is a benign pleasurable activity, but sometimes, if the lines between fan and celebrity blur in the fan’s fantasy, fandom can become a sickness.

In Mourning John Lennon, Elliott writes at length about the role of phantasy and primitive defenses in fandom, and he describes Lennon’s murderer, Mark David Chapman, as projecting his idealizing phantasies into Lennon and then killing him for not living up to them. Elliott asserts that Chapman’s relationship with Lennon (which was an internal relationship) was inherently violent, and he states that this is the case with all fan to fan object relationships because they are based in the primitive defense of splitting (Klein, 1935; Elliott, 1999).

Elliott’s assessment of the inherent violence of fandom does little to advance the argument that fandom is a pleasurable, healthy, playful activity widely enjoyed by humans. It is not Elliott’s intention to make a statement about normative expressions of fandom, but to consider the dynamics of fandom. However, his theory about Chapman’s violent projections does promote the narrative that a devoted fan could be mentally ill.

In “Fandom as Pathology,” Jolie Jenson (1992) writes, not as a psychoanalyst but as a cultural theorist, about the tendency to consider devoted fans as either obsessed loners or hysterical fanatics. Writing about a perception that is changing (but has not completely changed), Jenson stated that admitting she was a fan delegitimized her in some academic circles, even though she was a professor who had written scholarly papers about her fan object, Patsy Cline. Jenson claims this tendency to denigrate fans comes not so much from any actual pathology of fans, as from a need to create a deviant, pathological Other which is not like us. This is another form of primitive splitting, not at the intrapsychic level, but at interpersonal and cultural levels.

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Are fans pathological? No (Hills, 2002). Yes (Elliott, 1999). That’s not the right question (Jenson, 1992).

Group process.

It was absolute pandemonium. Girls fainting, screaming, wet seats. The whole hall went into some kind of state, almost like collective hypnotism.

I’d never seen anything like it. (Andy Lothian, in Lynskey, 2013) When the Beatles arrived in the US, the girls were ready. Advanced promotions – including a TV newsreel that featured footage of screaming mobs of teenaged girls called, “The Beatles Come to Town” – heralded their arrival (Lynskey, 2013). Popular radio stations played Beatles music non-stop and gave away buttons, stickers, and posters that declared, “The Beatles are Coming” (Ehrenreich, et al., 1992). The band touched down and the girls went wild. Beatlemania had arrived.

In “Beatlemania: Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” (1992), cultural theorists Barbara Ehrenreich, Elizabeth Hess and Gloria Jacobs explore the ecstatic uprising of young white females that exploded in the US when the Beatles came on the popular music scene in the early 1960s. Beatlemania in America was a convergence of pop culture, artistic output and media hype with pre-feminist white middle-class society, teenaged girl subculture, and the experiences, perceptions and fantasies of each fan (Ehrenreich, et al., 1992).

The Beatles were, in many ways, excellent receivers of everything the girls were projecting (although the band was so unhinged by their experiences on the road that they stopped touring completely in 1966 [Elliott, 1999; Lynskey, 2013]). They were distant

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fantasy objects. The girls were unlikely to ever be confronted by John, Paul, George, or Ringo in the flesh. And there were four Beatles, so desire could be spread out, not focused on a single overwhelming attraction (Ehrenreich, et al., 1992).

The Beatles were funny, playful, enthusiastic, and androgynous. Their androgyny was part of their appeal. Elvis, too, had a huge fan base of impassioned young women, but he was a full-grown working-class man. Compared to Elvis, the Beatles seemed respectable and safe (Ehrenreich et al., 1992). Their middle-class fans could use the Beatles as a source of identification, not just of erotic desire. Speaking to Ehrenreich, one fan said, I didn’t want to sleep with Paul McCartney. I was too young. But I wanted to be like him, something larger than life” (Ehrenreich, et al., 1992, p. 103).

The girls identified with their idols, and they identified with each other. Their screams were a communal ritual. “It made you feel part of something larger,” a fan told Dorian Lynskey of The Guardian (2013). To be part of Beatlemania meant to be part of a fan community and to take part in culture. Ehrenreich and her colleagues posit that this identification – this sense of community – was as important, or more important, to these young fans as sexuality. Not only did they have one another to talk to endlessly about their idols, but also – as a collective – they had considerable power. The millions of girls who screamed ecstatically for John, Paul, George, and Ringo made the Beatles superstars (Ehrenreich, et al., 1992).

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Freudian groups: Love 4 one another.

A group is clearly held together by a power of some kind: and to what power could this feat be better ascribed to than to Eros, which holds everything in the world? (Freud, 1921, p. 31) In Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921), Freud hypothesized that it was possible to understand groups psychoanalytically utilizing what was known about individual dynamics, and vice versa. Individual psychology, he believed, was always social psychology because infants are born surrounded by people and most continue to live that way their entire lives.

Using two influential contemporary books – Gustave LeBon’s The Psychology of Crowds (1895) and William McDougall’s The Group Mind (1920) – Freud painted a picture of groups. In a group, he said, the personality of the individual member recedes and a collective mind emerges. Under the fascinating sway of the group’s leader, the group becomes one, rather than many. Within the group, the member has a feeling of invincibility and power and a willingness to sacrifice himself for the leader and the group. A group and its members are subject to contagion and in a state similar to being hypnotized. The intelligence of the group seems to diminish, but the ethical stance becomes stronger. The group has common ideals and goals, and the group members have the power to influence each other. Freud likened these accounts of groups to accounts of the mental states of neurotic people and children.

Freud further pointed out that LeBon’s and McDougall’s renditions of groups focused on negative, mob-like, herd-like, horde-like qualities, overlooking the potential good in groups. Groups, Freud said, are not just crowds, poised to de-evolve into

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mindless passivity or violence, but organizations that have the potential to promote greater than normal ethical and moral behavior among their members and foster largescale imaginative acts. “Even the group mind is capable of creative genius in the field of intelligence,” Freud said, “as is shown above all by language itself, as well as by folksong, folklore and the like” (1921, p. 20).

Freud proposed that the force that binds people in groups is love – that only love has the power to overcome an individual’s narcissism and the hatred that divides people.

The kind of love that hold a group together, libido diverted from its sexual aims, is identification, which Freud called “the earliest kind of love” (1921, p. 50). Freud examined group process by looking at two organized groups, the Army and the Church.

Each group functions, Freud said, because they’re held together by love/libido. In the Church, members love Christ, and, to a lesser extent, one another. This double love bond accounts for the cohesiveness of the group.

In addition to this dual identification – of church members to Christ and to each other – the group is also bound by idealization of Christ. Christ is the members’ ideal ego, and members endeavor to be like Him. Each individual church member’s ego is less important than the ego ideal of Christ. Freud likened this to a normal family relationship.

A son wishes to grow up to be like his father and endeavors to behave like him. The father’s ego ideal takes precedence over the ego of the child. When there is trouble in this formulation, as in too great a tension between ego and ego ideal, or too much distance between the two, pathology occurs (Freud, 1921).

The leader of a group, said Freud, doesn’t have to be a person (as Christ is not really a person). The leader can be an idea or even the history of the group itself (just as

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the Bible is the history of Christianity). Additionally, a group doesn’t have to be a large collection of people. A group can be comprised of one leading person and one follower (as in a hypnotist and a hypnotized person or an analyst and an analysand), or even of an ego ideal and an ego existing in the mind of a single person. What is necessary for a group to exist is the persistence of affectional ties between the leader and the group members (Freud, 1921).

As in a family, however, not all feelings in a group are loving. Feelings can also be hostile and envious. Consider the ambivalent relationships between siblings: Every child would like to have all the love of the parents, but they can’t kill or banish the rest of their siblings, and – even if they could – it would not have the intended effect of increasing their parents’ love. So the children bond together: “Originally rivals, they have succeeded in identifying themselves with one another by means of a similar love for the same object” (Freud, 1921, p. 67). Through identification and a reaction formation, children cohere as a group around the parents, their leaders.

Freud returned to the scientific myth of the primal horde that he proposed several years earlier in Totem and Taboo (1915), suggesting that the relationship between the group leader and the group is analogous to the relationship between the primal father and the sons in the myth. The primal father rules his sons through fear, and his sons submit to him – taking him as their group ideal. “Even today,” said Freud, “the members of a group stand in need of the illusion that they are equally and justly led by their leader” (1921, p.

70).

In Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921), Freud extended the story of the primal horde, introducing the character of the first epic poet. One of the band

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of brothers, he stepped away from the group and re-told the story of the killing of the father, casting himself as a hero who singlehandedly killed the father, now re-imagined and presented as a supernatural monster. In this way, the epic poet created the first myth out of his own fantasy, from his own imagination, and shared the new story with the group.

He goes and relates to the group his hero’s deeds that he has invented. At bottom this hero is no one but himself. Thus he lowers himself to the level of reality, and raises his hearers to the level of imagination. But his hearers understand the poet, and, in virtue of their having the same relation of longing toward the primal father, they can identify themselves with the hero. (Freud, 1921, p. 88-89) Who is this epic poet? He has a role for the people and is a leader but not the same kind of leader as the father who rules through fear, or even like Christ, who rules by fulfilling a prophecy and bringing hope to the world. I’ll return to this after introducing Wilfred Bion’s expansion of Freud’s theory of group dynamics (Bion, 1953, 1961).

Bion’s group – Everybody’s looking for the ladder.

The point that I would make is that no individual, however isolated in time and space, can be regarded as outside a group or lacking in active manifestations of group psychology, although conditions do not exist which would make it possible to demonstrate it. Acceptance of the idea that the human being is a group animal would solve the difficulties that are

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felt to exist in the seeming paradox that a group is more than the sum of its members. (Bion, 1961, p. 132) British psychoanalyst, Wilfred Bion who extended and widened the line of Melanie Klein’s theory of internal object relations, observed and wrote about group dynamics and group process. His theory advanced Freud’s work in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, bringing it in line with Klein’s theories. He also expanded beyond Klein into ideas about groups that were uniquely his own. Like Freud, Bion believed that group dynamics are inseparable from individual dynamics, and he applied his theories about individual psychology to group experience – namely that all individuals’ personalities are comprised of psychotic and non-psychotic parts and that a goal of life is to develop the capacity for thought and learn from experience (Freud, 1921; Bion, 1953, 1961).

Paralleling work by Melanie Klein and her associates, Bion extended Freud’s theory of groups backwards into the pre-Oedipal phase of development, characterized by splitting and other primitive defenses like introjection, projection, and projective identification. The primitive group, like the very young child, is ruled by instinct and filled with powerful feelings of anxiety, greed, hate, and aggression. These feeling are overwhelming and paranoid, and the group wishes to expel them rather than contain and learn from them. These feelings oppose the objective purpose of the group - the work group (also called, “W group”) (Bion, 1953, p. 143).

Opposing the work group, Bion proposed, are three kinds of “basic assumption” groups (Bion, 1953, p. 147) whose members believe that a leader can solve the problems of the group and rescue it from its dire situation. The dependent group believes that a

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strong leader will save it if its members follow him blindly; the fight/flight group believes that a leader will help them conquer or run away from an enemy; and the pairing group believes that two group members will come together and have a baby who will become a messiah and save the group.

The leader in a basic assumption group is not felt to be loving and beloved, as in Freud’s theory, but frustrating and unhelpful, thwarting group members from escaping their plight (that of fulfilling the work of the work group). United in the perceived need to be saved, the group operating under one of the basic assumptions functions at a paranoidschizoid level and is unable to learn anything new (Bion, 1953, 1961).

However, Bion believed that, “despite the influence of the basic assumptions, it is the W group that triumphs in the long run” (1961, p. 135). Agreeing with Freud’s perception that in spite of their regressive pull groups have the capacity for great creativity and for moving forward big ideas and ideals, Bion concluded that work group function and basic assumption group function exist side by side in most groups and the work of the work group is usually accomplished.

Both Freud and Bion stated that individual and group psychology are the same and that an individual is born into relationship and social situations, and, as such, is never free from the group – even if the group is just the individual and their ideas (Freud, 1921) or the individual and their internal object relationships (Bion, 1953) living alone on a deserted island. And both Freud and Bion believed, not just in the destructive or obstructive power of groups, but in groups’ creative potential and in the ability of groups to advance the work of culture (Freud, 1921; Bion, 1953, 1961).

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The epic poet – Baby I’m a star/We all are a star.

The poet, like a prophet is the spokesman for his group. He gives word and form to the group’s emerging but unarticulated wishes. The poet is the community’s daydreamer. He spins the public fantasy (Arlow, 1986, p.

58) This section on groups ends with Freud’s epic poet, who is a prototype for all poets and artists who use their own imaginations, their own creativity and artistic creations, to tell the secrets of their desires and the fantasies of the community. In his essay, “The poet as a prophet,” Jacob Arlow (1986) describes the role of the poet in revealing the hidden fantasies of his audience in ways that get around internal (and sometimes external) prohibitions, alleviate guilt, and sometimes either predict or promote social change. In more religious times a prophet was believed to be speaking with the authority of God in a frankly religious way. Touched by the divine, he was the object of fascination, and he functioned as the ego ideal for the group.

Introduced earlier in this review, the creative writer described by Freud writes his own daydreams, derivatives of his unconscious phantasies, and calls his fantasies fiction (Freud, 1909; Arlow, 1986; Balter, 2002). Through his writing he shares his disguised forbidden longings with an audience, and audience members are invited to embellish the poet’s vision in their minds. Audience members become co-creators and interpreters of the creative product, using their own daydreams and fantasies and the workings of their own imaginations (Arlow, 1986). By sharing the poet or artist’s daydream, the audience finds a way to protest giving up the pleasures of childhood.

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Lacking ways to do this – such as sleep, dreams, daydreams, carnivals, or the enjoyment of the arts – people can become mentally ill (Freud, 1909, 1915; Arlow, 1986). The poet’s (or other kind of artist’s) art, and our participation in and co-creation of it, is an adaptive, satisfying reaction formation (Freud, 1909).

The poet is the spokesperson for the audience that assembles to share the (modified) daydream. Together, poet and audience indulge in disguised, forbidden wishes. By loving and accepting the poet’s art, which – in addition to connecting with fantasies – may be very moving or beautiful, the audience relieves the poet of the guilt they might feel about their fantasies, and the poet, and the whole audience, relieve the individual audience member of his or her guilt (Freud, 1909, 1915, 1921). As Arlow says, “Everyone’s guilt . . . is no one’s guilt” (Arlow, 1986, p. 58).

For the message to be effective, it has to transcend the level of the rational and the cognitive. To evoke the latent fantasy in the face of the omnipresent internal resistance, the message must be couched in an indirect, metaphoric fashion, one that will enable each individual to contribute to the message representations from his own imagery. (Arlow, 1986, p. 66).

The poet’s work may be more than aesthetically pleasing disguised fantasy. The poet may be a harbinger of social change or a spokesperson for changing morality.

Through his artistic production he may articulate a vision of the culture that is still inarticulate, on the verge of emerging (Arlow, 1986). In this way, the poet is like a prophet, but his message is one of an equal (possible a spectacularly talented equal) among equals. The prophet speaks with an authority instilled by some higher power, but

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the poet – as great as his aesthetic gift, as compelling as his story, as charismatic as his person, and as iconic as his work may be – finds his power in his fantasies and creativity as they are mediated through the imagination of the audience.

Death, grief, and mourning.

Two years feel like a matter of weeks to some of Prince’s friends and band mates. “He just died. Other humans, mere mortals, we’re not handling this well,” says Bobby Z. Rivkin, The Revolution’s original drummer, who compares Prince to Mozart in his work and influence. The band that accompanied him on his rise to fame in the 1980s still stays in close touch, he says, “We’re all children of him in a way, his creations.” (Heller, 2018, online) This project was conceived in the shadow of the death of superstar Prince, out of curiosity about the experiences of his very devoted fams, including experiences following his death. As with other topics explored in this project, psychoanalytic literature about the aftermath of popular celebrities’ deaths is scant. Exceptions are Anthony Elliott’s book, The Mourning of John Lennon (1999), and an article by Susan Cowan-Jenssen and Lucy Goodison called, “Celebrity and the flight from mortality” (2004).

To give context to the experiences of Prince’s fams since his death, I explored psychoanalytic literature about mourning, beginning with Freud’s Mourning and Melancholia and focusing primarily on Freud, Melanie Klein and two integrative articles

by George Hagman. Moving into a larger, cultural picture I reviewed well-know sociological works about death in Western culture by Philippe Aries and Geoffrey Gorer.

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I examined popular culture responses to celebrity death through the lens of both academic and popular writing. I conclude by looking at Fan Studies research about Grateful Dead fans’ experiences since Jerry Garcia’s death.

Normal mourning and the shadow of the object.

In his 1917 paper, “Mourning and Melancholia,” on which much subsequent research and literature about mourning has been based, Freud succinctly described the difficult, but non-pathological experience of mourning after the loss of a loved object. He contrasted mourning with melancholia, a pathological process similar to depression that resembles mourning.

Freud asserted that several things happen following the loss of a loved object.

First, the mourner disbelieves that the loved object is gone and does everything he can to disprove that reality. Then, realizing that the loved object really is gone, the mourner replays the whole relationship in his head and gradually is able to let go of his attachment to (withdraw his libido from) the object. Finally, the mourner is able to resume his life and engage in new relationships. This process is not straightforward and is generally very painful and time-consuming, but it is a natural occurrence in the lives of most people, and most of the time the work of mourning unfolds and resolves without becoming pathological. “Normally, respect for reality gains the day,” said Freud (1917, p. 244).

In melancholia, as in mourning, something has been lost (although in melancholia the sufferer may not know who or what it is), and – on the outside – the losing person appears to be in a painful state very similar to mourning. As in mourning, the melancholic sufferer is dejected, disinterested in the world, and unable to love or take

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part in any activity (Freud, 1917). In melancholia, however, the sufferer is also filled with self-loathing and expects punishment. Something very different is happening in the melancholic person’s mind. He has become identified with the lost object. “the shadow of the object” (Freud, 1917, p. 249), which he has taken into his ego. Meanwhile, another part of his ego – the ego ideal - rails against this lost object part of the ego.

Freud believed that this internalization of the lost object was part of a pathological process. The lost object, now housed in the ego, was the subject of torment by the critical “special agency” of the ego ideal (Freud, 1917, p. 249). (Later Freud would rename this agency, “superego,” the voice of morality, of right and wrong, and of the idealized, internalized parents [Freud, 1923]). The symptoms created in reaction to this identification in the ego and its subsequent punishment by the ego ideal looked like mourning, but unlike normal mourning this pathological mourning was a mental illness (Freud, 1917).

In the editor’s notes preceding “Mourning and Melancholia” in the Standard Edition, James Strachey asserts that, although Freud’s description of mourning was eloquent and elegant, Freud felt that the most significant contributions he made in this article were in the direction of developing concepts underlying melancholia including narcissism, identification, and the ego ideal (Strachey, 1996). He continued to work on those ideas in later works, including Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego.

Good objects to the rescue.

Freud wrote about mourning throughout his career, but he did not develop an extensive theory about it. The description in “Mourning and Melancholia” became a

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template that subsequent writers used to understand and articulate their own ideas. More than twenty years after “Mourning and Melancholia,” Melanie Klein expanded Freud’s theory.

Klein believed that Freud had gotten some things wrong (Klein, 1940). First, the pain of mourning did make the sufferer ill. Even though mourning was an ordinary occurrence in the life of almost all people, it was still a form of sickness. The key, Klein said, was for the sufferer to pass through this temporary, but terribly painful, sickness and return to health without complications. Complications, however, were frequent, as the ego longed to – was impelled to – internalize the lost love object and potentially to relate to it in a complicated way that inspired further pain.

In normal mourning the individual reintrojects and reinstates, as well as the actual lost person, his loved parents who are felt to be his ‘good’ inner objects. His inner world, the one that he has built up from his earliest days onwards, in his phantasy was destroyed when the actual loss occurred. The rebuilding of this inner world characterizes the successful work of mourning. (Klein, 1940, 331).

In “Mourning and Its Relation to Manic-Depressive States,” Klein stated that loss, no matter when it happens in life, reignites grief the child has had since early infancy, the grief of losing the connection with the mother’s breast “and all that the breast and milk have come to stand for in the infant’s mind: namely, love, goodness and security” (Klein, 1940, p. 312). Every subsequent loss hearkens back to this first, which contains the baby’s depressive phantasy that she has destroyed her beloved breast/mother in trying to greedily devour (introject) her and keep the mother inside herself.

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Klein believed that good experiences with loving people in the outside world helped a child manage her big feelings – first of aggression, anxiety and hatred (in the paranoid-schizoid position), then of grief, anxiety, sorrow, and the desire to make reparation (in the depressive position) – and these “good” objects in the child’s external world also lived inside of her, and helped her there, too. However, the constellation of the child included her outer experience and an inner experience that contained all of her experiences with ambivalently loved good and bad objects, plus her phantasies, plus her impulses. If, Klein said, this was “a world of people predominantly at peace with each other and with the ego, inner harmony, security and integration ensue” (1940, p. 313). If, however, this world were not harmonious, mental illness – melancholia and manicdepressive illness – would occur.

Positive interaction between good experiences and people external to the mourner and corresponding harmony in his internal world (internal object relations) create a situation in which normal grieving can occur. But Klein (1940) felt that the danger arose when inner and outer were not in sync, and when the reorganization in the inner life that was necessary after the death of a loved object could not happen smoothly.

The poignancy of the actual loss of a loved person is, in my view, greatly increased by the mourner’s unconscious phantasies of having lost his internal good objects as well. (Klein, 1949 p. 320) Freud believed that the risk following loss was that the mourner would identify with and internalize the lost object in the ego and punish it, leading to melancholia (Freud, 1917). Klein believed the mourner would incorporate the lost object and reincorporate the internal object of that person, and reinstate all other good objects that

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had been part of her life since she was a baby. Danger of pathological mourning came from the potential for this process to go badly in any number of ways (Klein, 1940).

Nonetheless, Klein like Freud and many others who have contributed to theories of grief and mourning, believed that the mourning process has a normal course that, in ordinarily supportive environments unfolds and resolves without complication (Freud, 1917; Klein, 1940, and others). In each situation of mourning each person has her own unique inner world interacting with her own particular outer world, so no two situations are the same, but with help from supportive others on the outside, the likelihood of a person in grief suffering pathologically is decreased (Klein, 1940).

George Hagman and others.

Contemporary social worker and psychoanalyst George Hagman has integrated the ideas of earlier generations of theorists with his own ideas about mourning. Writing about mourning in the mid-1990s, Hagman reviewed the psychoanalytic literature on mourning and found it sparse and too focused on pathological mourning. He said that the mourning process was far more varied than the literature demonstrated. In Hagman’s estimation (as in Klein’s), normal mourning and pathological mourning differ mostly in matter of degree, and often what appears as pathological grief has its foundation in a preexisting psychopathology (Hagman, 1995, 1996).

Like others writing between 1917 when Freud wrote “Mourning and Melancholia” and the 1990s (including Freud himself in Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety [1926]), Hagman did not believe the goal of mourning was to give up the attachment to the lost loved one, but for the sufferer to transform the relationship with the

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lost object in is mind (Freud, 1926; Klein, 1940; Hagman, 1995, 1996). This Hagman said, could be accomplished in myriad ways, through many kinds of identifications. It would be more pathological, he asserted, if no such identification took place. Evidence of this might be suggested by a mourner displaying no discernible grief (Deutsch, 1937; Hagman, 1996).

Hagman took issue with Freud’s idea that massive dejection is a normal part of grieving, claiming that after the initial shock of loss many of his bereaved patients were able to continue working and engaging in social activities, and, he observed, their mourning process was aided by their ability to stay engaged in the usual activities of their daily lives (Hagman, 1995). Hagman, like Klein, believed that successful mourning is far more likely to occur when the mourner has the support of others. Successful mourning is also more likely if the bereaved can internalize the lost loved one in positive ways (Klein, 1940; Hagman, 1995).

In healthy mourning, some of the functions of the internal object are gradually taken over by new relationships with new objects in the external world. Yet there are aspects of the internal relationship with the deceased that remain unique. The self is never again the same as it was in that relationship, and the object too is found to be unique in ways that cannot fully be replaced. (Baker, 2001, p. 70) A few years later, John Baker expanded on Hagman’s views by pointing to examples in his clinical work in which widows and widowers maintained very close, nonpathological relationships with their (internal good) dead spouses, using those

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internalized spouses much as they had used them in life – to help them make decisions, provide company and solace, and create structure (Hagman, 1996; Baker, 2001).

Mournography.

This demand for immortality is a product of our wishes too unmistakable to lay claim to reality: what is painful may nonetheless be true. I could not see my way to dispute the transience of all things, nor could I insist upon an exception in favour of what is beautiful and true. But I did dispute the pessimistic poet’s view that the transience of what is beautiful involves any loss in its worth. (Freud, 1916, p. 305) Despite Freud’s statement in “On Transience” (1916), that the reality that we will die gives meaning to our lives, this is not the popular view of mortality. Death is, as Ernest Becker says in The Denial of Death, “the worm at the core” for humans, who possess the consciousness to know it is coming and to fear it (Becker, 1973, p. 15).

At this time in Western history we have done as much as we can to deny its existence and remove it as far as possible from ordinary life (Gorer, 1955; Aries, 1974).

At one time a “good death” meant dying at home, surrounded by family members.

Today it’s common to die alone in a hospital (Aries, 1974, p. 85). After death, the body is whisked away and fixed up for quick viewing in a commercial funeral home, then put away somewhere (Aries, 1974). We also downplay and hide our feelings about death (Aries, 1974). Scholar Philippe Aries asserts that in many parts of the developed world showing anything but the most private and understated grief is considered disgraceful (1974). This is not so true in the United States, where lingering religious sentiment and

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our particular cultural character create a grieving duality (Gorer, 1955). With one hand we sweep death under the rug, and with the other we turn it into spectacle (Gorer, 1955; Aries, 1974; Elliott, 1999).

Anthony Elliott, wrestling with the death of the superstar in The Mourning of John Lennon (1999), asserts that the “mournography” (Gorer, 1955, p. 51) surrounding celebrity deaths exacerbates our inability to truly mourn real losses. He discredits the possibility that mourning the loss of an objectively unknown, distant superstar qualifies as anything more than a parody of feeling, a performance in the place of experience.

“People need to forge emotional connections with others in order to make death meaningful,” he says (Elliott, 1999, p. 152). To Elliott’s mind, the fans who gather to sing and lay flowers on the commemorative “Imagine” mosaic in Central Park are not honoring John Lennon. They are engaging in a performance that trivializes the death (Elliott, 1999).

A loss that can be felt.

Writers from many different fields challenge this view (Mhyrom, 2016, Questlove, 2016). When a beloved celebrity or public figure dies, the public responds.

Elliott (1999) remarks that after John Lennon died millions of people around the world congregated in his memory, and every news channel and newspaper devoted as much time and space to the death as possible. The same is true when any beloved icon dies – whether it is John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Elvis, John Lennon, Jerry Garcia, Princess Diana or Prince.

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In this century, our access to and the flow of information are staggering, and this is evident in media attention to the deaths of celebrities. Posts on social media, blogs, fan sites, TV and cable news channels, and articles in online and print popular publications pay homage to dead celebrities and muse about what it means to pay homage.

Even though most of us who are lamenting Prince’s death had no tangible connection to him as a person, we are sharing a collective knowing, and it is a heavy holy thing to bear. Certainly it does not compare to what his close friends and family are experiencing, and no one is claiming that – but it is no less real, and no less worth listening to. (Myhrom, 2016, online) In the days and weeks after Prince died, writers in many popular publications wondered what it meant that people were so passionately and publicly lamenting Prince’s death (Carson, 2016; Holmes & Melnick, 2016; Katz, 2016; Myhrom, 2016; Questlove, 2016). Certainly Prince was a genius musician who spoke for a generation and whose life ended shockingly, but what was the meaning of this grief for this man we didn’t know?

Many writers seemed earnest in their efforts to provide respectful answers (although Alex Proud, curmudgeonly columnist for the London Telegraph, titled his piece, “Our Public Grieving over Dead Celebrities Has Reached Insufferable Levels,” leaving no doubt about his feelings [Proud, 2016, online]).

Writers in popular publications, among them Newsweek and Huffington Post, stated that mourning a celebrity provides an opportunity to confront our mortality in our culture that wants to deny death (Myhrom, 2016). Alan Carr, writing in Psychology Today said that celebrities are social anchors, tying us to ourselves and to other people,

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and their deaths force us to confront our separateness (Carr, 2016). Mark Vernon at Newseek said: Someone famous dies. Suddenly, mourning becomes possible. The icon meant a lot but, unlike a parent or partner or child, was not half of us. And so it’s a loss that can be felt. It precipitates an outpouring of grief – the death of Diana comes to mind – that is as much an unblocking of the deeper melancholia, as it is sadness at the departure of the celebrity. The tears are real. But they are about more than the shock of the immediate news. (Vernon, 2016, online) According to Vernon, we grieve celebrities because we are inhibited from grieving other losses. To feel sadness at Prince’s death is to feel sad at all deaths, and to feel sad with a huge community of people. In becoming famous, celebrities offer themselves to us for our use (Vernon, 2016).

Virtual immortality.

Susan Cowan-Jenssen and Lucy Goodison, writing in Free Associations, seem to agree with these popular writers in many ways, but with greater ambivalence. Celebrities, they say, live in “the world of virtual immortality,” and this is a mixed bag for their fans (Cowan-Jenssen & Goodison, 2004, p. 474). Cowan-Jenssen and Goodison say that with death hidden from view, how we manage the knowledge of our mortality is important.

Denial is partially effective, but when it fails we are confronted with terror. We have developed ways to cope through art, religion and popular culture, but in dark moments

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we are turned back on ourselves, aware that we are vulnerable and alone (Cowan-Jenssen & Goodison, 2004).

Celebrities are people we don’t know and who don’t know us, but we relate to their images and their productions. Because of this, “their existence doesn’t depend on them being alive or dead” (Cowan-Jenssen & Goodison, 2004, p. 466). Their apparent immortality helps us deny our own mortality. The writers assert that our belief in the power of the celebrity has grown out of a need for security that was once furnished by extended families, communities, and religion. We need to believe in things that are bigger than we are, so we turn to popular culture and to celebrities (Cowan-Jenssen & Goodison, 2004).

These idols are not supposed to die, but when they do, we are shocked and jarred, and it throws us back on our own mortality. We try to deny that the loss has occurred.

(Some Elvis fans still believe he is alive [Marcus, 1991; Hinerman, 1992; Doss, 1998].)

We make excuses for the death – it couldn’t have happened in an ordinary way.

Concurrent with the memorials and tributes, we feel alienated and horrified. We believed our idols would live forever, and – since they would – we would, too (Cowan-Jenssen & Goodison, 2004).

In ways, celebrities do continue to live after their deaths. Through their images, their brands, and their creative productions, our idols can live forever (Cowan-Jenssen & Goodison, 2004). Elvis has been dead for over 40 years, but his popularity and marketability have never diminished (Marcus, 1994; Doss, 1998). The same is true of Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead, who died in 1995 (Adams, Ernstes and Lucey, 2014) and others. In “Music, Mourning and Consolation” psychoanalyst Alexander Stein states

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that music connects us to our lives and to the people we love (2004). This is true whether the musician is alive or dead (Cowan-Jenssen & Goodison, 2004). Music, like ritual, can help us to grieve – even when what we are grieving is the musician who created it (Pollock, 1971; Stein, 2004). By connecting us to something larger than ourselves – something that feels supernatural, beyond mortal – music connects us to our human community (Stein, 2004).

Many small circles.

It is one of the great paradoxes of art that in both form and content it can simultaneously represent two contradictory aspects of mental existence. In music listening, the regressive, formless, oceanic experience of aesthetic rapture – by definition an internal and solitary experience – can powerfully instill a sense of external connectedness with important others, as part of a community of other mourners, as well as in fantasy, internally resurrecting or creating a link to the lost object. (A. Stein, 2004, p. 808) When Jerry Garcia died, the devoted fans of the Grateful Dead known as Deadheads were devastated. Concerts by the Dead were a powerful combination of music, community and spiritual experience (Adams, Ernstes, Lucey, 2014). Many Deadheads followed the band on tour year after year, taking time off work and traveling all over the US to attend scores of shows. Being a Deadhead was important to people’s lives and identities. When Jerry died, the Grateful Dead ended as a band, and fans had to figure out how to manage the loss.

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Fan researchers Rebecca Adams, Amy Ernstes and Kelly Lucey have conducted several studies about Deadhead experiences AJD (After Jerry’s Death). In “After Jerry’s Death: Achieving Continuity in Deadhead Identity,” the authors describe the persistence of fans’ attachments to the music and lifestyle surrounding the Grateful Dead and the ways their experiences were altered by Jerry’s death (Adams, et al., 2014). Thinking about Prince and his Purple Army, I conclude this section on death and mourning with this research.

The Grateful Dead came together in Haight-Ashbury in the mid-1960s. They were the house band for the “Acid Tests,” open-air public gatherings at which then-legal LSD was distributed (Adams, et al., 2014). They continued to play together, traveling with a large, committed tribe of fans, for thirty years. Even in the 1990s, with band members and many fans in solid middle age, the Dead’s tours were the highest grossing in the world (Adams, et al., 2004); and the Deadheads continued to be a huge and coherent fan group.

A survey of the 290,000 members on the Dead’s mailing list revealed that fans, on average, were willing to travel at least a thousand miles to see a show and were so committed to the band and to their fandom that they had seen sixty-plus shows (Adams, et al., 2014). They cited the music, their closeness and identification with the community, and spiritual transformation as the top reasons for their commitment. Then Jerry died, and four months later the remaining band members decided to disband (Pareles, 1995, online.)

The magic is still there – [the music] still transports to some higher level of consciousness and makes us feel good. This has always been a deeply

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religious and spiritual touchstone for me and it still is! As somebody said in one of the tributes, “We will never forget this music – it is woven in our bones.” (Adams, et al., 2014, 193) What has happened since then? Over twenty years later many Deadheads still identify as Deadheads, find their community among other Deadheads, seek out Deadhead-friendly music and experiences, and work to preserve and increase Jerry Garcia’s legacy. After a period of disorganization, despair, confusion, and mourning, some drifted away, but many Deadheads found new ways to engage with each other and with the music that they loved. Music festivals like the Further Festival rise and fall.

Some fans follow tribute bands or jam bands that invoke the feeling of the Dead. Fans trade tapes, arrange local meet-ups, and hold large-scale gatherings (Adams, et al., 2014).

The researchers found that there is no single way to be a fan after Jerry’s death.

The Deadhead tribe, once one big circle, is now “many small circles” that “pass that good feeling around again and again” (Mountain Girl in Adams, et al., 2014, p. 195). Jerry is dead, and the Grateful Dead is gone, but the music has never stopped and the tribe has never disbanded.

Conclusion As stated elsewhere there is no single reality in lived experience (Van Manen, 1990). This literature review could have gone in many different directions. With this in mind, I undertook this chapter knowing that it would not be straightforward. At best it would be evocative and introduce a handful of concepts to keep in mind in upcoming chapters. I used a funneling method to organize the chapter. I filtered popular writing

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about Prince and his fams and an introduction to the academic study of fandom through the project assumptions presented in Chapter I, and I chose three psychoanalytic themes pertinent to the study – phantasy/fantasy, group experience and death, grief and mourning.

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Chapter III

Research Methodology Reintroduction of Major Approach and Research Question A good phenomenological description is collected by lived experience and recollects lived experience – is validated by lived experience and it validates lived experience, (Van Manen, 1990, p. 27) This psychoanalytic case study (Tolleson, 1996) explores the phenomenon of Prince famdom, especially since his death on April 21, 2016. This phenomenological hermeneutic project approaches data analysis using a psychoanalytic interpretive frame.

The study asks, “What is the experience of the devoted Prince fam, and how has it been impacted by the superstar’s death?”

Rational for Qualitative Research Design The phenomenon of fandom is under-researched within the psychoanalytic field.

The voices of individual fans are rarely heard in psychoanalytic literature, except in occasional descriptions of adolescent development (see Rosenblum, Danielos, Kass & Martin, 1999; Kristovich, 2010. This is a deficiency in the field; given that most people are or have been fans of something, and fandom is experienced by people of all ages (Hills, 2002). While fandom is culturally-constructed, fan experiences are deeply personal and meaningful for individual fans (Hills, 2002; Sandvoss, 2005; Jenkins, 2016;

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Fraade-Blanar & Glazer, 2017). This study is interested in the individual fan. It doesn’t seek to understand all of fandom, but to describe and interpret individual fans’ lived experiences within a particular fandom in rich and evocative ways that invite further inquiry.

This exploratory study utilizes a hermeneutic phenomenological framework in order to understand both how participants experience Prince famdom and what their experiences mean to them. Phenomenological research seeks to discover and elucidate the meaning of lived experiences, bearing in mind that the researcher’s biases and assumptions affect her vision: there are no universal truths in lived experience (Gadamer, 1960/1998; Stern, 1991; Laverty, 2003; Greenwood & Loewenthal, 2005). Hermeneutic phenomenology is a “philosophy of the persona,” in which the perspectives of both the participant and the researcher shape the findings, as do their personal histories and the culture in which they are embedded (Laverty, 2003, p. 7).

Meaning is found as we are constructed by the world. While at the same time we are constructing the world from our own background and experiences. There is a transaction between the individual and the world as they constitute and are constituted by each other. (Laverty, 2003, p. 3) The research participant speaks for himself, telling his story within the context of his relationship with the researcher and to the phenomenon (Van Manen, 1990; Laverty, 2003). Keeping in mind the impossibility of erasing her own viewpoint, the researcher interprets what she hears by engaging in a hermeneutic circle – from within herself, to the participant’s story, and back again – spiraling between the part and the whole until she has an understanding of the phenomenon that mindfully contains the text, the cultural and

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historical embeddedness of the text, her own embeddedness within the text and within history, and her relationship with the participant (Steele, 1979; Van Manen, 1990; Laverty, 2003). Through engagement in this circular process the researcher creates an “animating, evocative description” of the text/phenomenon as it is revealed through the research process (Van Manen, 1990, p. 19).

To reach an understanding in a dialogue is not merely a matter of putting oneself forward and successfully asserting one’s own point of view, but being transformed into a communion in which we do not remain what we were. (Gadamer, 1960/1998, p. 375) In this study of the phenomenon of famdom as it has been impacted by Prince’s death, individual fams speak. I listen and engage in sense-making, and together we coconstruct a picture of the famdom as it exists in their shared moment. Each carefully selected participant is a self-identified expert on Prince famdom. Their thoughts and feelings elucidate the phenomenon of their famdom and the effect of Prince’s death on it.

Where I stand in relation to the topic also comes to bear on the story. By acknowledging my foreknowledge and biases, I make my own assumptions part of a circular hermeneutic endeavor to understand the text of their experiences (Gadamer, 1960/1998; Van Manen, 1990; Laverty, 2003).

Rationale for Specific Methodology The case study begins with an idea (Prince had many devoted fams, and their famdom was affected by his death). The researcher engages with the idea, pondering its possibilities and thinking and rethinking in light of data she collects through interactions

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with participants. She adjusts her expectations as discrepancies arise between her assumptions and foreknowledge and the real responses of participants. By engaging in the circular hermeneutic process, the researcher creates “a rich dialogue with the evidence” (Yin, 2014, p. 73).

A good case study rests on the efforts and skills of the researcher more heavily than do methods that rely on the traditional scientific method (Van Manen, 1990; Stake, 1995). Like a psychoanalyst, a case study researcher listens with openness and empathy, capturing more than just words in interactions, finding both manifest and latent meaning in the verbal and nonverbal interchanges with participants (Tolleson, 1996; Servatius, 2011).

It still strikes me as strange that the case histories I write should read like short stories and that, as one might say, they lack the serious stamp of science. I must console myself with the reflection that the nature of the subject is evidently responsible for this. (Freud, 1893, p. 160) The psychoanalytic case study method articulated by Jennifer Tolleson (1996) takes as its basis the method utilized by Sigmund Freud and refined by subsequent generations of psychoanalytic practitioners as the field’s standard research tool (Steele, 1979; Stern, 1991; Cartwright, 2004; Greenwood & Loewenthal, 2005). Setting aside specific psychoanalytic explanatory theories, the psychoanalytic case study method uses general psychoanalytic theories and clinical strategies in an effort to understand the experiences of the participant (Tolleson, 1996; Servatius, 2011). Thus, this approach is well suited to eliciting the individual’s idiosyncratic experiences of famdom.

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Psychoanalysis is concerned with the life of the unconscious, how an individual’s developmental history continues to live throughout his or her life, and how people relate to objects. In psychoanalysis, the goal is the patient’s development of self-knowledge and internal change. The goal of the psychoanalytic case study method, however, is not internal change, but the elucidation of an experience or a phenomenon. Obviously the structure of the case study process and the clinician’s stance will be very different (Tolleson, 1996).

Because research is a time-limited endeavor, the researcher keeps the interviews focused on facilitating the participant’s narrative related to the research question. As a result, she is more direct and directive than in a psychoanalytic interview. However, the ways the researcher listens and attends to what transpires between the participant and herself, and the ways she formulates interpretations around what she hears and observes during the process will be psychoanalytic in character (Tolleson, 1996; Servatius, 2001).

She will be listening for the articulation of unconscious meaning.

Although the interviews contained clear and circumscribed parameters around what was to be discussed, within those boundaries the subject was free to elaborate on whatever aspects of his experience were the most salient for him. It remained the investigator’s task to follow his discourse, to clarify its significance, and to pursue exploration of the larger, more latent meaning embedded in it. (Tolleson, 1996, p. 91) Within the structure that necessarily exists in order to answer the research question, the participant is invited to speak as freely as possible and to follow her own associations as she tells her story. The researcher, skilled at hearing, listens beyond the

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participant’s manifest comments to silences, absences, and repetitions – evidence of unconscious process (Tolleson, 1996; Cartwright, 2004). As in psychoanalytic work, the researcher pays attention to the participant’s reactions to her – the transference – and her reactions to the participant – the countertransference – and to situations that occur in and around the research relationship. These psychoanalytic ways of attending to the research question and to the relationship between participant and researcher guide the interpretation of the data.

Research Sample John Creswell (2007) states that sample size of three to five participants is optimal for case study research, and Cresswell (2007) and Robert Yin (2014) assert that case study evidence is more compelling, and the overall study more robust, if the sample is chosen purposively. In a purposive sample, research participants are chosen intentionally, either in a way that each case predicts similar results, or in a way that predicts anticipated contrasting results. To the former end, I chose as participants five self-identified fams who expressed strong feelings about Prince’s death.

Although I did not have personal relationships with the participants prior to beginning the project, I became friendly with all of them – in the context of the Purple Family - between the time of Prince’s death and the time I began interviews. Creswell advises against using acquaintances as research participants (2007). In some cases, however, the potential benefits outweigh the potential risks. As stated earlier, passionate fans are frequently marginalized and even pathologized (Jenson, 1992, 2014; Elliott, 1999). I worried that fams might not feel comfortable speaking frankly about their

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famdom with someone they didn’t know. Conversely, I hoped – and was correct – that they would be open with a researcher who was a “fellow traveler” (Tolleson, 2018, personal correspondence).

In his ICSW doctoral dissertation, Mead Goedert (2015) noted two risks of choosing acquaintances as participants and outlined a strategy for managing these risks.

First, participants known to the researcher may not feel free to decline to participate or to leave the study: Goedert addressed this by making this dynamic explicit and by repeatedly assuring potential participants that they were free to leave the study at any time. Second, the personal relationship will influence the data: Goedert addressed this by reminding the reader that hermeneutic research takes place in the context of a relationship – so data is always impacted by the relationship between researcher and participant. He also made this point explicit to participants and solicited their feedback when they reviewed their case documents. In addition, Goedert screened every potential acquaintance participant the same as one would non-acquaintances and excluded any potential participant who did not meet the screening criteria. I followed these same steps (see Screening Interview Script, Appendix C).

Appropriateness.

During a 30-minute screening phone or Skype call, I asked potential participants about their famdom and outlined the interview and feedback process. I told them about the risks and benefits of participating, and I listened carefully to our conversation in order to discern their appropriateness. To be appropriate for this study, participants self-

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identified as devoted fans of Prince and demonstrated that they met the research phenomenon as evidenced by (See Chapter I): 

Consumption of Prince-related products.

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Attendance at Prince-related events.

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Participation in fam community.

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Substantial interest in and knowledge about Prince.

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Feelings of strong emotional attachment to Prince and his work.

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A sense of loss following his death.

In addition, they demonstrated willingness and ability to speak about their experiences as fams and expressed desire to participate in all parts of the study including: 

Taking part in the entire interview process, including three 75-minute face-toface interviews; the reading of their case study; and a follow-up interview to discuss their responses to the study.

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Allowing me to record our conversations, transcribe and store the recordings, and use our conversations as the basis of my research and its conclusions.

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Agreeing to the presentation of their history and story in the project, including my interpretation of their story.

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Recognizing that the interview and research process would be somewhat time consuming and inconvenient.

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Reading and signing a document that outlined their rights and responsibilities as participants and allowed the interview, data collection, transcribing, and interpreting process to take place (See Informed Consent Form, Appendix A).

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Two final requirements were more difficult to assess during the screening but were essential to the research process. Beyond being willing and able to share their stories, potential participants needed to: 

Demonstrate the ability to think about and speak reflexively about their experiences, which might be more associated with feelings than with thoughts.

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Demonstrate the ability to tolerate and manage intense feelings, retain reality testing, and self-advocate if they were feeling upset or overwhelmed.

To assess for these abilities, I used clinical listening skills, including empathy, curiosity, skepticism, and awareness of any countertransference toward the potential participant. Asking open-ended questions and allowing potential participants to form their own answers without interference helped me assess their ability to reflect on experiences and to tolerate and mange intense feelings in the moment.

Compensation of participants.

The fams were enthusiastic volunteers, so compensation was not necessary. I did buy each participant beverages and light meals.

Research Design In Case Study Research: Design and Methods, Robert Yin describes research design as a plan for “getting from here to there” (2014, p. 28). In case study research this journey can be both exciting and challenging. Yin suggests a researcher should proceed “as though someone is looking over your shoulder” (2014, p. 49) To do this, the researcher establishes and follows a rigorous protocol that includes collecting data from

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multiple sources, spending considerable time with each participant, processing through writing, keeping thorough records, and allowing others to view and comment upon the unfolding project. In this project, the protocol addressed the recruitment and selection of participants (covered in the previous section), the collection and analysis of data, the creation and sharing of reports, and the storage and disposal of same (covered in the remainder of this chapter).  Screening and selection of participants.  Data collection methods. 

Interviews. 

Three 75-minute lightly structured interviews occurring at least one week apart, over a period of no more than two months.

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To occur in person, in each participant’s home or hometown (with participant’s consent.)

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Captured via recording device, to be transcribed and analyzed in within-case discussion in individual case reports.

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Recordings and transcripts to be archived and kept in locked storage for five years, then destroyed.

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Field notes. 

Detailed notes written by researcher in response to interviews, containing observations about participant during interview process and interviewer’s subjective reaction to narrative and to participant.

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Written free-hand and collected in an individual journal assigned to each participant.

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

Written as quickly as possible after the interview, preferably immediately.

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Used, along with transcriptions of interviews, in within-case analysis in individual case reports.

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To be archived and kept in locked storage for five years, then destroyed.

 Data analysis methods. 

Individual case studies and within-case analyses. 

Transcripts and field notes for each participant brought together and read closely, making note of patterns and themes that appear within each participant’s narrative. These patterns/themes are Categories of Meaning, and they comprise the primary unit of analysis in individual case reports (Tolleson, personal correspondence, October 29, 2018).

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Utilizing the Categories of Meanings as subject headings, a withincase analysis is made for each individual participant. The analysis uses the participant’s own words and the psychoanalytically- and clinicallyinformed observations and interpretations of the researcher.

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The individual case reports, comprised of background information about each participant and the interview process, plus the within-case analysis, are written up and shared with the participant in a follow-up interview, and the participant’s comments and corrections are invited.

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The individual case study is revised to incorporate the participant’s input.

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

The individual case study is included in its entirety in Chapter IV of the project. The case study is comprised of an introductory summary of each participant along with that person’s Categories of Meaning.

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Cross-case discussion. 

Individual case reports brought together and closely read for patterns and themes that emerge across cases.

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These cross-case Categories of Meaning are analyzed, as above, using the psychoanalytically-informed interpretations of the researcher.

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This analysis comprises the Discussion section of the project, to be found in Chapter V.

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The analysis concludes with recommendations for further study.

Data Collection To increase the likelihood that this psychoanalytic case study project reflects participants’ experiences as accurately as possible, evidence was collected in multiple ways. This is a process called “triangulation,” and it is a measure that ensures the project’s trustworthiness (Stake, 1995).

Interviews.

Following an approach described by Denzin (2009), this study relied on a series of in-person interviews with fams as its primary source of data. Three 75-minute inperson interviews, a 30-minute Skype screening call, and a 60-minute Skype follow-up session yielded rich multi-layered descriptions of Prince famdom.

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The script for the screening interview is located in Appendix C. The purpose of this interview was to ascertain whether the potential participant was appropriate for the study, using the guidelines listed earlier in the chapter. It contained demographic questions and preliminary questions about Prince famdom, including questions about the respondents’ reactions to Prince’s death.

Three 75-minute interviews and feedback session.

Interviews were the primary vehicle through which the participant’s narrative was obtained. They were lightly structured. The first interview contained several fixed, openended questions in order to start the process and maintain continuity among participants (See First Interview Questions, Appendix D). The questions included: 

How did you become a fam?

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Tell me about your experiences as a fam.

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How did you feel when you learned that Prince had died?

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How has your fandom changed since Prince’s death?

Subsequent interviews were more spontaneous, but were based on a rough outline that I developed after reflecting on field notes and transcripts from the previous interview.

Most interviews took place in person. The majority of participants lived out of town, and I traveled to meet them. Meeting in person facilitated the unfolding of research relationships, and any transference-countertransference reactions were more obvious and usable than if we were exclusively using electronic means of communication. It was also

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easier in person to observe body language and pick up on subtle moments in verbal and nonverbal interactions.

After the interview process concluded I wrote case studies one at a time in order to immerse myself in each participant’s story. I spoke with each participant to obtain feedback at least once, inviting the participant to clarify or elaborate points that were not clear and to correct errors in the document. This was essential for establishing the project’s trustworthiness.

Field notes.

Immediately following each interview, I wrote detailed notes about what transpired during the meeting. These notes included: 

My reactions in the aftermath of the interview.

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Thoughts about the nonverbal aspects of the interviews.

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Participant’s gestures, posture, facial expressions, mannerisms.

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Pauses between words, obvious shifts in mood or emotion, obvious reactions to questions or comments by interviewer.

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Nonverbal interchanges between participant and interviewer.

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Impressions of the participant’s transference.

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Observations about my countertransference reactions.

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Words and phrases that were repeated or seemed out of place.

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The emergence of themes/Categories of Meaning.

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Thoughts about a general psychoanalytic formulation.

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

Thoughts about how each interview fit with the participant’s other interviews and about how this set of interviews related to the whole group.

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Things that seemed to remain unsaid.

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Questions to ask in next interview.

Field notes provided an opportunity to capture more about the interview process than could be captured through spoken words alone. Writing as soon as possible after each interview I was further engaged in a hermeneutic circle.

Data storing and disposal.

Yin (2014) states that one of the necessary components of establishing credibility in case study research is to keep meticulous and thorough records of the process. These records prove that the project happened, and they create a pathway through the process that – theoretically – would make it possible for another researcher to repeat it. The two major sources of data, interviews and field notes, generate physical or electronic records that provide the project’s “chain of evidence” (Yin, 2014, p. 237) This section outlines the procedures associated with this process.

Recorded sessions.

Interviews we sound recorded on a handheld Sony IC recorder. With participant’s permission, some were also video recorded on an IPhone 6. I assigned each case a number. I stored sound and video files on a password protected thumb drive, filed under the case number and kept in a locked archive box in a locked storage closet. In five years I will erase them.

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Transcription.

I sent sound recordings to Rev.com, a HIPAA-compliant service for transcription.

Sound recordings were sent to the service on password-protected computer files. Per the transcription service’s service agreement, once the transcription was complete the service deleted their file.

Typed process records.

Transcriptions were returned from Rev.com as process records. I assigned each participant’s process records a number, and I masked each participant’s identity. These process records will be kept in a locked storage closet in a numbered archival box for five years and then destroyed.

Field notes.

I assigned a number to the field notebooks of each participant, and I masked their identity. Notebooks will be kept in a locked storage closet in a locked archival box for five years and then destroyed.

Case studies.

Because the case studies are contained in the body of the dissertation, they will not be destroyed. However, each participant’s identity has been masked. Participants took part in and approved their masking, which was thorough, but not to the extent of obscuring crucial aspects of their experiences (for example, a 60-year-old gay, Caucasian

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man from rural Minnesota would not be disguised as a 40-year-old African American woman from Memphis).

Study participants signed an Informed Consent Form that stated that I am permitted to use their information in the ways outlined previously. This form also contains information about security and confidentiality (See Appendix A).

Data Analysis Data analysis took place in two stages. First, I wrote individual case studies for each participant, in which I identified themes and patterns – the participant’s Categories of Meaning – and examined them through a psychoanalytic lens. These individual studies are presented in their entirety in Chapter IV. Second, I undertook a cross-case analysis that mined the studies for meaning categories that exist across most or all cases. These are discussed in detail in Chapter V. The two stages of data analysis are described below in greater detail.

Within-case analysis.

Within-case analysis follows the method for psychoanalytic case study research delineated by Jennifer Tolleson (1996). During my interactions with each participant, themes and patterns emerged that were particular to the participant’s experience of the study phenomenon. These patterns and themes comprise the Categories of Meaning that organize and focus the discussion of each participant’s case (Tolleson, 1996, p. 105).

Each meaning category revealed something significant about the participant’s relationship to the phenomenon.

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Categories of Meaning were identified in the following way: 

I did not keep notes during interviews because it was important that each interview flowed like a conversation, without the external impediment of note-taking between participant and researcher.



Immediately after the interview concluded, before listening to transcript or writing field notes, I gave the session a working title – a phrase that seemed to be the most salient theme in the interview. I also quickly sketched themes and patterns I noticed during the session.



Within one to three hours after the interview, I listened to the sound recording and wrote field notes. These field notes included my reactions to the session and the patterns and themes that emerged in the participant’s recorded narrative. These themes and patterns became the working Categories of Meaning for each interview.



After the interview process concluded and all written transcripts were returned from the transcription service, I looked at the participant’s interview process as a whole, bringing together field notes and transcripts. I read the transcripts with an eye to themes and Categories of Meaning already identified for each session, assessing whether they were particular to the hour or whether they ran through the whole interview process.



I used all the information available – transcripts, field notes, feelings and perceptions about the process, and knowledge of pertinent psychoanalytic ideas – to discern each participant’s Categories of Meaning. This is another

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example of a hermeneutic circle, moving from the parts to the whole of the interview process and back again. 

The process for determining cross-case Categories of Meaning was similar to the final steps of determining individual Categories of Meaning. All case study documents were brought together, and I used the documents, my memory, and my knowledge of psychoanalytic theory and clinical theory to determine themes shared by participants.

Each participant’s story is unique and important, so each case was prepared and presented individually before moving to the cross-case analysis that formed the discussion section of the project.

Like any theory, psychoanalytic theory is a culturally constructed way of understanding that is rooted in a particular sociocultural and historical context. Its limitations and assumptions affect how the meaning categories in this project are constructed and understood (Tolleson, 1996; Servatius, 2011; Goedert, 2015). Further, I used psychoanalytic theory not to diagnose or pathologize fans, but to deepen depictions of the famdom.

To ensure the trustworthiness of my interpretations, I coded each participant’s narrative for Categories of Meaning twice, and I gave a second, psychoanalyticallyinformed reader randomly selected sections of each case study to see if that reader would arrive at similar conclusions. In addition, I discussed my formulations with a psychoanalytically-informed consultant to ensure that they made sense and were feasible (Tolleson, 1996). I also shared sections of the report with each participant, who had the opportunity to clarify or correct what I had written.

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Cross-case analysis.

After the case study process was completed for individual participants, I brought all of the case study documents together and examined them as a group, focusing again on themes and patterns and comparing Categories of Meaning across participants. I then examined the aggregate meaning categories through a psychoanalytic lens. This comparative analysis provides the basis of the study’s discussion section in Chapter V (Tolleson, 1996). Chapter V concludes with my thoughts about the implications of this study’s findings for psychoanalytic and fan-oriented fields and suggested directions for future study.

Ethical Considerations The rights and protections for study participants are outlined in the “Research Information and Consent for Participation in Social Behavioral Research” document (see Appendix A). Protections included informing participants fully about the nature of the study, including its risks and benefits, and formally soliciting their participation. This form was signed by each participant and by the researcher at the beginning of the first interview. Each participant received a copy of the signed document, and the original is archived with other case materials.

Ensuring privacy and confidentiality.

Participants’ confidential information and privacy is protected by masking their identity in the case write-ups, by identifying their files by number, by passwordprotecting their confidential documents, by engaging the services of a HIPAA-compliant

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transcription service, by storing their physical and electronic data securely, and by committing to destroy it after a period of five years.

Each participant’s identity is masked. Participants contributed to and approved their masking. Demographic features and physical characteristics have been altered to the extent that participants are satisfied that people who know them will not recognize them.

Ensuring emotional well-being.

I addressed concerns about the emotional vulnerability of participants by assessing their stability prior to beginning the study and by choosing participants who demonstrated resilience. No participants became distressed or overwhelmed during the course of the research However, had this occurred I would have assisted them according to the following guidelines: 

I would offer to help process the experience if the participant felt emotionally overwhelmed as a result of an interview. In addition, I provided a list of national hotlines and therapy referral databases to all participants (such as psychologytoday.com). (See Resources for Participants, Appendix B).



At the beginning of the first interview I stated orally and in writing that the participant was a volunteer and empowered to take breaks, set the pace, redirect the scheduling or flow of interviews, or terminate their participation in the study (See Informed Consent, Appendix A). I reiterated this in subsequent meetings.



I stated orally and in writing that if a participant had a complaint about me or about the study, that person could contact my dissertation chair, Dr. Jennifer

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Tolleson. Her email and phone number are included on the Informed Consent document (See Appendix A).

Issues of Trustworthiness In this hermeneutic phenomenological study where the sample size was very small and I, the researcher, was sympathetic to the participants as representatives of a phenomenon toward which I was biased, establishing the trustworthiness of the project was essential (Guba, 1981). I addressed this by attending to its credibility, dependability, and transferability.

Credibility.

The credibility of the project, or the confidence I have in the truth of my findings, is established through various means. A credible project is one in which I am able to represent participants’ data in a plausible way, giving a correct interpretation of participants’ views (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). In this project I tried to ensure a high level of credibility by: 

Interviewing participants several times, over a fairly long period. This helped me build rapport, gave the participants time to open up to me, and helped me come to an understanding of their famdom within the context of their particular life stories. As the participants and I got to know each other over time, interactions became increasingly open and collaborative.

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

Reflecting upon my process in a field journal. The field journal contained impressions of the nonverbal aspects of researcher/participant interactions and other observations about the interview process.



Sharing findings with each participant. At points during the writing of the case studies, I shared my findings with each participant, inviting each to comment and make corrections. This increased the credibility of the document by ensuring that the document was a co-construction, not just a fantasy of my own (Schwandt, et al., 2007).



Presenting in dissertation seminar. I further enhanced credibility by presenting my project twice to the Institute for Clinical Social Work’s dissertation seminar.



Choosing expert participants. Finally, I selected participants who are experts on their own famdom, who were able to provide in-depth, targeted information about the topic being studied.

Dependability.

Dependability is “the stability of the findings over time” (Anvey, 2004, online).

Creating a dependable project involves evaluating the findings and the interpretations of the study to make sure they are supported by the data provided by the participants (Schwandt, 2007). I did this by creating an audit trail of my research materials – field notes, transcripts, raw data, calendars – so that the steps I took, observations I made, and the conclusions I drew during the research could be confirmed (Lincoln & Guba, 2002). I

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also coded data of themes twice to see if I arrived at the same themes in the data each time.

Transferability.

Transferability is the degree to which the results of the research can be transferred to other contexts with other respondents. Two strategies facilitate transferability – “thick description” and purposive sampling (Anvey, 2014). Thick description comes about through a “rich and extensive” elaboration of the details concerning research methodology and contexts. Purposive sampling involves choosing research participants who are knowledgeable about and part of the phenomenon under study (Guba, 1981).

Through thick descriptions of the steps to be taken and a purposive sample of selfidentified invested fams who were impacted by Prince’s death, this study could be transferable to other psychoanalytic studies of Prince fams or fans of other dead idols, but I would not expect it to transfer to other contexts.

The Role and Background of the Researcher My own activities as a “Bruce” fan gave me extensive background knowledge about Springsteen fan culture and allowed me access to people and to realms of fandom to which I would not ordinarily have access.

Fandom is an intensely personal thing: that I practiced similar activities and had knowledge similar to the people I studied helped me to ask intelligent questions and to better understand their points of view (Cavicchi, 1998, p. 11).

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Fan theorist Donald Cavicchi, addressing the strength and limitations of being an academic fan engaged in a study as a “native researcher� (1998, p. 13), emphasizes the effects of researcher bias, which causes one to see what one expects to find and not what one does not expect to find. As previously noted, this is a challenge to all phenomenological and hermeneutic research. I cannot remove my own experiences, assumptions, historicality, and biases from this work, so these have become interpreting tools. Along with my ability to listen, to observe, to think and to write, I have used my own self to understand and tell the participants’ stories.

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Chapter IV

Individual Case Studies

Chris: My Own, Special Family Member I knew Chris by name and reputation long before I met him. He was my husband’s colleague and he was a passionate Prince fan. Years before Prince died, Chris lent my husband his huge archive of Prince music – CDs, singles, maxi singles, remixes, movies, concert DVDs, imports and bootlegs I didn’t know existed. I also didn’t know fans like Chris existed. I was very curious, but it wasn’t until I started this project that I got to know him.

Chris dresses in purple, with a symbol on his hat and another around his neck.

Somehow he makes this look understated. He is always representing Prince. In Princeoriented social situations he is warm and engaged – an excellent listener at every after party. He smiles easily and laughs often. People, including celebrities, are drawn to him.

When we first met, Chris told me this: I’ll put it this way, and I’m being serious. My dad had pancreatic cancer, and when he passed my mom called. She called, of course, to tell me he’d passed, but more important, she called me because she wanted me to hurry up and tell my brother before he went on social media and found out about

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our dad that way. So my mom called me so I could make sure my brother was all right.

The day Prince died, my mom called me, but she called to see if I was okay. “Chris, I heard what happened. You need anything? Do you want me to come stay with you?” You know what I mean? It was like she called me because a family member of mine had passed. My own special family member.

Background and history.

Chris is a 48-year-old, heterosexual, African American man. He is divorced. He has a son. His mother is still living, and he has one younger brother. A hospital patient advocate, whose job involves sensitive navigation of systems that are sometimes at odds with one another, Chris is both commanding and at ease.

When he was growing up in Detroit, his parents listened to Motown, so Chris did, too. Motown music washed over Chris, who received it passively without giving it much thought. It was musical furniture, his musical foundation.

In Detroit, Chris said, you might bump into Diana Ross or Marvin Gaye while you were out doing your shopping. Or, if you were hungry, and your friends and you couldn’t quite scrape up the cash for an order of wings, Aretha Franklin might put it on her tab.

I met Aretha Franklin at this place called Bert’s. It’s a soul food place and an after-hours jazz club. My friends and me walk in there, trying to get some chicken wings. We were, maybe, seniors in high school, and we

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didn’t have a lot of money, so we were pooling our money to get some wings. Out of the corner of my eye, I’m like, “There’s Aretha Franklin!”

We are a little star-struck because we were kids. Everybody else was like, “That’s just RiRi [Aretha].” Everybody else was cool.

She could see that we were shell-shocked, and she was like, “Oh, baby – y’all come over here. It’s okay! You can say hi,” So we walked up and said, “Hey, Ms. Franklin, how you doing?” She said, “I’m alright. I’m just sitting here eating, listening to some music . . . You all look hungry.

Bert, give them some chicken wings. Just put it on my tab.” So – Aretha Franklin fed us, and that’s how it is in Detroit.

Motown stars were just regular people – regular, famous people – in Detroit. They were both part of the landscape and cherished icons. If you were a Detroit native and saw a Motown star on the street you didn’t lose your cool, scream, or ask for an autograph.

You greeted the star, maybe thanked them, and respected their privacy.

Fan story.

Chris was a musically-naïve 12 year old when his cool, older cousin Lou called to him from a back room at a family gathering, said, “Listen to this,” and put on Prince’s 1999. The first song she played was, “Let’s Pretend We’re Married,” followed by, “Lady Cab Driver.” Chris’ curiosity was “definitely piqued.” He’d heard a lot of Motown, and “those guys sang about deep stuff,” but it was always coded. Chris had never heard such directly sexual music. He says, “This dude – he didn’t care!”

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Then Lou told him Prince was playing all the music himself. Not only was he singing about things that amazed and delighted the 12-year-old mind, Prince was playing every instrument in those songs. Chris says, “I’d never heard anything like that, and I thought it was the greatest thing ever.” He wondered, “What can this dude not do?”

Chris began to listen to all of Prince’s recorded music, starting with 1999 and moving backwards. Controversy was completely different than 1999. “In the middle of the song ‘Controversy,’ Prince starts reciting The Lord’s Prayer,” Chris says, “Now my head is blowing up.” Backing up further, Dirty Mind didn’t sound like either 1999 or Controversy. Every album was different. Prince didn’t sound like anybody else, and, at the same time, he did. He was completely original, but there were elements of Motown – and of every other kind of music – in his songs.

Chris describes this period as research. He was researching the question, Do I like Prince? The answer was, Yes! Prince sang about everything and experimented with every musical style and genre. His lyrics conveyed to Chris that “it’s okay to be what I am, or it’s okay to do this thing or feel this thing.” Chris was mesmerized. Then Purple Rain hit.

Chris says, “Oh, okay. Now we know for sure. He’s the man.”

Chris says that Detroit was onto Prince before the rest of the world. He attributes this to the influence of The Electrifying Mojo, “the best DJ Detroit ever had.” By the time Purple Rain happened people in Detroit “already knew how funky he [Prince] was.”

Chris saw Purple Rain at least 15 times at Detroit’s Norwest Theater, where it ran for two years. Not only was the music incredible, but also Chris loved Prince’s character, The Kid, who he found eminently relatable.

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Chris thinks that Prince lost many of his fans when he followed Purple Rain with Around the World in a Day. He suspects that Prince intended to do just that, because, “who wants a lot of fair-weather, jump-on-the-bandwagon fans who won’t let you make anything but 1999 and Purple Rain for the rest of your life?” Nothing in the new album sounded like Purple Rain. There was only one obvious single, “Raspberry Beret.” He says, “Most people must’ve felt like, ‘What is this? I thought it was the greatest. This dude was something else!”

A second point of departure for fans arrived when Prince changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol. Chris says, “I thought it was great.” He didn’t know why Prince became a symbol and began putting out two albums every year. “There’s two different messages,” he says, “and no one will explain it to me, and I’m not going to know what’s going on until years from now. That’s okay. I’m gonna roll with it and buy my two albums.” When he learned that becoming the symbol was Prince’s way of both fulfilling his obligation to Warner Brothers and getting around his contract, Chris thought, “That’s brilliant.”

Over the years, Chris has visited Minneapolis multiple times, and has had countless Prince-related experiences. One time he was in Prince’s Glam Slam club with a girlfriend, and Prince (who Chris mistook for a little boy) was so taken with their dancing that he invited them up to his private VIP room. Prince was gone by the time they got there, but they enjoyed wandering around, sipping champagne, and marveling at Prince’s “Greek statues swathed in purple and lace.”

Chris never missed an opportunity to see Prince live. The Lovesexy show in the late 1980’s was his favorite. He says, “There was a basketball court. He’s shooting hoops

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on stage. The man has got energy, so it’s, like, three hours, full energy, full stage, full music, full production, just everything.” Chris always tried to go to Prince’s birthday concerts in Detroit, and in 2007 he serendipitously scored tickets to the Per4ming Live 3121 show in Las Vegas. He’s also attended concerts by Sheila E., The Time, The Family, Mazerati and many of Prince’s other protégés and associates.

On April 21, 2016, Chris was in his office when his boss came in and asked if he was okay. He asked what she was talking about, and she told him to look on the Internet.

This worried him because using the Internet for personal reasons was not permitted at his job. He was already concerned about Prince after his plane had made an emergency landing in Moline the previous week, but he was unprepared for the news. “I went on Yahoo, and there it was, ‘Prince dead at 57,’” he says, “But I was still like, ‘Come on!

Stop fooling!’ I thought it was a late April Fool’s joke.” His boss sent him home early.

Chris stayed in his apartment from Thursday to Monday. He doesn’t remember how he got there, but once home he bundled himself in a blanket on the couch and stared at the news, trying to understand what had happened. People called, texted, emailed.

People sent him food. His ex-girlfriend from college to whom he hadn’t spoken since they broke up in 1993, called to check on him. It was as though a close relative had died.

On Saturday afternoon he got up and made himself something to eat. Then he watched all of Prince’s movies, videos, and old interviews, thinking, “I can’t believe this dude is gone.” He heard about a radio station playing all of Prince’s music. He just watched and listened until it was time to go back to work.

Since Prince died, Chris has continued to be “a strong fan.” He listens to Prince music all the time. He collects Prince’s music and the music of people associated with

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him. He has a collection of Prince-related merchandise and artwork. He goes to shows by Prince’s associates and protégés “because I want to hear his influence on other people.”

He also wants to be around other fams. He went to Minneapolis for the Tribute concert in October, 2016, and he has been back every year for Celebration. He says, “I want to celebrate! I want to be in Minneapolis. It’s a beautiful city, and I want to be with everyone to celebrate Prince!”

Categories of meaning.

When Chris was a kid in Detroit, Motown was everywhere, and he grew up surrounded by it. However, he didn’t wake up to an experience of music that was his own until his favorite cousin played “Let’s Pretend We’re Married” when he was 12. The song had hooks – multiple hooks – that connected with something inside him and grew throughout his life, providing internal and external structure and becoming part of his personality.

Not just Prince, but fandom itself, is important to Chris, who is passionately affiliated with a number of things, from sports teams to medical research organizations.

These fandom-like affiliations externally represent Chris’s commitment to inner values and beliefs. Chris engages enthusiastically with these things, but their meanings beyond the manifest remain very private.

Assessing both Chris’ presented narrative and less direct forms of communication, a picture of what Prince means to him comes into view. More obviously than any other participant, Prince’s meanings are expressed in what Chris doesn’t say directly – through repetitions, body language, slips of the tongue, spontaneous eruptions

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of song snippets, surprising moments of exuberance and sadness, and other phenomena outside the verbal through-line of his story.

For Chris, Prince is an internal relationship and private experiences that are protected in his mind, but that are nourished through group or public activities. For Chris, Prince is both inside and outside. His music exists in time, providing a path Chris can follow and claim. Chris identifies with and idealizes Prince. In his interpretations of Prince’s songs, he finds ideas about how to be a person. In Prince’s conduct, he sees ways to live and lead, and ways to show love for other people. Chris is a strong, true fan, and Prince is Chris’s own special family member.

When Prince died, Chris mourned, and then he moved beyond mourning to something new. The death recollected another death – the death of his father – and the resolution of his grief for Prince may have followed a similar path. Today, Chris focuses on living his life informed by Prince’s message, but in his own way.

Prince as environment.

Chris’ fan experience is publicly, exuberantly expressed, but the meanings it has for him are private and internal. He feels Prince and his music deeply. Prince resides in a place in Chris’ mind that he protects and that may be inarticulable. He loves Prince powerfully in a way that is difficult, or maybe impossible, to describe.

If you could sum everything up in one word, you would just say, "Dude, the dude is amazing." Just the music, the style, the culture, the clothes, the message, how you treat others, the total package is just amazing. I don't know if we're ever going to see somebody like that again, because it's just

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different, because everything is different now, and I think everything happens for a reason and all that kind of stuff, but it's just different. It's just amazing. It's just amazing.

Chris tries to describe his feelings for Prince, but what most clearly illuminates them are not the words themselves, but how he expresses them. He repeats words and phrases like, “The dude is something else,” and, “Unbelievable,” and, “Who does that,” and, “He’s just amazing.” These words, spoken with jubilance and awe, are like punctuation, bringing almost every statement to its close. Chris is not looking for an answer to the question of who does the things Prince does or affirmation that Prince is, indeed, amazing. These repetitions seem to express overwhelming wonder for something so engulfing that it must be said this way.

The love Chris has for Prince is also evident in the way Chris listens to Prince music. He listens with an inward focus, like the music is inside of him, and he is leaving behind his surface self and traveling someplace deep inside to find it. He could be in a stadium with 55,000 other people singing “Purple Rain,” but Chris would be singing to himself. He sings quietly, almost under his breath, with a still look on his face. He knows every Prince song. If Prince were playing on the radio 24 hours a day, every day, forever, Chris would sing along quietly – in deep attunement, like a lullaby.

This gives you some indication of how much I love Prince. I was in the hospital once – unconscious – for days. It turned out I had Legionnaire’s Disease, but nobody knew that at the time. They’d called my mom and brother to come. One time the nurse came in – I hadn’t said anything for days – and she was doing what she had to do, and she looked down, and

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my mouth was moving, so she said to my brother, “I think he’s trying to say something.” So my brother came over and put his ear down next to me . . . and I was singing “Boys and Girls” real quietly. He stood up and said to the nurse, “It’s Prince. He’s going to be okay.”

Prince envelops Chris. Prince is a calming, grounding internal presence for Chris, who protects this deep relationship that belongs just to him. It’s possible that he doesn’t express it because he can’t. It may be beyond words or linked to an inner experience before words. Prince is not just a genius or a person or an ideal or a mirror, or anything that Chris can use to do something. Prince is an environment.

Music – transitional and transformational.

The way Chris talks about music in his home growing up suggests that it was something about which he was barely conscious. It was there before he got there, and it was there, alongside him, while he was growing up. He received it passively. His father’s siblings were musicians, but his father wasn’t. Music was in the air around the house, but it didn’t directly impact Chris. He didn’t like or dislike it, or have any thoughts about it.

His parents listened to Motown, so that’s what he heard. It was just there, both inside and outside of him, an unconscious presence evoking family and home.

We’re in Detroit, so in Detroit you listen to Motown – all the Motown, the Temptations, all the bands. So, you know. It’s funky. It’s soulful. Detroit is only so big. When my dad was growing up he knew the Temptations.

They were just running around. They were high school students like he was. Everybody knew each other, and that’s just how it is.

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At the family party, Chris’s cool, older cousin called from the back room. This was a significant moment – like an initiation – an invitation to share something between the two of them. On the edge of adolescence, before anything had really happened (but everything might or could happen), Chris went into to the back room, and his mind was blown.

The first song was, “Let’s Pretend We’re Married.” Prince is cussing a little, swearing, and he’s talking about doing all the things people do when they’re married, but he’s not married. It’s just . . . I was like . . . “This is music?” I’d never heard anything like that, and I thought it was the greatest thing ever.

This song that was flagrantly about sex, a topic of great interest and curiosity to a teenaged boy, blew his mind. The image of the man on the album cover – looking both utterly, fantastically other and like a relatable little guy – blew his mind. He recognized the mind-blowing sounds as music, but it was different than anything he’d ever heard in his life. It was familiar, and it was totally new. He was enthralled.

Here’s this dude that’s different than anybody else in the world. The music is different, but – of course – it’s got these undertones of Motown and everybody else from that heyday. All that kind of stuff. It’s like, “Dude, how’d you put this all together?” And I loved it.

Prince was both something that Chris found in the world and that he created for himself in his mind – a transitional object and an object of transformation. Prince became a preoccupation, a pastime, a playmate, and an aspect of Chris’ unfolding self. In that

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moment, Chris first encountered a passion and a source of play, and it became an absorption that continues to this day.

Who does that?

See, the music is great, and he’s a genius, but that’s just a part of it. I think this separates a true fan from someone who just appreciates that he’s a good musician and all of that. You can’t separate the music from the person. The music sounds good. It sounds funky. It’s crystal clear, but the message of the music is also important. You can’t separate the music from the message, and you can’t separate either of those from the person.

Chris uses what he believes are Prince’s qualities and values as goals for living his best life. Chris idealizes Prince – the genius who created music – in all his guises. He admires The Kid who is like him, the man who is both fallible human and principled hard worker, and the Symbol who is a larger than life shining star and agent of change. Chris identifies with Prince’s humanity while holding him up as an object embodying ideals that Chris wishes to express.

Identification with The Kid. Everything stopped when Purple Rain came out. I was mesmerized by Purple Rain. That’s when I felt like, “Okay – he got me. I’m a fan.” It’s like, dang – this dude gets deep! I’m gonna have to pay attention to this man for the rest of my life. He is not going to fade away, so I’m gonna have to stay with this dude forever.

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By the time Purple Rain was released in 1984, Chris “already knew Prince was the man,” but the movie sealed Chris’s sense that he had to “follow him forever.” He saw the movie in the theater multiple times, marveling at the music and at the character of The Kid. He didn’t play God in that movie. He played a black sheep who didn’t have anything . . . Your band is mad at you. The owner of the club says, “If you don’t get your stuff together, I’m gonna replace you with a lady band that’s only been on stage one or two times . . . He had to fight and strive to achieve anything. Everybody can relate to that.

The Kid was “a chump, living in his parents’ basement,” who got into trouble at his job and “didn’t know how to talk to girls.” Fourteen-year-old Chris could relate to this. At the same time, The Kid played the guitar, danced, rode a cool motorcycle, and eventually got both the applause and the girl. This is another way Prince was a “special family member” for Chris, who could look up to him as an older brother or a “cool uncle.”

You can tell he was kind of a black sheep in his family, right? Sometimes I identify as the black sheep in my family. I love my sister, of course.

Everybody wants to be around my sister. Chris is cool, but Ch--- is the one everybody wants to be around, you know what I mean? So, you kind of identify that with him, right? He was this weird, quirky little dude who isolated a lot. He was a chump in high school. Well, I was a chump in high school, too.

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Having only a little brother, who commanded a lot of his parents’ attention and always needed some looking after, Chris may have craved a fantasy older brother, and The Kid delivered. Both nerdy and cool, The Kid was perfect for Chris.

Most people – if they had the chance to play the rock star in the movie, the guy who gets all the girls, all that kind of stuff – guess what they’re going to play. They’re gonna play the rock star who gets all the girls! They’re not gonna play some little dude living in the basement of his parents’ house, getting punked out by the other band.

The Kid looked a little like Chris and was growing up in a modest home in a cold Midwestern city. The biggest movie of Chris’s life was filled with characters with whom he could relate, who came from backgrounds he could imagine. This must have had a powerful impact on his young mind.

He didn’t care!

If you came in under Purple Rain and didn't do your research, and then all of a sudden, Around the World in a Day comes out, that sounds nothing like anything you heard before. Because, you listening to tambourines and all different kind of musical instruments that you never ... yeah, cymbals, and ... stuff that you never really heard of in pop music is being used in this album. You're like, well, what is this? What is going on here? You know what I mean? Who plays violins in pop music? And, you got violins playing and stuff like that. If you didn't do your research you wasn't ready for that. It's like, this is too deep for me. You lost me, I gotta go. But, for

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those who did their research. It was like, yeah, he’s changing a gear. He’s growing again. He’s expanding again.

Prince constantly flew in the face of convention: that “he didn’t care” has great appeal for Chris, who repeated that phrase scores of times during interviews. Chris was enthralled as Prince “changed and changed again.” He grew from a relatable older fantasy brother to something larger than life. He wowed Chris, who was ecstatic about each new thing he did. With each twist and turn of Prince’s career, Chris loved him more and became more committed to following him. Chris saw in Prince’s bold, ingenious, rulebreaking approach to his musical career qualities to tailor to his own young life.

He practiced every day, every day, every day and always perfected his sound and tried to do the best he could do in music. I’m no musician, but as far as things that I do in everyday life, trying to be the best person I can be and keep doing the best I can, and don't settle for the cheap way or the easy way out, you know what I mean? Always trying not to sell it for the status quo. Always trying to do better than that. I think that's definitely a way he fits into my life, because he wouldn't just settle for mediocre, so why would I? I can't do that, you know what I mean?

Not caring didn’t mean that Prince treated people poorly or behaved badly. His work ethic was extraordinary, as was his commitment to his fans. What Prince didn’t care about was the status quo, a value Chris adheres to in his own life.

He was a very gifted and talented human being. But, he was a human being. And so, as a human being, that's what to me, also, made him a genius and also goes with how great he was because despite all the

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imperfections he had, in spite all the demons we now see that he had, and all that kind of stuff. He was still doing it, still producing good music, still doing what he need to do, still giving to numerous charities that we'll never know the names of. But, he just gave it to them at the whim of whatever.

Chris relates to and idealizes Prince, not because he was perfect, but because he was human and he tried. Perfection is just “a fantasy” or “smoke and mirrors.” And for Chris, Prince’s radical not caring about rules is inspiring because, in Prince’s own words, “a strong spirit transcends rules.” Chris sees in it a vehicle for identifying and envisioning the values he wants to embody in his own life.

That’s the stuff I would do!

It’s not like he’s telling me to do something that’s like, “Oh, I didn’t think about that before.” It’s like, “Man, that’s something I would do.” You can really identify with and attach yourself to his music because it’s stuff you would do. The stuff you think – about life, about religion. You think about your relationships. You think about every aspect of your life, and his music – you got an issue? Play one of his albums. You’ll get an answer.

A question that Chris repeats often is, “Who does that?” Who puts those sounds together? Who creates a hero that lives in his parents’ basement? Who follows the biggest album ever made with Around the World in a Day? Who releases six albums at a time?

Who plays basketball onstage during a show? Prince does.

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I was born wanting to treat everybody fairly, I was born trying to advocate for those who can't advocate for themselves, and all that kind of stuff.

That's the trait that I was born with as a kid. Right? Then I grow up and I listen to Prince music and all that kind of stuff. The traits that I already had as a kid is in the music, you know what I mean? The traits that I had in the music, then yes, the music is the guideline, is the roadmap to how you want to do stuff, because guess what? You're already thinking this anyway.

While Prince was alive, Chris perceived that Prince – the older brother, the idealizable other – was one step ahead of him, showing him the way. As Prince grew up, so did Chris. As Prince moved out of his “punk” period, Chris was on the verge of becoming less of a punk. When Prince shifted from “rude boy” to a more responsible, spiritual state of mind, Chris was also moving in that direction.

It’s in the words, and it’s also in the music. There are elements of both that relate specifically to you. I like all kinds of music. A lot of music is good, and it’s cool, but I can’t relate to it because I haven’t lived it, haven’t experienced it. But Prince’s music – that’s the stuff I would do! The stuff I think about life, about religion, about – you know – politics, and relationships. You got an issue or a problem? Listen to a Prince album, and you’ll get an answer.

Prince was an excellent, idealizable object because Chris could see himself in Prince’s actions. Chris could follow in Prince’s footsteps and feel like he knew where he was going.

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The Symbol.

I’m being extravagant on my soapbox right now, but from the time of the caveman until the time of future George Jetson, who would have ever thought that because I don’t like the contract that I signed, period, not even talking about Warner Brothers, but because of the contract that I signed – I don’t like it, and they’re not letting me out of it – I say, “Fine, I’m going to change my name to something you can’t pronounce. Then I’m going to do albums in my name so I can finish the contract. But I’m also going to do other stuff on my own under the name you can’t pronounce, and guess what. You can’t mess with me! And guess why – because you can’t pronounce my name!” It’s hilarious. How can you not be a fan of that?

No story from Prince’s life speaks more directly to Chris than the story of Prince changing his name to an unpronounceable symbol to get around limits set on him by his record company, Warner Brothers. Chris sees this maneuver – as confusing and inexplicable as it was at the time – as a mind-blowingly transformational event that “changed the music business forever.” It also changed Chris’ mind forever, opening him to new ways to think about and approach barriers in his own life. “It was the story of David and Goliath,” Chris says, “And David won.”

It [Prince changing his name] was the funniest thing in my life that I’ve ever seen, and it also let me know this dude was totally before his time . . .

Who does that? It’s hilarious! You know what I mean? How did it come

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into his mind? That stuff is just before his time. And I also think it’s critical thinking. This is how you overcome problems. I’m not gonna let this be a barrier. How can you not like somebody like that? And it changed the music industry for so many other people . . . I mean, everything he did was, of course, for him, but it also ended up being for the future of everyone else.

I must note here, that when Chris reveled, as he did many times, in the details of this story I felt a mix of exasperation and amusement. I was one of those “fair-weather fans who fell away” when Prince became O(+>. Every time Chris gleefully related his feelings about this move I wanted to roll my eyes and exclaim, “For crying out loud, what did Prince think would happen when he signed that hundred million dollar contract?”

Most barriers that are in front of people, you may not have put that barrier there, but you have something to do with it, in some form or fashion. You have to think outside the box how to work around it. Really outside of the box – which is hard, because it’s your box. I totally get that sometimes stuff happens that’s beyond your control. You had nothing to do with it, and it’s still a barrier, but sometimes you do have something to do with it . . . “Now let me think of a plan to get around this barrier so it won’t ever come back again, because I ain’t going to be in this situation ever again.

I’m not going to sign a contract saying I need to do another 50 albums with them and not get my masters. I’m not doing that any more.”

Maybe in those moments I was identifying with the establishment that Prince outsmarted. I was thinking like someone who can’t understand that sometimes obstacles

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can’t be surmounted by either following the rules or blasting through them. Sometimes obstacles have to be skirted by whatever means necessary and then destroyed from the other side. Chris’s ideal Prince is a man – like him - who can sneak past a barrier, search his soul, and then destroy that barrier to make the world better for everyone.

Death, internalization and the rest of your life.

I miss him, I miss him. I miss him. It’s just a hole you can’t fill. He’s missing. Everything that’s happened since he passed, Celebrations, the concerts, the memorials, the Target Center thing with the live band, the Questlove orchestra – it’s all been great – but he is missing. He’s not there. You can feel that hole, but you can’t fill it, no matter what. Some days, it’s like . . . whoa. He’s not here. I have to sit down and consider, like . . . dang. He’s not here.

For Chris, Prince’s death was a deep tragedy. It was the loss of a person to whom he looked up in many ways – an idealized older brother, an icon, a superstar, and even, in some ways a father. It was also a disruption to his internal life, in which Prince played a containing and structuring role. Without Prince one step ahead, giving Chris a focus and providing the soundtrack to his life, how would Chris continue on with his life?

Loss of the idealized other.

"There will be no more new interpretations of your feelings from now to whenever I drop dead." So that's the first thing I realized like, "Wow." So I have to take what I've got from age ... What'd I say? 12 or 13 or 14 when I

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first listened to Prince in the backroom with my cousin, whatever year that was and how old I was, to 44, when he passed. I have to take the music from all those years now, and that's got to be my roadmap.

Chris loved Prince, not merely for his “sustainable funkiness,” but for the internal roles he played as an idealized selfobject and ego ideal. Prince was the object filling Chris’s mind with a sense of knowing where he was going and what his purpose was.

Prince was a relatable man and a strong man. He was a human with flaws and frailties, and he was a supernova and a genius in his science laboratory. He had always been there, up in Minneapolis, creating. As long as Chris had been conscious of his own musical choices, Prince had been at the center.

My dad isn’t here, but I can hear him in my mind, “Chris, that’s not what you should do,” or I can think, “What would my dad do?” Those things are still with me because, of course, he was the greatest man in my life. So Prince was the second greatest man in my life. Yes, my dad’s still there.

Would he like this? What would he think about this? You take the time you had with your loved one – or with Prince – and you still live your life that way. That’s all you can do. You know what I mean?

Only a few years before Prince died, Chris lost his first strong, idealized object.

His father died from pancreatic cancer in 2013. Chris recognizes that his feelings and thoughts as he’s mourned Prince resemble those he felt when he grieved the loss of his dad. Chris knows full well that grief is real and that working through it takes a long time.

And, at the end of the hard work the lost person remains dead.

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So who's your voice now? Who's the voice of reason now as far as music?

Who's the voice of reason now? Who's your voice in music to say stuff now? One of the last songs he did was “Baltimore,” with all the stuff that was going on in Baltimore. He put it perfectly in the song. Who's going to do that now? You start thinking about like, wow, that hits you. It really hits you.

Chris has moved through his grief and internalized what he loved about his lost objects. Neither Prince nor Chris’s father has returned to him as a living person at the end of his mourning, but both are alive within him, and each has contributed in transformational ways to Chris’ sense of himself as an actor in the world.

Living – externally expressing – your values.

It’s like we lost the voice of our generation. It’s gone. That voice that told the man, “This is the way it is,” and got the man to stick it. You know what I mean? Or – this is how we’re going to act – We’re going to act the way we want to act. All that is gone . . . So, who’s your voice now? Who’s the voice of reason? You start thinking about that, and it’s like – wow – it really hits you. It’s me.

The values that Prince embodied are part of Chris. They resonated deeply because they are values Chris also holds. Now that Prince is dead, the call is stronger for Chris to live them.

When are you going to take a stand as far as really appreciating things around you and treating people the way you want to be treated? “Better

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live now.” He’s a perfect example of his own message. He thought he was gonna live forever, and he didn’t. So when are you going to start living the way you should be living?

Chris repeatedly expresses his gratitude that Prince was a little older, considerably wiser, and astonishingly generous about putting his inner thoughts into songs and sharing them with millions of strangers. Prince’s deep thoughts and beliefs resonated with Chris because, “these are things I was already thinking about myself.”

Always try to be the best that you can be, and always treat people like you want to be treated. We say that, but we take it for granted. We’ve said that’s what we believe our whole lives, but now I have to think more about the things I’m actually doing. Am I going to harm someone if I do something? Is this decision I make going to hurt or help someone? That kind of stuff – I’m more conscious of that now, I think.

Did Chris create these values, or did he find them? Chris thanks Prince for showing up at exactly the right moment and walking the road with him throughout his life. If Chris had a problem he could, “go to a Prince song, and there’s your answer,” similar to how some people use a Bible or other sacred text. The values Chris holds can be found in messages in Prince’s music.

We don’t know what tomorrow holds . . . So, when are you going to make a stand and do the things you said you would do? Now’s the time to really appreciate the things around you and treat people like you want to be treated, you know what I mean? Tomorrow’s not guaranteed, so I’ve got to really start living my message. I want to be remembered as a good

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person, so what does it take for that to happen? I know what it takes, but I have to start actually living it.

Now that Prince – the external person embodying Chris’ ideal, internal good object – is gone, Chris must make do with what he has inside himself. He has to live the values he already believes. As with his father, Chris carries Prince inside now. The internalized Prince will never fill into the hole left by the departure of the temporal, material superstar Prince, but – as with other loved, lost others – what remains is Chris’s to use forever.

Good and Bad Fans.

Where else you're gonna go that you see middle-aged black men, middleaged black women, youngsters, teenagers, middle-aged white women, middle aged white men. Old white dudes with cowboy hats and cowboy boots. Straight up cowboy from Houston Texas, dancing his butt off. He had to be about at least 65. Cowboy suit, spurs, cowboy hat, rocking to Prince, dancing in the aisles. Old ladies and Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans. Where are you going to see all ages, all ranges, all ethnic groups, all sexualities, LGBTQ, every religion. Where are you going to go to any concert hall and see everybody come together for one thing – to appreciate this dude's music. You're not going to see that anywhere else.

Chris uses other Prince fams, the fam community, and other membership in other fandoms (that include the Detroit Pistons, his alma mater, his fraternity, and pancreatic cancer research organizations) to foster a sense of affiliation and belonging and to

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provide mirroring selfobject functions. He is proud to be a strong, true fan among other strong, true fans. His interactions with other people and fandoms generally confirm that he is on the right track, representing his fan objects in exemplary ways and living the values embodied by those objects.

I think the kind of kid who grows up to be a Prince fan is one who wouldn't mind sharing his toys with others, the type of kid that saw all the kids the same. So no matter if you were boy, girl, black, white, red, blue, like pizza, hate pizza, like cookies, hate cookies, whatever, we all play together well in the sandbox. The purpose of us together is playing together in the sandbox, not any other kind of purpose. Not because we have to be together or we need to be together or because it's just the time or the place. Everybody's in the sandbox playing together because, guess what? We got each other and we're all in the sandbox.

Chris uses other fams and the fam group for mirroring. While much of his fan experience is private, he does desire to be in the company of other fams where he can express himself and where he can see himself reflected in the expression of others. He has a clear idea of what a fam is and should be, and he likes to be with like-minded fams who reinforce this. However, he is sometimes disappointed, and even occasionally injured, when other people’s views of fandom conflict with or impinge upon his.

What would be over the top to me is one fan telling another fan how he or she should appreciate his music or anybody's music. That's over the top, you know what I mean? I should appreciate Prince the way I want to appreciate him, and you should be able to appreciate Prince the way you

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want to appreciate Prince. So if you dress in high heels and ruffles and the purple and all that kind of stuff, I love it because that's the way you celebrate. That’s the way it should be, because that's what you want to do.

You should just celebrate it. I'm never going to tell you oh, you shouldn't do this or that. I think that's over the top when you try to tell somebody else how they should celebrate Prince or how they should appreciate the music or how Prince wouldn't like this so you shouldn't do this. That's over the top to me.

One day, Chris was sitting on his front lawn, listening to an old, obscenity-filled Prince song, when a woman stopped and told him to turn it off because “Prince wouldn’t like it.” Chris was so outraged he could not stop thinking and talking about it. He could not believe that this woman, claiming to be a fam, had been so judgmental. She was missing the point. She was who Prince wasn’t about, not the song. Chris was so angry.

How dare she?

At least three things upset him about this fam who claimed to know what was in Prince’s mind. First, her beliefs about what Prince was were opposed to his, and that was jarring. They couldn’t both be right. Second, she disavowed pieces of Prince she didn’t like, and that disturbed Chris, who believes, not just that a true fan must love the whole Prince, but that such disavowal goes against the actual messages he identifies with in Prince’s music. Third, she called him out, and that was mortifying.

Please don't tell me that you are gonna say, that you're going want to erase all of the raunchiness and sex and act like that never happened. Guess what? Nine times of 10, if he didn't do all that stuff, you wouldn't have

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liked him or even knew who he was. You know what I mean? That's what made him so different back then. And then, as things changed, he changed, too.

Chris uses other fams as twinship selfobjects. He wants to be with others who are like him, to feel at home among other fams, to see himself reflected in their eyes. The Prince that Chris loves is not perfect. He is many beautiful and incredible things, including the kid who danced around in his underwear in 1979. Chris wants other fams to get it, to feel Prince like he does. When someone not only doesn’t feel that way but tells Chris he’s wrong for feeling it, Chris is shocked.

Please don't tell me why did he release that song? What are you talking about? That was part of him back then, and 100% of his fan base liked him back then. That's why he has his fan base now, because he was back then.

That’s why he was so revolutionary and different than everybody, because he was the only person dancing on stage in his underwear and talking about wonderful asses. What are we talking about? You can't cut out those parts of you.

Chris is not only shocked, but the wind is knocked out of his sails. Prince’s music makes him feel good, happy, strong, and bold. The fam who called him out might as well have slapped him in the face. Chris feels outraged, not just because she was wrong, but because she burst his bubble and failed to provide the right response – not right for Prince and not right for Chris. In that moment, the woman and he were profoundly misattuned, and he experienced it as a narcissistic injury. That woman was a bad fam, not just because she was wrong, or because her viewpoint was unhealthy, but because it wounded

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Chris in the part of him that revels in that raunchy song – that kid that first heard Prince in the back room at the party.

Conclusion.

I actually think it [Prince’s death] has made me a better person. You know how he used to say “love 4 one another?” That's one of his major things, right? You need to show love. You need to appreciate the people around you. You shouldn't take the people around you for granted. You should live life to its fullest. You should be mindful of nature and your community. I think I've grasped this more now. I think it's really changed me. It’s like, wow, he was right. It all means something. Take care of Mother Nature. Take care of your mother and brother, sister and father.

Take care of your children.

Chris is a strong fan, a true fan, and Prince has been his own, special family member since Chris was a kid. Prince has been a fantasied brother, cool cousin or uncle, and even a father to Chris. He idealizes Prince, and he identifies with Prince’s human vulnerability and imperfection. Chris believes that Prince’s death is changing him. He is internalizing values that he used to attribute to Prince, but that are his own, and he is finding himself trying harder to be himself in the strong, true ways he is like Prince. Chris knows this is what happens when someone beloved dies. The person is gone. We can never forget or replace him, but we keep him in our minds, where he continues to influence us.

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Freya: Meant to Be a Fam Introduction.

One of the first people who contacted me after I posted about my project on Facebook in early 2017, Freya followed up her response to my post with an extensive email assortment of links to Prince interviews, documentaries, news articles, and an annotated bibliography of essays and biographies about Prince. During the many months between the post and when I was ready to choose participants and begin interviews, Freya stayed in touch in ways that were simultaneously low-key and intense. Freya made sure that I knew about new books that were coming out, new videos that had been posted, new information that had been released about the Prince universe. She also connected me to people she thought I might want to know – other writers and people who knew a lot about Prince. When Freya took an interest in what I was doing, I didn’t just find a participant for my project, I stumbled into a lucky association with someone who was a combination of research librarian and matchmaker.

Background and history.

Freya is a 43-year-old Caucasian woman. She has never married and has no children. She is tiny, but like Prince she creates an illusion of height by always wearing high heels. She speaks earnestly in a low, hushed voice. She lives in a mid-sized East Coast city and is an advertising copywriter.

Freya’s adolescent parents were ill prepared to start a family and struggling to make ends meet. Her early memories center on music – a love she discovered by being exposed to her father’s record collection. Freya remembers looking at his album covers

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and delighting in the artwork, even though she wasn’t allowed to play what was inside them. She has an uncanny feeling she has known Prince’s music “forever.”

During Freya’s childhood, her family moved multiple times to accommodate her father’s jobs. Because she was always the new girl, she had a hard time fitting in socially.

She also had difficulty bringing together what she perceived as opposed parts of her personality. She was “analytic,” and she was creative, but she overvalued the former at the expense of the latter, thinking she was doing this to make her family happy. Freya struggled with anxiety and depression from an early age, but books and music were her refuge. By the end of high school, Freya was thoroughly a music fan. Her longest lasting and most deeply felt love was for Prince.

For Freya, 2016 was a watershed year, filled with disasters that opened up into opportunities. In the middle of it all, Prince – her lifelong idol – died. Emerging from the grief and difficulty of that time, she feels she is changing and becoming more herself. She believes Prince’s death had something to do with this.

Fam story.

Freya first heard Prince while listening to her father’s pristine and exquisite record collection. Although her father preferred other music, she always liked Prince the best. “I know it sounds ridiculous,” she says, “but I chose that music.” Freya loved “Little Red Corvette” and “1999” when she was in kindergarten. She was too young to see Purple Rain when it came out “because there were boobies in it,” but a friend of her mother’s brought her a pin from the movie. She bonded with her grandmother over the song “Raspberry Beret,” which her grandmother said reminded her of Beethoven. When

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she was 12, Freya “guilt-tripped” her dad into giving her Sign “O” the Times as a birthday gift. That was the first cassette she ever owned.

A fan of a lot of different music, Freya became a very serious fam of Prince’s in the 1990s. “At the time when other people were giving up,” she says, “I was really becoming attached.” She began to research all parts of Prince’s career and life, searching out interviews, books, movies and videos. She became “very knowledgeable” about Prince. She says, “I was studying him and reading everything I could find about him.

Like, I looked up to him . . . and also I wanted to be a journalist then, so I wanted all the facts.”

My first concert was in college. I just got out for the summer, so I hadn’t gotten paid for a summer job yet. I used my last $50 to go to this concert four hours away. We were in the first dozen rows, and we were right on the end by the catwalk that came out, so they were the best seats ever. I could feel him sweat.

Freya saw Prince in concerts several times. She stayed tuned into his career and anticipated when new albums would be released and when concert tours would begin. “I always bought tickets and albums the second they came out.”

She is able to cite many reasons she loves Prince. She recognizes that she is not merely someone who appreciates his music or is interested in his career. She is “obsessed.” She laughs, “Some would lovingly say it’s a sickness.” Freya’s father, the man who introduced her to music has jokingly referred to it as such. And she admits, “Sometimes I’m concerned that I’m a little too into it.”

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Freya can cite most, if not all, of Prince’s lyrics, and she can tell you what album they were on, what year the album was released, what tour accompanied the album, and everything else that was happening in Prince’s career at the time. Freya is interested in the details and facts of Prince’s life, and she is annoyed with fams who get these wrong.

Freya believes that all fams have a sense of being an outsider in common. She believes that Prince was an outsider, and she likes that he played up the ways he was different. Freya feels that his openness about some things – the fact that he came from a difficult background – and his simultaneous intense privacy helped him become a beloved fan object for her and many others. Even if Prince didn’t reveal a lot of himself overtly, he expressed his emotion, wishes, dreams, beliefs, and desires in his songs. “His life was in his lyrics. Everything was in there,” she says.

She didn’t always love everything he did, but Freya never gave up on Prince.

“Rainbow Children confused me,” she says, “but I gave it a full listen before I put it away and looked forward to the next album.” Even when she disagreed with things he did in his personal life she continued to support him. And “unlike a lot of fans that got discouraged and left during the record company business,” Freya thought Prince becoming the Symbol was ingenious.

Freya expresses her famdom, and expresses herself through her famdom, in many ways. She has beautiful, Prince-inspired tattoos. Her long, dark hair is shot through with streaks of vibrant purple. She dresses dramatically in lace and leather and purple fake fur.

Her car is purple. She has a large collection of Prince-related art. She says, “I only buy local art because I want to support local artists, and if I was buying from every artist that made tribute art I’d be broke. Having the local parameter saves me.”

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Freya became fascinated with belly dancing when she was a teenager, in part because she loved Prince and New Power Generation’s album, Love Symbol, on which the belly dancer (and Prince’s future wife) Mayte was featured. Belly dancing classes were almost impossible to find in her town, but they were offered as PE at her college.

She says, “That was my back-up to my back-up to my back-up school. The thing that made me happy about going there was that I could take those two belly dance classes.”

She is still dancing. She says, “Prince sparked my curiosity, but I made belly dancing my own.”

Prince’s death and its aftermath.

Freya was at her job when she heard Prince had died. “Looking back,” I could see signs,” she says, “but at the time I couldn’t believe it. It didn’t seem real.” She cried to her boss, who was kind, but “I don’t think he understood. I just lost it. It was like I’d heard a family member or a best friend had died.” She went home early and spent the evening with the fam partner of a friend.

It was tough. It was kind of like walking in slow motion, or something like that, for days afterward. It really was. I’d had family members die, but those deaths didn’t even compare to the feeling I had after Prince died.

Because she likes to research, Freya went online and read everything she could.

“It was obvious that something was going on,” she says. She points to the intimacy of Prince’s final “Piano and a Microphone” tour. “He was revealing more personal details than ever before,” she says. She believes he was acting like someone who was putting his affairs in order. Earlier in the year, she points out, Prince had announced he was working

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on an autobiography. “That didn’t sound like Prince at all.” Freya believes Prince was suffering from a terminal illness, “probably cancer.” She wishes fams could know, but she suspects his family will “try to honor his wishes for privacy.”

Despite her suspicion about a terminal illness, Freya has no interest in wild theories about Prince’s death. She believes what the coroner’s report and other factually based reports have said – that he took illegally-obtained opioids to manage chronic pain and overdosed accidentally. “Why do people have to believe something more nefarious than that,” she wonders, “Isn’t that tragic enough?”

Not everyone in Freya’s life understood her distress in the aftermath of Prince’s death. Her boyfriend of five years told her “to get over it.” Freya, herself, both understood and didn’t. “It’s true,” she says, “I never knew this man.” She also says, “I never remember not knowing him. Even before I can remember, I knew his music.

Suddenly a part of me was gone.”

Several events in 2016, including Prince’s death and the death of a young family member, created a “perfect storm” in which Freya’s life-long depression and anxiety began to break apart. She didn’t experience this as a breakdown, but as something opening up inside her. Each thing that happened jolted her worldview. “I realized,” she said, “that I had been forcing myself to live ways that weren’t me.” She began to see Prince’s death as a catalyst.

Freya feels that something spiritual happened to her in the wake of Prince’s death.

Opportunities to experience new things presented themselves quickly and – somehow – she decided to “be bold and see what happened.” Freya’s life began to improve rapidly.

She started to have more fun. She visited Minneapolis and made new friends. She says,

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“People started crossing my path through Prince circles, and they helped me in many ways.” She even danced on stage at Paisley Park. “I went up there,” she says, “kicked off my shoes, and I danced!”

Categories of meaning.

Apparently this was abundantly clear to many people in my life, and so deep that I didn’t really know it – I am who I am because of Prince. I developed my own, unique personality in part because of his influence in my life. I can’t imagine ever being completely separate from him or his music. Why would I? Prince was in Freya’s mind before she can remember. Her father introduced Prince to her, but she chose Prince herself. She always loved him, although she had other, more transient loves. She loves him intensely, forever. She set her life’s clock by him, and she developed hobbies and ways of being that were related to and influenced by him.

Prince is a beloved fantasy object for Freya, who uses him in many ways. He is a source of multiple identifications and idealizations. He is both a place of refuge and an inspiration for change. A transitional object, Prince exists inside of her and also outside of her, and she uses things associated with him – his music, belly dance – to playfully discover and create herself in his audacious, complex, imperfect image.

His death was a shock. Freya grieved as though a loved one in her material world had died, and as though a piece of her self had died. But out of this grief she perceived messages and a call to change. She feels urgency to have a better life, and she believes

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the way to this life is through the ideals and examples set forth by Prince. And she has come to believe that something more mysterious and spiritual is at work.

Identification with father.

From what I’ve worked out with my dad I’ve been a fam since his career started, but I was so young then that I didn’t realize it. I have my earliest memory at four or five, and it’s just been all my life. That’s where I feel fortunate that I had teen parents because they were listening to things that maybe they – maybe they didn’t realize that their kids shouldn’t be hearing that. But he introduced me to Prince.

For Freya, music was a connection and identification with her father. Even though she wasn’t allowed to touch his albums, the time she spent listening at her father’s side and looking at his album covers was precious. In her childhood, during which she didn’t feel much love, music was love that she could experience with her distant father.

In the beginning, Freya found Prince in her father’s record collection that he played on his “pristine and expensive stereo system no one else in the family was allowed to touch.” She says, as though putting it together for the first time, ‘I realize that my dad wasn’t physically present in my life, but music was his presence. That’s how we connected – through that commonality.”

Through my entire childhood and into my teen years I would go through his album collection and just look at the artwork. He had everything. So it was my dad who really introduced me to music. I remember Prince’s second album – the self-titled on – the one with the black cover. That’s the

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one I think my dad had. My dad was more into George Clinton, P-Funk, Sly and the Family Stone, and even Morris Day and the Time. But I was always attracted to Prince’s music.

Prince’s Sign “O” the Times (1987) was Freya’s eleventh birthday present from her father. This was a highly significant gift – the first music that belonged solely to her – given by the person who had always been the proprietor of the music. It was a good gift of great utility – a tool for discovering and becoming her own self. For Freya, receiving this gift was a kind of rite of passage – marking her transition from a childhood of passively receiving music to a lifetime of active engagement with music.

The tape belonged to her. She owned it. Freya laughs when she tells the story, “It came as one of those ‘eight cassettes for a penny’ deals, and he wanted to send them all back. We didn’t have a lot of money, but I said, ‘you’re making us move,’ and that worked.” She smiles, “I wore that thing out.”

Ribbon through life.

For every stage of my life, my growth, my development, there’s music of his associated with it. Seeing him in concert. A lot of my life was waiting for the next concert, the next album, waiting for those announcements, and the excitement that went with all of that. So many fams talk about this.

For Freya, Prince and his music were a ribbon through her life – running through it, encircling it, and tying the pieces together. Prince provided continuity and nourished her sense of going-on-being. Unlike many fams, whose introduction to Prince is a conscious memory, Prince seemed to always be there.

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Freya breathlessly recounts her fascination with the person of Prince and an underlying sense of anticipation that was always there “even when he sometimes did things I didn’t agree with.” Prince always gave Freya something to look forward to – something new to discover. Freya liked to learn and liked facts. She says, “I studied him.

I paid attention to what he was doing in his business, his music, even in his personal life.”

Prince was a continuous, pleasurable preoccupation.

“I mean, he created the soundtrack of my life,” she says. The soundtrack still plays – in Freya’s car, in her office where we meet. His music contains and flows through her history, and his songs illustrate everything in her life. She says, “It’s all in there.

Everything.”

I always knew when I would start seeing him doing more public appearances. That was a signal to me that he was going to tour soon. Then I’d start getting into groups – the internet and the precursor of the internet – and asking around, because I knew an announcement would be coming.

So the year he died I’d started re-joining Prince groups, looking for stuff on Facebook, kind of going back to Prince.org, because he was getting more public. And then he passed away.

With his death – an event that was “so out of left field” and disruptive of the flow of Freya’s life, at first – Freya found that she had internalized the sense of life’s rhythm and continuity she had attributed to Prince. She says, “At first it was just music and being a fam. Now I’ve moved beyond just Prince and the music.”

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Escape.

No one knew what to do with me. And it was okay because ne one knew what to do with him then either. This was during the Love Symbol album and Gold Experience, and that whole time . . . I’d just go into my room, and sometimes I’d turn out the lights and listen to music.

For much of Freya’s life, music – in particular, Prince’s music – has been a place where she can escape in fantasy from things in her life that have been difficult for her.

Music is “a refuge,” a place to go in her mind. During interviews she speaks, hesitantly at first, about the challenges in her young life. Her home was not happy. She internalized the idea that the only way to make it was to be good all the time.

I thought if I dressed too wild or was too liberal or read tarot cards, or whatever, it would upset everyone. It wasn’t just upsetting my parents, but the whole family. Both grandmothers said I was their favorite, so I couldn’t upset them either . . . so, I gotta be good.

Listening to music, however, Freya could be any way she wanted. Absorbed in music (“not just Prince – him a lot – but others, too”) she didn’t care as much about what she believed was expected of her. And unlike people in her life, music could contain Freya’s big emotions. She says, “I wasn’t one of those people who buried themselves in music,” but she used it when she needed to get away from where she was. “I would turn the music up loud, make mix tapes. Sometimes I’d dance. I always wanted to dance.”

Being a fan is very absorbing, and when she is engaged in music or in other activities related to Prince, Freya can get “a little too into it.” This was true when she was young, and she chuckles and says it’s still true. Prince, she says, was an obsession. The

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knowledge she has amassed about him – about everything she can know about him – is vast and detailed. But she acknowledges that Prince was “an enigma,” and this is also appealing to her. “I suspect he didn’t want to be known, that he preferred to be a mystery.

Nobody really knew him, so . . .” She shrugs and smiles. Freya can escape, not just into his music, but also into Prince’s fascinating inscrutability.

Make it your own/self-expression.

The ways that Freya uses her physical self, her activities, and the physical spaces she inhabits to signify and proclaim her famdom suggest that she desires to create beauty outside of her that will also show who she is on the inside. She projects images of the kind of fabulousness she identifies with Prince – through, for example, her stage-ready appearance and her belly dancing – and hopes that fabulousness will be reflected back to her for her to internalize.

Stage ready.

Purple is my favorite color. People have asked which came first because I was a fam early. As long as I can remember – and I asked my dad, and as long as he can remember – I’ve always loved purple, so it’s a chicken and egg thing . . . I have a tattoo that has the Symbol incorporated into it, so I always have a Symbol on me. My bedroom and my office are full of Prince paraphernalia . . . I name my electronics, and they’re all related to Prince.

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Freya identifies with and idealizes Prince’s use of his appearance and his highly crafted persona as a form of expression. Keeping him in mind, Freya dresses to meet the world. Her stage-ready appearance signifies something about who she is to others, and it enhances her sense of herself, reminding her in manifest ways that, as Prince was fabulous, so is she.

What would Prince do? He wouldn’t ever go out if he wasn’t stage-ready, even if he was going to Ace Hardware. I hate doing my hair. I hate doing my makeup. But you will rarely see – and this is funny because I used to make fun of my mother for being this way – you don’t see me going out in yoga pants and a ball cap. Hardly ever. I think about Prince. You never know who you’ll run into.

Freya uses her physical self, and she uses the objects and spaces in her life to express that she is a fam. She is noticed around town by other fams. She believes that people can recognize some of her internal characteristics because she wears her love of Prince on the outside. She says, “I imagine people look at me and think, “She’s probably pretty cool, because who wouldn’t be with that hair.” Taking Prince as her guide, Freya can look free, creative, and fabulous, and this helps her feel those qualities inside herself.

Freya notes that some people have asked her if her persona is “a put on,” a claim she denies. Prince, she observes, would not have been able to create his persona unless that character lived inside him. Freya identifies with this and is inspired by it. She believes that by projecting “a better version” of herself she will embody the woman she hopes she is on the inside.

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A marketing tool.

We meet in Freya’s office filled with Prince artwork and purple. Seeing Freya in her office it is impossible to not identify her with Prince. “It’s me,” she says, “and it’s kind of a marketing tool.” There is no way to disguise the man in the paintings by local artists, and Freya likes it that way. “I told my boss I was thinking of getting rid of the purple in my hair, and he said, ‘No, keep it!’ He thinks it’s good for business.” In her office she has more traditional office things – a squishy stress ball, a little terrarium filled with succulents, and many awards – but the awards are backlit with purple light, and the succulents sit next to a purple crystal. Freya lets people know where her inspiration lies.

Belly dance.

I’ve always loved dance, and I wanted to dance from a very, very young age . . . When Love Symbol came out I was in high school. Around that time I saw a belly dancer on Phil Donahue, and my friend was dating a Lebanese kid who had a belly dancer at his graduation party. I don’t know how she met him because he didn’t go to our school, but we went to his party and there was a belly dancer there.

For Freya, belly dance is a powerful identification with Prince through an identification with Mayte, a woman Prince loved. In addition to the way she dresses and decorates her life, Freya expresses herself through the playful and creative act of dancing.

As with the way she adorns herself, belly dancing is an externalization of who she longs to be on the inside. And as she did with her father’s music, she has taken belly dance into her and made it her own.

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I belly danced to a Prince song – a solo – on stage in the NPG Music Club at Paisley Park. A month later I was sitting beside Mayte, his wife and the woman who inspired me to learn belly dancing, and I got to share the story with her. And she was excited for me, because even she started as a fam before she was married to the man. And she knows the thrill of dancing at Paisley Park for the first time.

Freya talks about Mayte in several contexts, most often through belly dancing, the activity they’ve come to share. She mentions Mayte many times. They only people she mentions more frequently are Prince and her father. If Prince is Freya’s good father, perhaps Mayte is her good mother.

Mayte is “the person Prince probably loved best of all,” and Freya describes their belly dancing-related interactions with reverence. Belly dancing is something she shares with beautiful Mayte, and it is Freya’s own expression of beauty. To dance, she says, makes her feel proud and unselfconscious. She says, “I’m embarrassed to be in a bikini. I don’t want people to see my body, but when I put on a dance costume I take on a different persona . . . and I feel beautiful.” This persona contains parts of her that she split off and denied for much of her life. Using belly dance and her identifications with Mayte and Prince, Freya hopes to heal the split.

Identifying and idealizing.

Most fams have felt like outsiders at some point . . . I think there is a huge variety of people who are attracted to him, but I think the biggest commonality we share is that we all felt weird at some point – like

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outsiders. Somehow he was a person we could identify with and not feel like we were weird, or like it didn’t matter. He flew his weird flag proudly. He didn’t care.

Freya finds many points of identification with Prince, and these points enhance her sense of herself. In the case of his outsiderness Freya identifies not just with Prince, but also with other fams. This is something she believes they all share. Fams, she says, are drawn to Prince because he was not like other people, other stars. “Once he realized he was an outsider,” she says, “he took it up a bazillion notches and used it to his advantage.”

Prince was little like me. But instead of being insecure or embarrassed he used it to his advantage. He started wearing heels, and the women loved it.

He became big in other ways.

Freya identifies with this and takes it as an ideal. She says, “Instead of feeling put down or like society doesn’t like you, at some point you say, ‘I don’t care. I like me.’”

Freya has idealized Prince’s outrageous expressions of individuality since she was a weird, smart teenager telling herself, “Nobody knows what to do with him, either. I’ll come into my own eventually, and then people will think I’m really cool.”

This is how you get around it.

When he was going through everything with the record company, and everyone I knew was like, “He’s crazy! You’re crazy! Why do you like someone like that, who . . . now he’s just a squiggle?” I was like, “No, it’s brilliant, because this is how he’s going to get out of his record deal.”

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Since she was in high school, Freya has idealized Prince’s audaciousness and identified with his well-known quote, “An independent spirit transcends rules.” She says, “I share that with him – independence.” She shakes her head, “I spent a lot of my life in conflict about this and trying to stifle it, but it’s there.” Freya was delighted by Prince’s novel solution to the problem of his record contract with Warner Brothers. Unlike herself, who spent many years trying to ascertain what others wanted from her and trying to live up to that, Freya imagines that Prince never felt compelled to conform to anyone else’s ideas of who he should be. She says emphatically, “I was a teenager going through my own parallel situations to his – so I identified with it.

Freya identifies with Prince’s subversive problem-solving strategies. She has felt deeply ambivalent about being a good girl, and she wishes very much to give herself permission to just be herself. She is good and bad and myriad other qualities. She finds in Prince a better model for how to embody the many different aspects of herself than the adults she internalized in childhood.

Not perfect.

Some of the best artists, we get their art because they’re not perfect. If they were, I don’t think they’d create the art they do because their art comes from their struggle. The art, the music, the photography, the paintings, all of it manifests because artists need ways to wrestle with their demons.

Freya idealizes many things about Prince, including the fact that he was a person who encountered difficulties and made mistakes. She says, “I know some fams put him

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on a pedestal and need to think of him as untouchable and perfect.” This makes her angry, and she brings it up several times. “I’m not perfect,” she says, “How could I learn anything from someone who was? I can’t relate to that or recreate it. It would just make me feel hopeless.”

Prince’s imperfection made him identifiably human and relatable. His weird decisions and his sometimes “not good” treatment of women, including Mayte, provide evidence that he was a complicated, fallible human, and Freya needs that in a hero. She is distressed by fams who “worship because they aren’t secure in themselves.” It makes her irritable when she hears claims like, “Prince wouldn’t like you playing songs with offensive words,” and she is especially perturbed by conspiracy theorists.

There are some fams – I can’t be around them. I don’t want to be around their negative energy. They’re still saying he was murdered, or his sister killed him, or one of the brothers, or the record company. It was all a giant conspiracy. But why? Who benefits from believing that?

The conspiracy theorists, Freya thinks, can’t tolerate the idea of a fallible Prince who was reliant on opioids and accidentally overdosed, so they have to deny his humanity and assign a villain. But she says emphatically, “If you don’t have the bad, you can’t appreciate the good. You’d never be able to see it for what it is. Without the ugly, how can you recognize what is beautiful?

Tragedy to transformation.

He was such a big part of my life. My friends said, “We all knew. It was one of the things we associated with you.” I must have talked about him a

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lot. But back then it was just music and me being a fan. Everyone is a fan of something – especially when they’re young. What he means to me now is so different.

Freya is experiencing Prince’s death as a vehicle for transformation. The immediate aftermath was terrible and painful, but then her life, which up to that point had been difficult, began to improve remarkably. She attributes this change to Prince’s death in two significant ways. First, the death jolted her awake to a sense that “life doesn’t last forever” and a realization that she’d “better live now.” Second, she has come to believe that a supernatural bond between her and Prince exists that is reinforcing her new wakefulness.

Live boldly.

I didn’t start to really live until he died. Even though he gave me music and he gave me so many things to relate to before he died, after he died he gave me life. It was almost like a rebirth. So, yeah, it’s like I was born again. That almost sounds like a Jesus Christ type thing – like some kind of worship. I don’t worship him. He was human, not a god . . . I’m very clear about that.

When Prince died – the same year as other losses and disasters – Freya had an uneasy sense of life teetering on the edge. The losses were traumatic. She felt stunned by grief. Then – she recounts breathlessly – she consciously decided to change.

I started being me, and things got easier and better and fell into place. I mean, Prince was always true to himself, and now that I’m being true to

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myself – rather than feeling like I have to do what I think people expect of me – the stuff they expected is falling away or falling into place, and . . . I get to be myself.

Freya says, with what sounds like frustration toward her former self, “Life is about experiences. It’s not about money in the bank or the bills that are paid.” She says firmly that she “started immediately,” purchasing tickets for a concert that she wanted to see even though she couldn’t afford it.

One of the first lessons I learned from Prince’s death was that nobody is promised tomorrow. If you’re lying on your deathbed you’re not going to say, “I’m so glad I saved that $2,500.” You’re going to say, “I’m so glad I went to that concert.”

Since the concert Freya has continued to challenge herself to make bold choices like Prince would do. She says with passion, “Every aspect of my life has changed, and all of the changes have been interconnected.” She feels that she is more creative, more successful, and more engaged with other people. She says, “I’m so much more comfortable now. I needed that shakeup in my life.”

When I started trying to be true to myself everything else in my life started getting better and better. I’ve had all these amazing experiences – experiences I never thought would be an option for me. I belly danced at Paisley Park! I’ve gained friends. I’ve gained myself. I’ve gained so many experiences. It’s hard for me to be sad anymore because I’ve gained so much. Well, I’m sad that he isn’t here so I can thank him, but he’s somewhere, and he probably can hear me thanking him right now.

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Listening to Freya speak eagerly about the changes in her life, I have the sense that she fervently wishes to banish her bad old ways of being. She is vexed by the time she wasted on things that didn’t matter. She tells herself that life is hers to create now, and new situations seem to confirm that her resolve is working. She hopes and says she believes that her external actions will bring about internal change.

Soul circle.

My guess is that I needed to learn spirituality from him. I needed to learn not to stress so much because life is short. And I needed to know how to take advantage of opportunities when they arise and not be so worried about being responsible or what people would think. I needed to not be afraid to try – to be bold.

Freya believes the transformation she is experiencing is not a mere force of will, but also supernatural. Her connection to Prince goes beyond being a fam on Earth, during her lifetime, in material reality. She is careful how she reveals this to me. She says, “There are some nutters out there.” She doesn’t want me to wonder whether she is a nutter.

I’m not the only one who’s experiencing this in this way. I’ve made friends within the fam community who are having the same kinds of experiences. They’re saying their lives have been changed, turned upside down, inside out. They were devastated. Couldn’t understand. But now their lives are changing for the better. Things are happening and people are crossing their paths that they never would have imagined before.

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Freya reveals with growing confidence that she believes the reason for her transformation is spiritual. “Any other explanation,” she says, “would be crazy.” The reason she is changing is not mere determination, or wish-fulfillment, or luck, or coincidence. She has thought about it, read about it, talked to other people about it, and her conclusion is that she and Prince have a soul connection.

I guess I was already into the past lives thing when Prince talked about him and Mayte and how they met. He believed they’d met in past lives, and she believed that, too. So that’s probably when I started thinking, “Past lives kinda make sense.” But at that point I was in high school and still going to church every day, so I was like, “I’m not supposed to believe this.” So I buried it. I was probably influenced by it, but it didn’t really take hold until after he passed.

Several times Freya asserts that people who are delusional about mysterious happenings are not as careful as she is about revealing them. I do not get the impression that Freya is delusional. She longs ardently for a transformation that is meaningful and true. She says, “Studies came out after 9/11 that showed that people who survived the attacks best were those who had some kind of faith . . . whether the faith was in something real or not was irrelevant.”

Prince’s death triggered a lot of events in my life and a lot of things that I needed to go through. Now, based on what I’ve learned and what I believe, it has to do with soul contracts. I think our souls are connected.

There are things called “spirit groups.” Every incarnation you have you’ll always have those souls in your life somehow. In each life, your soul

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learns things it needs to learn from other souls in the spirit group. I think he’s probably part of that group. In this life, he was more removed from me, but he was still an influence.

Freya is a member of this powerful, eternal group, and so is Prince. She believes that this supernatural relationship provides the setting in which her transformation can occur, but she also believes she could choose to turn away from it and be miserable. “I have to hold up my end of the deal and make the most of it,” she says. As a member of her “soul circle,” Prince will always be with her. On some other life Freya might have been Prince’s “friend, lover, sister, mother/wife” (Prince, as O)+>, 1996), but in this life, Freya states, “I was meant to be a fam.”

Foster: Feel Good, Feel Better, Feel Wonderful Introduction.

Foster and I meet in the sitting room of a guesthouse owned by one of his friends.

I hear Foster come through the front door with exuberance. He greets everyone and bounds up the stairs like he owns the place. He hugs me and pours a soft drink from the refreshments set out for guests.

Our parents have been friends all our lives, but Foster is younger than I so I never really knew him. It was from one of his sisters that I learned that he was, “crazy about Prince, and that’s not an exaggeration.” With a demeanor that is enthusiastic, humorous and a little gossipy, Foster regales me with the story of his fandom. His narrative is full of personal anecdotes about concerts, after parties, club gigs, and events he’s attended because of his membership in a fan club, as well a several close Prince encounters.

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He is truly gregarious and extroverted, and it is clear that Foster takes pleasure in the social aspects of our encounters. He feels more like a great host than a research participant. He loves telling me his stories. He loves less my questions about how he feels and what Prince means to him. “Oh, you therapist people,” he laughs, rolling his eyes.

Background and history.

Foster is an effervescent 52-year-old, gay Caucasian man. He and his husband have been together for many years. He has an adult stepdaughter and several grandchildren. Foster’s nonagenarian parents are married and healthy. He has four older sisters and many nieces and nephews. He lives in an affluent suburb of a large Southern city. He is the development director for a fine arts organization.

Foster grew up in a small town. His popular and prosperous parents were movers and shakers and quintessential big fish in a small pond. A much-desired son with older sisters, Foster was pampered as a child, and he admits to being “spoiled.” When he was very young he was diagnosed with a serious health condition he’s had several major surgeries to manage. He doesn’t remember knowing about this condition until three days before his first surgery at 15.

Foster suspected he was different from an early age. He was gay, which could have been a big problem for him and his family in his small town, so he kept it under wraps until he met Tom in his late 20’s. When he came out, his sisters told him they’d always known. His parents went through a period of adjustment and suffered some discrimination, but they supported Foster unconditionally, and they’ve come to love Tom.

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Foster believes that he has been unusually fortunate in life. “Look at us,” he says, spreading his arms to include both of us, “We lack for nothing.” To Foster, any troubles in his life are barely worth thinking about because his bounty has been so great. He laughs, “Only boy, youngest child, with a health condition – what could be better?”

Fan story.

Foster was 15 when he went away to overnight camp for the first time. Prince’s album 1999 had come out, and the single, “Little Red Corvette,” was huge. Foster loved everything about camp, and everyone at camp loved “Little Red Corvette.” When he returned home he associated that song with great memories of a very happy time. He says, “That’s when I first became a fan.”

When Purple Rain came out, Foster saw the premiere at midnight. “Like everyone else in the world,” Foster was a huge fan of both the movie and the album. But he was also a fan of other MTV icons, like Madonna and Boy George. He says, “I was big into that whole MTV era – our era. I was into Prince, but I was into others, too.”

When Prince followed Purple Rain with Around the World in a Day, Foster was delighted. Other fans were “like, ‘that album’s awful,” but Foster loved it. “It’s still my favorite album,” he says, “It’s sheer genius. I love that he put it out then.” He was “crazy” about Prince for the next several years. Then his fandom began to wane.

“That’s when I went to my first show,” Foster says, “What he could do on a stage – I was done. That was it.” After that, Foster followed Prince until he died, going to shows and events all over the country – everything from huge arena shows, to tiny club gigs.

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His re-energized appreciation for Prince’s music made Foster go back and play all of the albums again, and he heard them with a new sense of awe. He says, “It was fascinating. You have to play them loud, because there things in there . . . I could listen to Sign “O” the Times today, and hear something I’ve never heard before.” In the 1990s and beyond, with fair-weather, Purple Rain-era fans turning away from Prince, Foster was loving him more.

In the 1990s, Foster belonged to an on-the-ground fan club that met monthly for parties and other gatherings. “You wouldn’t believe the people,” he says, “how diverse and crazy and different it was – which I loved.” Friendly, outgoing Foster reveled in the social aspects of the group. (He’s never become part of any online fan groups. He says, “I don’t need to sit in front of a screen and type about how much I love Prince to strangers.”)

Over the years, Foster thought some of Prince’s projects were “weird” or “cheesy,” and sometimes he disagreed with Prince’s actions, but he was enough of a fan to “do the research” and try to understand. He says, “I never thought he’d gone too far out there like some people did.” Even when he “did the ‘slave’ thing and had his fight with Warner Brothers,” Foster was able to stand back and appreciate what he was doing.

He says, “Even if I thought it was wrong, it didn’t affect my fandom at all. I probably liked him even more because he backed it up.”

Foster was giving a tour to a group of potential donors when he got a text that Prince had died. He says he involuntarily blurted the news to a woman standing next to him, and she, “thought I meant Harry or William or one of the other royals. I was like,

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‘No – the Prince.’” Foster had to Google it to be sure. Then his phone blew up. He says, “I just turned it off and kept doing what I was doing. I guess I just went numb.”

That night he called his grade school best friend, who “thinks he’s the biggest fan,” and they had a long talk. They agreed they’d been fortunate to have an icon who they loved and enjoyed for almost their entire lives. He says, “It was a good way to look at it. We were very lucky to have him when we did.”

Foster says he sensed that Prince’s death was coming before it happened. The week before Prince died, his plane made an emergency landing in “some little town” because Prince had “what they said was the flu.” Foster had heard rumors over the years that Prince was addicted, so he had a feeling that “something was going on with drugs.”

He says, “I knew it was coming – just in the back of my mind.”

Foster says he had a bigger reaction when Michael Jackson died because Jackson was the first generational icon to go. Foster knows that geniuses die, and people who use opioids die, and generational icons die just like the rest of us. He gets it. But he thinks Prince’s death is unfair. As much as he appreciates the many concerts he’s seen and is grateful for the large catalogue of music Prince left behind, Foster admits he’s “angry” and “bummed” that there will be no more new music.

Categories of meaning.

I still play his music all the time. I still talk about him all the time. I still have the phone with the words to “Purple Rain” on the back. But his death did not change me. I told a lot of my friends, “I get why you think Prince is crazy, I do. What's this slave thing? What's this ... Now he doesn't have

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a name? If that's all you hear and you don't dig deeper, then, yeah, he's nuts. I get it. I understand too why you don't like his music. It doesn't sound like everyone else's.” But I used to always say, “If you saw him live, you'd get it.” And I’m bummed that now you can't.

For Foster, Prince is an idealized object, a persona to identify with and with whom to be identified. Prince provided a place in Foster’s mind for retreat. He is a fascinating character, a way to connect with others, and the facilitator of transcendent experiences. His death was an ambiguous loss that numbed and disillusioned Foster, but the persona and music of Prince remain a strong source of pleasure, preoccupation and identification for Foster, who will forever be “The Prince Guy” to his friends and family.

Foster’s life has been a journey from semi-hidden to whole, and Prince has accompanied him much of the way. Prince sang, “Feel good. Feel better. Feel wonderful.” Foster says he always felt good (because for a long time he didn’t know any better). But now he feels wonderful.

The setting.

I had an, I would say, amazing childhood socially and family-wise. I did have the health condition, and, you know, that ate up a lot of . . . it was a big part of my life, but other than that it was pretty magical.

Foster’s family was prominent and he was treated like “royalty” in his small town.

He was happy, and he had a great life, but things lurked below the surface that he wasn’t able to understand. There were two secrets, two ways he was different. Foster had a serious birth defect he didn’t know about as a kid. Whatever their manifest attitude was

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toward Foster, his parents must have been worried about him, and his life must have been affected. Even if he did not consciously know, it seems likely that some part of him wondered about himself. In addition to this not-talked-about health condition, Foster was gay, and no one talked about that, either.

The health problem is probably the worst thing that’s ever happened in my life, right? I mean, The only people close to me who have died are my grandparents. They were all at least in their 90s, and they went peacefully.

How great is that? Well, I mean, now great, but come on. My parents are in great health. I have a great family life. I live in a beautiful place, and I have great friends, and I love my job. I mean . . . so I have this one problem. It’s fixable.

One Friday when he was 15, Foster’s dad told him to let his teachers know he’d be out for a week because he’d be having surgery on Monday. He says, “I asked, ‘What do you mean?’ And he said, ‘Well, they’re gonna fix you up, and it’ll be a week, and then it’ll all be over.’ Nothing was said until that day.” In that moment, Foster learned something shocking about himself, and his life changed forever. He puts a positive spin on this, but he says the recovery was long, that he “doesn’t remember much,” and that he went away to boarding school for the first time “a little too soon” after that.

Given all the gross things people have to deal with that aren’t fixable, I’m pretty lucky. I walk into a hospital, they drug me up and put me under, and the next thing I wake up and it’s done. It’s not like I’m walking in there and they’re saying, “Okay, we’re going to try a few things, and maybe something will work.”

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It is clear, not from his narrative but from his affect, that his feelings about his health are not as simple as his words convey. He is genuinely awed, pleased and grateful that medical science can address his episodically serious situation, but it weighs on him.

He counters his concern with an attitude of, “I’m not saying I have a perfect life, but it’s been pretty damn good,” leaving little room for negative feelings.

Meanings of Prince.

Elements of Foster’s love for Prince and his own life intertwine and parallel each other. Prince has had private and social meanings for Foster. Over the course of Foster’s fandom, which began when he was a young teen, Prince has functioned as an idealized and idealizable object; as a locus for imagination, fantasy, and play; as a source of identifications; and as a way to identify with others.

Belonging/Our song.

This may be a weird thing to say, but Prince is good socially when he’s onstage. He can hold his own and bring a group of 50,000 people together.

Could he do it at a cocktail party? Probably not, but I don’t know. I’m an extrovert. I’m happy with five or 50,000 people, so I admire that, and I love being a part of it.

Belonging is an important element in Foster’s identity, and in his orientation to fandom. For Foster, fandom has often been about affiliation with like-minded people.

Prince fans share a love of music, a love of Prince, a generation, and transcendent experiences at live shows. Foster loves connection, and he finds it through Prince and

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fandom. His camp friends had their song, “Little Red Corvette.” “Everyone” in his hometown “loved those quirky MTV stars,” who were “our stars, from our generation.”

The members of the fan club were his “tribe.”

Prince doesn’t just belong to Foster. He belongs to “us.” The love of Prince is part of shared experiences – intentional communities like the fan club and spontaneous communities like audiences at live concerts. Whether experienced alone or with others, music feels good, and Foster imagines it unites people and provides a basis for common experience that diminishes individual differences.

Foster enjoys telling his Prince origin story: discovering and reveling in “Little Red Corvette” while at camp. He was away from home with a group of kids, free-feeling but structured and protected. He came home changed, with a private experience he didn’t have to share with his family. He also had a song to tie his mind to memories, a song that was one of the biggest hits of his generation – but it was particularly their song, “our” song, and his song.

Camp was a idealized experience of luscious, shared fun, and returning home Foster was able to recall the good times through association with this ubiquitous song.

Hearing “Little Red Corvette” revives that special, shared experience with friends and reminds him of a beginning – the beginning of his appreciation for popular culture, youth culture, the 1980s pop music of the MTV generation, and – of course – Prince.

A place to go in my mind.

My first summer job was bussing tables at a tennis club, and I would get off work at midnight. I’d have my mom and dad’s nice car, ‘cause I didn’t

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have a car yet. I would blast the radio – put the sunroof back and the windows down and drive home listening to Purple Rain as loud as I could.

Foster used Prince, along with other music, not only as a source of social connection and affiliation, but as a way to escape into his own mind and get lost for a while in fantasy. Foster insists repeatedly during our time together that using music to retreat is less important to him than music as a source of connection and transcendence – that the outward-focused pleasure means more to him than any internal functions. He says, however, that he was nervous as a teenager in his small town, and he used music both as a source of identification with his peers and as a way to make himself less nervous.

I was into the trendy ones. Culture Club. Madonna. I’m still a big fan.

Back then it was all show and fun and colorful and artsy, and . . . you could be like those people, as crazy as they were, and it was okay because everybody liked them. When you’re 13 or 14 or 15, and you’re trying to figure out what you’re doing in your world, and you need to have a place to go to figure it out . . . that place was music for me.

Purple Rain and MTV were cultural phenomena that Foster could use to both connect and retreat. Listening to Prince by himself Foster was able to feel neither different nor the same as other people, but like himself. He could lose himself in the pleasure of music as an aesthetic experience, and he could also lose himself in the pleasure of his associations and fantasies about his quirky idols (who were, like Foster, both widely loved and “weird”).

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It was a time in my life when I needed something to connect with that didn’t know me and didn’t have judgment, and I went to music. I connected with Prince big time. You know where I grew up, in a small town with a family that – people knew us. It’s not like I could hide, so I would retreat, and music was where I went. And he was my go-to.

Foster’s story of listening to Prince with the windows rolled down sounds intimate and sublime – a private moment, a time apart, free from everything and everyone. When he was blaring Purple Rain through the sunroof on a summer night, Foster’s secrets and the ways he was different – the things known and unknown about him – didn’t matter.

MTV generation/My tribe.

I was battling my own issues: 15, gay, not out, and all that mess. So it was easy to like all that – and not be judged – because everybody liked all those stars. Cyndi Lauper was crazy and colorful and wild, and Boy George was . . . and, yet, all my friends liked them, which was so weird to me.

Popular culture increasingly became Foster’s answer to questions he had about himself. In Foster’s story of his lucky life, he gives much credit to “our” MTV. MTV brought music and stars to the masses that would not have come to the masses at any earlier time in history. The MTV stars that Foster loved –the ones who would have obviously been “fringe-y” even a few years earlier – had music videos that were shown in heavy rotation, day and night, and so they entered the mainstream.

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These stars, obvious oddballs with whom Foster could identify, were flaunting their difference – a strategy Foster could idealize and use for himself. He says, “Somehow they made it safe. I felt comfortable.” Cross-dressers, girls having fun, sexually dominant women, and Prince flooded Foster’s mind and gave him a sense that his difference – while it didn’t not matter – might be hidden in plain sight.

Prince was one of those stars, too, but he was a lot smarter. He hit every realm of humanity. You couldn’t pin him down to, say, he only liked women, or black males, or gays, or whatever. He was so smart. He was the first to appear androgynous. Is that the right word to use? He didn’t care what anyone thought he was. I don’t think he cared.

Several years later, his Prince fan club provided Foster a place to not hide, but to be among others who felt the same as he did about their shared idol, Prince. This intentional community was a place of belonging and affiliation for Foster – a setting in which differences were minimized because the focus was on commonality and on fascination for the music and persona of Prince.

It was like finding your people. It was really fun. It was a big boost for me at that time. We met every month for parties, and we got things like – for example – early concert tickets. One time I went to one of Prince’s sound checks. There were 50 of us in the entire arena. Just amazing. And you wouldn’t believe . . . the people were so crazy and diverse and different – which I loved. He attracted every kind of person. It was a really good thing for me.

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Within this setting, Foster could experience people from disparate racial, ethnic, generational, and class backgrounds as kindred spirits – twins in the same fan tribe. He says, “It was comforting to be a part of that.” Even if Prince, who had by this time surpassed other MTV stars and claimed Foster’s heart completely, was not adored in the same ways and for the same reasons by all fan club members, love for Prince – and for members of the group – dominated this experience. Foster basked in the pleasures of fellowship within this group – a self-proclaimed “superfan” among other superfans.

Communitas.

When you’re a kid, pop music is pop music. You don’t realize how it’s made, how they do it, where they do it, all the people and computers involved. You just like the beat and the song, and it reminds you of dancing, that kind of thing. It was at the first show that I realized he’s not just a singer. He’s a musician all around. He can sing, and he can sing that falsetto, and the more he screams the more I love it. He can do ballads. He can do rock. He can do all of that. But – he’s doing all of that! It’s not those big boards where they mix everything – it’s him! I’d never seen anything like it, and I was old enough to see what it was, and I was hooked. I mean, that was when I was completely hooked.

It wasn’t only Prince’s brilliance as a musician that Foster discovered in live concert. He was swept up in the excitement of Prince’s charisma and the chemistry he had with his fans. Foster’s waning fandom expanded, exploded, and became something new. In the space created by Prince and his audience a new community was created, a

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new type of social encounter between concertgoers and Prince, and a new engagement with the music. This engagement felt unbounded from ordinary time and space – a coming together reminiscent of “communitas,” a term coined by ritual theorist Victor Turner to describe participants in transcendent, sacred rituals.

The beauty of live music is, I’ll hear something, and I might think, “That’s awful,” and then I’ll look around, and somebody’s dancing to it like it’s the greatest thing they’ve ever heard in their life, and I’m always like, “Well, that’s something.” That’s what you get at Prince shows. You can share the experience in completely different ways than you can recorded music.

Within the spontaneous community of the concert community Foster felt held by the activity and its participants and free to experience Prince’s music in new, even transformative ways. He had a heightened sense of Prince’s brilliance that was affected both by his engagement with Prince and the music – witnessing Prince playing the instruments, orchestrating what was happening on the stage and performing for and interacting with the audience – and by his engagement with the audience that joined with Prince in creating each amazing, playful, liminal event. Everything Foster loved about Prince’s music and persona grew and intensified in interaction with others.

When you’re listening to an album or watching one of the videos of him in concert – which, unfortunately, never do him justice because he’s always throwing in cheesy stuff to make them “better” – you can’t talk to the person next to you who sees it totally different than you do. You can’t share the music or the experience with anyone in the same way.

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Live performance transformed Foster’s love of Prince, and it transformed Foster’s engagement with music. His preoccupation with and dedication to Prince’s music became something more than an enjoyable pastime or an imaginary home in his mind. It became a potential space in which Foster could experience his own creativity and vitality in concert and at home with Prince and his fellow fans.

The Prince guy.

I don’t want to say that being a fan made me feel any more . . . less insecure, because it didn’t. Being a fan gave me a place to go in the insecure days. He gave me a place to go, but he wasn’t the reason I’m more secure today. I won’t give him that. His image and his music, him doing his job, gave me a place to go. Does that make sense? It’s the real people in my life, though, who are the ones.

As Foster has brought the parts of his self together (meeting Tom, coming out, joining their families together, and creating a home), his needs for fandom have changed.

Consciously, he is no longer hiding anything, so he has no reason to feel nervous about who he is. Because of this, he doesn’t need to use music and Prince in the same ways – as a place of retreat in his mind or a way to be seen and simultaneously unseen by others.

He loves Prince as much as ever, but he no longer needs a tribe like the fan club because he has another kind of tribe – family, friends, and community – with whom he can identify.

It was a different stage in my life. I’m different – a different person than I was 10 years ago, 20 years ago. Hopefully, we all are. I’m pretty secure

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with who I am now, and a lot of time when I was involved . . . I wasn’t.

That was my security blanket. I just don’t feel like I need it now. I’m just such a fan of his music. How do I explain? I don’t need . . . affirmation that he is the greatest musician who will live in my lifetime.

Prince continues to function for Foster in many of the same ways as ever, but the burden that fell squarely on escaping and connecting through fandom when Foster was truly young is now distributed more evenly among other objects and upon Foster himself.

He says, “Being a fan is important in people’s lives, I think, because it’s fun, it’s positive, and if you need an escape it’s there. And if you don’t, it’s still there.”

I’m proud of my knowledge of music and musicians and being able to say, “Yes, I know.” All my friends say things like, “Oh, God, he was so great.

Purple Rain is the best thing.” I’m like, “Dude, that is one billionth of a percent of what he really is,” and I’m kind of proud that I know about him and can tell them.

Foster loves Prince. He loves to love Prince. He loves that people associate him with Prince. He is The Prince Guy. Foster dresses like Prince at Halloween. He gives Prince-themed parties and hands out Prince-related party favors. He wants to have a Prince Christmas tree, to the good-humored exasperation of his loving husband. He is endearingly, outrageously associated with Prince, and he likes this. Foster is known for being a fan – an “obsessed,” “addicted” “superfan.” His fandom is something that makes him special.

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Meanings of Prince’s death.

I guess I just went numb. I went numb. I went numb. That’s what I did. I just . . . I don’t know. I didn’t start sobbing and run to the fence, and hang on the fence. I didn’t . . . also, I didn’t want to play it up because I didn’t want people constantly talking about it, which they did anyway. “Are you upset he died?” Come on. Don’t ask me that. What do you think? But I think I just went numb.

Foster insists that Prince means nothing more, less or different to him in the aftermath of his death. Foster denies that Prince’s death has had any lasting impact on him, and he insists that his fandom has not been changed. Given what he expressed about his changing uses of Prince as his life came together, this makes sense. But Prince’s death has taken away a source of pleasure. It has challenged his assumption that life always gets better. It may be true that the passing of time has worked on his sense of loss, and he no longer feels it as strongly as he did at first. It may also be true that he is using defenses like minimization, reaction formation, and denial to preserve his good feelings and maintain the love he has for the icon.

Changing needs.

Foster describes his life in a series of befores and afters. In each case, the movement from the former to that latter position is positive, always in an upward direction. He says, “When I talk about the afters, they’re all positive. That says a lot.”

After his first surgery he felt better and knew more about himself. After he met Tom he came out and life was more satisfying and coherent. After he saw Prince live, his fandom

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exploded. Foster is a master at seeing things in a positive light. He says, “I’m sure if I wanted to, I could find something negative to say about an ‘after,’ but – here’s the thing – I’d have to think about it.” But Prince’s death doesn’t fit into this “feel good, feel better, feel wonderful” model.

I don’t know. I wish I could explain it better. People were tiptoeing around me, and I had to put it in perspective. Maybe I’m just secure enough with it – with me and with it – I knew who he was, and I knew it was coming. I think I just did.

Foster says firmly and often that as he grew up and brought the pieces of his life together the needs he had for places of refuge within him transformed. His fandom didn’t have to function the same ways because Foster no longer needed to retreat into his mind or into an intentional tribe of like-minded people. He could be himself, everywhere, and still love Prince.

This insistence is surely accurate on many levels, but perhaps this is also defensive. He minimizes the impact of the loss, and he gets to keep his fandom intact in his mind. However, on some level, Prince’s death must be disillusioning and disappointing to Foster, who wishes to believe in a life that just keeps getting better, and who finds evidence of this upward trajectory all over his life.

Minimization.

I didn’t know him. We don’t know any of these entertainers. I know that was his job. I have a very visible job, and I interact with a lot of people because of it, and when I’m not with them they probably still think of me

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like that, but I’m not that person all the time. I know that when he walked off the stage he went home and, he probably owned a pair of jeans and a tee shirt. I’ve read things about him, and I’ve seen him a lot live, but I don’t know what he did between 8:30 and 11 in the morning. He probably brushed his teeth and went out and rode his bike.

Repeatedly, Foster insists, “We don’t know these people.” He claims he has never needed to know the details of Prince’s private life. He hasn’t identified Prince as a spiritual or moral model. His love for Prince, he claims, is found in his musical brilliance, his thrilling live performances and in his beautifully crafted and fascinating superstar persona. The real person of Prince was not what he loved, so, realistically, what is the loss?

I’m not a fan of anything else in my life – well, maybe my husband and my family – but not another icon like Prince. There’s no one else I would consider. My home is full of Prince. Ask anyone who knows me, and they’ll say, “He’s a fan of Prince.” It’s always going to be a big part of my life.

Foster is relentlessly positive, and he is also pragmatic. He knows life can be messy. He tempers this with beauty, love, and laughter. He loves to be entertained, wowed, amazed, and delighted. Prince was an entertainer – the entertainer who never disappointed, who always transported Foster. Prince was not a person to Foster so much as a persona – a glamorous, fascinating character who always delivered the goods.

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Disillusionment.

I didn’t go to the Piano & A Microphone concert because I’d just seen him. And remember the Baltimore riots? He wrote that song and put it on the HITnRUN album – one of those. He played in Baltimore, and I didn’t go to that one either. After his death I thought, “I should have gone.” But I always thought I’d get another chance.

Foster minimizes the impact of Prince’s death, but evidence points to it meaning something. He is mad that there will be no more new music. He is disappointed that he will not have more opportunities to see Prince perform. He regrets that he didn’t go to the last shows. He is sad that people who never saw Prince live will never have a chance to see him.

When Piano & A Microphone 1983 came out last year I couldn’t buy it. I can’t buy it. I don’t have it. I’m terrified that I’ll never get to buy another one. Once I buy that album will they release more? Rumors – yes, no, yes, no. I don’t know if I can do it, because I’m afraid there won’t be any more.

Foster is worried that he will come up against the limit of Prince-oriented things to anticipate with pleasure, and he wants to avoid the end. He is apprehensive about visiting Paisley Park because it might reveal itself to be “too Disney,” or something else that isn’t good. Foster defends against disillusionment.

Have you been there – to Paisley Park? I want to go. I haven’t gone. I haven’t bought the last album, and I haven’t been to Paisley Park. I’m

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going to go. I just . . I want it to be right. I kind of want Tom to go, ‘cause he might get it, but I don’t know how he’ll view it. And I do worry about what they’re going to do with it.

Foster says the death did not affect him, but this isn’t the whole story. He minimizes the loss and glosses over difficulty. He may have forgotten some of his sadness. Perhaps Foster has reacted this way to other losses at other times in his life. He wants to keep his good feelings and continue to give positive, pleasurable attention to fandom. He says, “I love his music, and I’ll always have that.”

I’m still a very serious fan. I would say it’s an addiction. It’s probably the one thing – well, maybe not the only thing – that I’ve held onto through everything I’ve ever gone through. It’s been there from beginning to end. I would say I’m a superfan.

Foster tells both himself and me that we’ll have to be satisfied with what we already have. Foster is a positive man with many resources and many healthy defenses.

He holds out against a hard ending – refusing to buy Prince’s last album and delaying his trip to Paisley Park indefinitely. He will have to find a way to preserve Prince forever in his life.

Carolyn: At Home in My Life Introduction.

I first saw Carolyn at a fam event the weekend of the tribute concert in October 2016. It was Carolyn’s first purple pilgrimage, but she appeared completely at home. She entered the room with confidence, as she says she always does. “You just keep walking

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until someone stops you,” she laughs, and then you drop someone’s name.” I told her about my project, and she stayed in touch until I was ready to begin.

We met for interviews in Carolyn’s home. Our interactions were lively and friendly. Carolyn, who has a very organized mind and an incredible memory, gave time and attention generously. “You are part of my journey now,” she said. Like Prince, Carolyn used words deftly and creatively, sprinkling her speech with puns, alliterations, and double entendres. She demonstrated an impressive capacity for self-analysis.

Carolyn’s home reflects her well. Images of trees with deep, strong roots dominate, along with landscapes and other nature paintings. Understated Christian symbols occupy places of honor. It’s a very homey home. And a giant, sparkly, purple image of Prince hangs over it all.

Background and history.

Carolyn is a 52-year-old heterosexual Caucasian woman. She lives in a city in Texas and is a buyer for a department store. She has never been married, and she has no children. Carolyn professes a strong, evangelical Christian faith. She is the fifth girl of six.

Carolyn’s father’s family came from rural Arkansas. There was one church in their tiny town. Carolyn’s father’s family attended that church, along with everyone else in the community. Carolyn’s mother joined this church when she married Carolyn’s father. Carolyn’s parents were a committed team, and they raised their children in a household in which faith was foundational.

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Carolyn’s father reinforced their strict evangelical practice for personal reasons.

His childhood home had been chaotic and violent. He wanted his own family to be peaceful and whole, so many worldly things – like rock music – were prohibited.

Nonetheless, Carolyn and her sisters would sneak records into the house and play them while their father was at work – small rebellions that were not always successful. Carolyn says, “I don’t know how many records went flying out in the back field.”

Carolyn perceives herself to be the black sheep of the family, somehow different than her sisters. Growing up, her parents seemed to hold her to a higher standard, and she believes her sisters scapegoated her and tried to get her in trouble as a result. Her response was to “hide who I am,” appear to conform, and leave home as soon as she could. This has distanced her from her sisters, yet they still continue to treat her as though she is up to no good.

Carolyn says she never met a man who could live up to the standards of her family so she never married or had children. She would like to have a family of her own, but she says that her life is full, and she doesn’t require anything to fill a lack. She has faith, a beautiful home, a career she loves, good friends, and now she has new experiences as part of Prince’s Purple Family.

Fam story.

When Prince died, Carolyn was a fan, but she was not yet a fam. “How could I have not been a fan,” she laughs. She appreciated Prince’s brilliance, and she recognized him as a cultural icon for her generation. When she was young, his music was everywhere, although, like other “music with a beat,” it was prohibited in her very

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religious home. She says, “We’d listen in secret and talk about him in a giggly, behindthe-hands way.”

As a college student and young adult during Prince’s heyday, Carolyn considered him to be “a bad boy” – exciting, but a little scary. In 2004 she attended the Musicology concert and was “blown away” by his live performance. She says, “He was totally different than I expected him to be. He was so interactive and charming. I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t that.” She listened to his music non-stop until other things stole her focus.

Starting in February of 2016, a surprising and serendipitous series of events began to unfold. “No more than a couple of months” before Prince’s death, Carolyn was contacted about participating in a class action suit pertaining to illegal hiring practices.

She signed the paperwork and forgot about it.

Carolyn was driving to Arkansas when she heard that Prince had died. She says, “All I kept hearing was Purple Rain on the radio . . . It’s like – what is going on?” She felt “curiously moved” by and sad about his death. Her feelings surprised and puzzled her. She was unable to follow the news while she was away, but she heard enough to know that he had died in his home in Chanhassen, Minnesota and that there had been a huge outpouring of love and sadness around the world.

When she returned home, Carolyn found an envelope with a return address in Chanhassen. “I would never have connected Chanhassen with Prince except that he’d been all over the radio,” she states. Inside the envelope was a $4,500 settlement check from the class action suit. Carolyn decided that this unexpected money was a sign that she should go “on a quest” to Minnesota to “see what the man was all about.”

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Carolyn experienced her first pilgrimage to Minneapolis as transformative. She met many kind, wonderful people who were unlike the other people in her life, and she felt surrounded by acceptance, generosity of spirit, openness, camaraderie, and love. She felt inexplicably drawn to the place where Prince had lived, and – once there – she met many others who felt the same way. She wasn’t sure what it meant, but she was sure her journey had meaning.

Returning home, Carolyn began to research Prince to get more of an idea who he had been as a person. She discovered he was more than the bad-boy musician of your youth, more than a superstar. He was “a unicorn, an anomaly,” a person who defied stereotypes and easy categorization. He was a man embodying many messages within a single, central message that spoke to Caroline. She became fascinated, and as her fascination grew so did her appreciation of Prince and the fam community that loved him.

Carolyn believes that her new famdom and her connections to Prince’s Purple Family is an unfolding journey, full of purpose. Carolyn feels that she is changing as she discovers meanings in Prince’s messages and “in the community he created.” Her new friends and fellow fams provide access and opportunities she lacked in the past. Carolyn feels that her world is expanding.

Categories of meaning.

I don’t have his music on all the time. I enjoy it when it’s there, but I don’t need to hear it. It really was that picture up there that made the light go on as to what this is all about. It’s like, “Yeah. This represents me.” What he

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represents to me is family and home. Family, acceptance, forgiveness and love. And he created a family that, you know, holds the same values I do.

Carolyn states that her life is full and happy, and she is outwardly content and satisfied, but she longs for an ideal home and family and for ways to express her faith and values that feel free and authentic. On a deep level, she has been searching for vehicles for connection and self-discovery and for ways to restore the lost objects associated with her longing for home.

When I first put that picture up there I was like, “I have a picture of Prince in my home!” I looked around, and it was like, “This doesn’t fit, but it does.” Everything in here is about home, family . . . the best you can do is give your children roots to know where they’re from and wings to let them fly. I’ve always felt that’s what my parents did . . .

When Prince died, Caroline was surprised by feelings of loss and, subsequently, by an inspiration, experienced at first as something mysterious and uncanny, to use Prince as the means for finding the longed-for family and creating the idealized home that her heart desires. Her path of discovery has been gradually and gently disillusioning, but it has clarified her values and provided her with a “glimpse of glory.”

Carolyn has always had the idea, instilled by various means in her childhood home, reinforced by her own “confident and quick-witted” temperament and psychology, and confirmed by events in her life, that she is special. She had an idea that her first visit to Prince’s home was a spiritual quest filled with significance. She says, “Nothing with my life is without purpose.”

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Carolyn believed that she was being called to do something or to be something.

She says, “I’ve got to find the purpose . . . If I’m on this road, there’s something here that I’m learning, so I have to be introspective, realize what it is, and embrace it.” At the same time, she was realistic. She is quick to say that, simultaneous with the wish for divine purpose, she was ready to debunk her own fantasy and embrace the trip as mere fun, an interesting adventure. She says, “At the very least I’d get a free trip out of it.”

This is how I felt at the beginning, that there was . . . everyone came together out of love, and there was no race or denominations. There were no politics. It was like I saw a community that actually knew how to interact without all of the social things buzzing around that divide and separate us. It was almost like a utopia. It was, like, can this really exist on a regular basis? It was so far beyond my expectation of what I thought I’d find.

Her experiences as a fam have had an ephemeral, numinous quality, but today she no longer feels the oceanic connection she felt on her first, transformative pilgrimage.

She witnessed something special in the community that gathered around the music and message of Prince, the coming together of all kinds of people in idealized and idealizing love and fellowship. She fantasied that this gathering could create a new kind of community, a new home and family, not just for her, but for all people, “brothers and sisters united all for love.”

This is something he’s taught me. If you don’t like the world you’re living in . .. change it. Don’t worry about what anyone else is doing. It like, you’re just responsible for what has been placed in your life at this

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moment, so take it as an opportunity, or a mission field if you want, and step up to it.

Softly disillusioned over time, Carolyn now sees that the fam has sacred moments and profane moments, like any other family. She says, “There are people who truly do get that we can all get along, but I can see that conflict still resides, even within this community.” Carolyn is coming to realize that the change she wishes to see resides, not in all of Prince’s purple people coming together, but inside her own mind and through her own actions.

Idealized home.

The pictures in my home are all safe places, happy places I’ve gone. This one reminds me of walks I took up in the hills. I would find these old dirt roads that had homes and foundations that have been abandoned. I used to love walking there. These are all places of comfort, places where I feel comfortable. That’s why – I’ve always felt that my home is a sanctuary, and I don’t ever want stress in it. There’s enough stress in the world.

When someone comes in my home I want them to feel at home, and loved, and I want them to have peace. This is a no-drama zone.

Carolyn has memories of and nostalgia for a lost or distant idealized home and family. She yearns for this home and family and longs for them to exist in the present.

The foundation of this desired family and home may rest in memories of actual experiences, but the soft light in which she paints it also suggests wishful fantasy.

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One of the stories my dad used to say was, “Okay, you’re walking up a high cliff, and there’s a really narrow road. Are you going to walk as close as you can to the edge, or are you going to hug the side of the road that’s going to keep you safe?” And he would say, “That’s where I want to stay – on the safe side. I don’t even want to get close to that edge and have my foot slip. So, if I’m strict with you, just know that I don’t want you to get too close to that place that you won’t be able to come back from.”

Casually, Carolyn reveals two possible contributors to her yearning of which she seems not to be aware. The first resides in her father’s desire to undo the harm of his own difficult childhood by being a better father than his was and creating a more peaceful home for his family than the one he had.

He wanted his home to be the complete opposite of the home where he grew up. Grandma was God-fearing, and at one time Grandpa was, too, but he [Carolyn’s father] said there was never any . . . there was always tension in that home, and he never wanted that. He ran his home completely differently.

The second resides in the unarticulated loss of an infant born 18 months before Carolyn.

She says in passing, “There was a boy between me and my older sister, and he passed away after he was two days old.” I wonder about the impact of this death on her parents (who pushed her to be special), her sisters (who treated her like she was an outsider), and on Carolyn.

Carolyn’s family’s values – “We forgive and we love. We laugh. We say ‘thank you.’ We give praise” – are stenciled on a wall in her home, and she believes in them

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strongly. But there are things that seem to be unspoken. Carolyn states, “I don’t feel a hole in my life.” I believe this is true in her present life, but there was a literal hole in her family.

Meanings of Prince.

He is such a mysterious individual. He can seem to morph into anything people want him to be. Not everyone has the same view of who he is to them, and also people need to feel special, so they want to feel like someone that big is actually reaching out to them, and they’re unique.

For Carolyn, Prince means a number of things. He is an idealized object with whom she can identify. He is a unicorn, a rare breed, and so is she. He is also idealizable as a man who points toward God. Through his music and message he invites her to play creatively with her own experiences and expressions of faith. He opens her mind to the possibility of a new kind of family and a new kind of home. As something like a prophet, he sings about the potential for a better world, and invites his Fam to heal the holes that separate them.

It was after he died that I was exposed to his incredible catalogue. I’d never heard so much of his music. I had no idea how profound he was.

How weird and not weird. My perception of him just became one big question mark because I could see that it was always evolving, and I just wanted to know what he was about. That’s how I first got pulled in, and then I kept going and enjoying the journey, further and further, and stepping through every door that opened.

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The meanings Prince has for Carolyn are not closely linked to his superstardom.

She is drawn to what she hears as his central message and to the idealized family he brought together through his work. She would not have known about, considered, or experienced these meanings if Prince, the superstar and cultural icon, had not died, and if she had not received that uncanny check from his next door neighbor.

The Unicorn – A fascinating object of identification and idealization.

I thought there was some reason I was supposed to go to Minneapolis.

Once I got there, there were so many people that felt the exact same way.

People were saying, “Prince came to me in a dream,” and, “I’m looking for a sign.” At some point I looked around, and I thought, “These people seem crazy. Does that mean I’m crazy, too?” I mean, I thought my story was so unique, but everyone had a sense that they were being pulled here.

That’s when I had to take a step back and ask, “What is it about this man?”

Through her pilgrimage, in the stories of others, and through her own research, Carolyn encountered Prince, “ the anomaly” and “ unicorn,” who surprised and delighted her with his depth and his contradictions. Not sure what she would find on her quest, she found someone extraordinary, who could hold opposite qualities in creative tension. He was, “a big question mark.”

He’s an example of being true to yourself. He’s someone who’s not afraid to make mistakes, then change who he is, and reinvent himself based on what he’s learned. I identify with that because I’m like that, too. Outside of that, he’s still very much a mystery.

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Carolyn identified in Prince qualities she recognized in herself – specialness, difference, and the defiance of expectations. Prince was like her. Prior to her immersion in famdom, she’d been intrigued, but he was too other. He did not fit with her ideas about what was good. He was profane and “dirty.” Part of his life’s journey, she believes, had to do with the transcendence of this.

It’s an interesting journey he was on. I don’t know if he ever completed it, but he tried. He never gave up. He kept striving. It’s like, “Okay, I haven’t reached it yet, but I’m gonna keep pushing toward it, and I don’t care what anyone else thinks. I’m not gonna be apologetic about the journey or what brought me here. If I’ve made mistakes along the way, well, that’s what we all do. But those mistakes brought me here. So, who’s to call them “mistakes” if they brought me where I needed to be?

Carolyn expresses that she also felt other. And she was often treated as other. Her life and worldview have been affected by her contradictory childhood experiences. Like Prince, she was both black sheep and prodigy. She is speaking about Prince when she says, “You can absorb it, but you can’t make it fit. He doesn’t come together.” She could also be speaking about herself.

He says music reaches people, and that it’s like, step back and listen to perfect harmony, but his music is slightly off-key. Who puts those notes together and makes them sound like that? It’s not even harmony. It’s taking things that seem to be at odds and making them come together. So, look. I just analyzed myself. That’s kind of what it is. Even things that don’t fit perfectly make harmony.

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Finding in Prince similar tensions to hers, and discovering that he successfully used those in his life and his work makes him an object of idealization as well as identification. Prince’s difference gives Carolyn validation and hope. She can use what she is learning about him to play with ideas about herself. She, too, is a unicorn.

The man pointing toward God – prophetic poet and leader.

There are so many people who worship him [Prince] as a god, and he never wanted that. He wanted to point you to something bigger than him, and it was always Christ. This goes in life with my core belief, too. It’s just taking me further out into my own spiritual journey. Yeah. That’s what this is. It’s a spiritual journey.

Carolyn tells me that, because he was unknowable, Prince can become every fam’s fantasy of what they want or need him to be: “He becomes in their minds what they’re missing.” Some fams desire a god-like Prince. Carolyn’s Prince is not a god, but he’s a man whose truth, she says, “is about God.” I feel that he never wanted to be worshipped. He wanted to be a vessel pointed to God, and he wanted people to understand that. That’s the type of fam I fit into. It’s like he sent a message that he was given a calling by God. Carolyn’s Prince invites her to play with and expand her experiences of faith. She hears in his music surprising and explicit messages about God that mirror her own beliefs. His music, expressed in ways – i.e. “with a beat” – that are outside Carolyn’s

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traditional conception of “Godly” music, appeals to Carolyn’s sense of wonder, awe, and inclusion in worship.

So many people say his music meant so much to them or that it saved their lives. A guy I know was homeless, and he said Prince literally saved his life when he was 23. I don’t understand it, but I hear it. And it’s not abnormal to hear stories like that. I don’t know what it is, exactly, that saved his life. I don’t hear it in “Darling Nikki,” But, yeah, “The Cross.”

Carolyn perceives that music has power that is beyond her understanding. She hears in Prince’s music an invitation to her and to a larger community of like-minded Fams to open themselves in new and unexpected ways.

(The singer in the band NPG) is lying on his back, and he’s just screaming out the words to “The Cross,” and I’m like, “Okay, you wouldn’t see this in a church, but it is worship.” Coming from the background I come from, it’s . . . that rock beat is from Satan. But there’s nothing Satanic about this.

It’s just someone pouring out their soul, and crying out. It’s not necessarily entertainment. To sing like that, you have to feel it in the depths of your soul.

Carolyn may deeply wish to cry out, too. She has words for her feelings about God and Christ, but this kind of music is new for her. Both the songs and the singer enthrall her.

She asks, “Who would have ever thought I would be talking about Prince leading people to Christ through his music?”

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Testimony in the group.

It’s almost like an expected reference. No one talks about it shyly or apologetically. It’s like, well . . . you just openly admit to it. I found myself talking that way to some other people in my life, and I’ve had them say, “Well, I don’t want to get into spirituality.” It’s like, “Well, you don’t have to. That was my comment.” But it’s interesting that there are topics that are taboo, but when you get into this community they’re not. But then when you step out of it, the taboo is still there. And so it might be . . . it might be that this is a safe place for me to express what I believe and to hear other people do it . . . and to do it in unity.

Carolyn has found “the segment of the fams that are like me.” Within this Christian group she feels free to openly profess her faith. She has yearned to express herself without holding back or worrying about dogma or decorum. In the group of fams with whom she identifies, Carolyn finds people who are following Prince’s example of “putting everything into his songs.” In this idealized group, people are, not just willing, but “expected” to share their stories. In this group, Carolyn says, “No one is a stranger.”

In my experience, the Godliest people are the most accepting. You just see that love comes through them, and that’s what faith means to me. God has given me this role to love, and to love people to Christ. It’s not always easy, and I don’t always do it. But it’s something to strive for, and this community allows me to practice it until it becomes who I am, a bigger part of who I am . . . So it’s part of my faith journey.

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Discovering and using Prince’s messages about faith Carolyn is engaged in worship. She acknowledges that other fams use Prince in their own ways. She says, “We all worship differently. We all have different backgrounds, and we’re at different places in our journey . . . But we’re all on the same journey.”

Home and family – pieces coming together.

I’m expanding. I’m not so vanilla anymore. I’m seeing other kinds of people, other ways of life, and I’m realizing that if you can just find that one thing you have in common, you really do have it. In this time we’re living, there’s so much hatred, so much division. I hate it. It’s like, don’t look to the government to solve your problems. What happens nationwide starts with us. It’s a heart thing.

Carolyn experienced Prince’s message, music, and death as vehicles and opportunities for exploring and expanding her conceptualizations of home and family.

This spiritual journey – whether fated or serendipitous – has led to discoveries about herself and to the discovery of the Purple family, an idealized group representing Carolyn’s core values.

Quest.

What started out as a feeling that I was being driven, you know, turned into something else. I told you that when I first went up there, people were walking into Paisley Park saying that they felt him, that they had a vision, or that, you know, there was a coldness, and they were asking for signs

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from him. Hearing that, I was like, “You guys are weird.” But then I thought, “What does that say about me? I’m here, too!”

Carolyn imagined herself the hero in an epic journey to an unknown destination, or, perhaps, just a curious traveler on an unexpected vacation. She was of two minds about her quest, but she longed for something big – a message, a sign, something heroic she was supposed to do, learn, or become. Not fully aware of what that meant, she had a fantasy that she would make a leap of faith into ideal, new experiences.

It turned out that it wasn’t so much a quest for me to do something, but a quest for me to become more of who I’m intended to be, and to experience the world through different lenses. It started as one thing, and it turned into another.

At first, Carolyn hoped and wished that she was leaving behind the old and entering something new. She wondered if she was the only hero on her quest, but she discovered that she was one of many, part of a group gathered around the fascinating character – the icon and symbol – Prince.

Family.

My family doesn’t hold my values, and I wanted to understand that. I wanted to be someplace where I was understood, and I found a place that has enriched me with all kinds of experiences and with people that I wouldn’t have had in my life if it wasn’t for this . . . if I hadn’t gone for this experience. So, period.

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Carolyn found what she first believed to be an ideal family, and she hoped that her experience within this group would reveal itself to be a realizable Utopia. She initially believed she was encountering an ideal situation and the possibility of living an ideal version of herself. She didn’t search for this consciously, but she immediately recognized opportunities to explore and challenge previously unconscious biases around social class, religion, political affiliation, and race.

It’s not something that I intentionally looked for, but it was a cool thing that I experienced along the way, right down to his [Prince’s] family coming up to me and introducing themselves, and just being so down to earth. It really did feel like a family, and it felt like everyone was welcome.

The idealized Purple Family that Carolyn encountered on her first quest seemed enlightened. They proclaimed their faith. They came together with love. The differences that separate people were diminished, and love of Prince and Love 4 One Another dominated. This was not mindless adherence to group norms – like dogmatic religious practice – but something that seemed to Carolyn to be free, authentic and genuine. This was a group, she fantasied, coming together to create something new.

Racism.

I’m having experiences outside my comfort zone – things that I want to experience – and I’m doing it with some wonderful people that I’m meeting along the way. One thing I didn’t have before was interracial friendships. Not because I didn’t want to, it’s just that I live in a very . . .

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white area. There have been a lot of things in the news over the last, I don’t know, five years, that have really bothered me. I want to be more than someone who just says I believe something. I want to get out there and actually live what I believe.

Carolyn’s ambivalently loved family of origin had a belief of being among God’s chosen ones. This status was maintained by “grace” and good actions and by being the right kind of person – especially the right kind of Caucasian person. Carolyn internalized this, but it was in conflict with consciously held values.

I was raised with a lot of untrue stereotypes. There was a lot of fear . . . but God gives us challenges in life, and they’re based on things He wants us to change. And this thing keeps coming at you until you deal with it. One of those things for me was racism.

Carolyn’s conflicts around race became externalized through her quest. Faced with awareness of her own unwanted biases through exposure to the Purple Family, Carolyn desired to change.

I parked in an alleyway when it was daylight, and it was night when I was walking back to my car. There were three black ladies walking behind me, and we were having a conversation, and they asked where I was parked. I told them, and they said, “Well, we’re not going to let you go out there on your own. We’ll walk with you. You’re our sister. Even though we just met, we’re sisters.” That touched my heart. I don’t think it would exist in normal America.

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Using the group as a way to immerse herself in experiences “outside her comfort zone,” Carolyn has consciously observed and countered her misconceptions about people who are different than she is. In the Fam community she’s able to do this using ideas found in Prince lyrics, like “love 4 one another,” and “brothers and sisters united all for love.” These values are summed up in her belief that, “We can all get along when we take away the labels that we have for each other and learn to love the individual.” Carolyn is matter-of-fact in pointing out that that this simple way of interacting with prejudice is significantly better than allowing it to remain underground.

Disillusionment.

I don’t know how long I’ll stay in it. I’m still here, though, and it’s three years later. So, yeah. There are times when I get tired of doing a lot of Prince things, but I don’t get tired of the community. I see the same people at all of these events. We don’t hang out outside of Prince events, but when we’re together, it’s cool.

Carolyn’s experiences, while transformative, have also been gradually disillusioning. No family is perfect. While the experiences she’s had are, indeed, life enhancing, she has discovered that the fams are not as united as she first believed.

Carolyn, who is both creative and pragmatic, continues to make use of what she has found.

What is coincidence? What is fate? What’s real, and what am I making up? I guess that’s what this whole journey is. Have I sent myself on a

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quest that wasn’t meant to be? If it’s just a coincidence, that’s okay, because I learned something out of it.

Carolyn was amazed when the opportunity to take a trip seemed to reveal something more – a new world, or an old dream of a perfect world, newly imagined. She yearned to believe in this revealed, special home and family – something she’d been searching for (without really knowing it) for much of her life. The sense of uncanny destiny felt both inevitable and surprising. It was both part of her and beyond her. The person of Prince, through dying, seemed to facilitate the coming together of Carolyn’s previously unformed fantasy of a Utopia.

At first, the potential for her initial “glimpse of glory” to grow into something more lasting – a movement or transformation of life as she knew it – seemed profound.

The longed-for special home for the special family seemed to be at hand. She was disappointed to discover that the glimpse was fleeting, yet it remains sacred to her, powerfully reinforcing her core beliefs and giving her a space in which she can put them into conscious action.

The painting.

This painting is not small. It’s huge. It’s like, I can’t believe it’s just hanging in my house. I’m looking around the room, and I think that now everyone who already thinks I’m strange is going to think I’m really strange. And then I look at every other thing in my home, and it just clicked. It’s like, everything is part of the same theme, and he’s part of it, too. He fits right in with it.

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The giant painting of Prince that dominates Carolyn’s living room is a representation of her inner and outer journey to discover and bring together the elements – the longings and material realities – of her life. The painting, an outward and visible symbol of her quest, speaks to her conscious synthesis of past and present, her desire to find meaning in experience, and her longing to understand and enact her best purpose in this world.

The money came, and it was the day after Prince died, and it was like, “Maybe this money is for me to do a quest and see what he’s like.” It piqued my interest, so I was like, “I’m doing it! I’m going to see where it leads. I’m gonna open the door and walk through it, and every door that opens, I’m just going to keep walking.”

When Prince died, Carolyn was a fan but she was not a fam. Unexpectedly moved by his death, her reaction became a catalyst for self-exploration and for expanding her worldview. She used him as an idealized object, to play with ideas about herself, family, community, spirituality, and faith. For Carolyn, Prince is less a man than his music, less his music than his message. She projects her ideals onto him, and he – mysterious Prince who “becomes in people’s minds what they are missing” – receives her projections and becomes them. He is a good object.

I call myself a fam because he didn’t want us to worship him. I don’t want to worship him, but we’re one big family . . . It really hit home that there was something that I wanted, that I longed for, something that made me feel at home . . . he represents that to me, and that’s a reason why he feels so at home in my life.

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Carolyn’s Prince is found less in his superstardom than in his messages about faith, less in the song “Darling Nikki,” than in the song “The Cross.” She is more enthralled with the community he has gathered than she is with him. But she also appreciates him for his reconciliation of opposites, for the conflicting ways he can be perceived, for the tension she hears in his dissonant yet beautiful music. Prince is more than one thing. He is more than meets the eye, and so is she.

You know, if you listen to music with a little bit of a . . . I mean, that’s what it really is – freedom to do things like listen to music with a beat, have a drink every now and then, or wear pants. It’s freedom to wear what you like! Wow – guess what – you don’t have to wear a dress to be modest, you know? These are things I’ve learned on my quest.

Carolyn, too, can live in creative tension. If Prince can sing – in the same song, in the same words – about his lusty infatuation with his Purple Rain costar Apollonia and about Jesus – then Carolyn can be herself. Carolyn is bringing together disparate parts of herself and developing empathy for and appreciation for all that she is. Her quest – like her fascination with Prince – could be never-ending. Her great sparkly purple painting of Prince is a symbol – not only of the Symbol – but of family, and of home, and of Christ.

He is a symbol of her entire journey.

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Penny: A Thread Woven Through My Life Introduction.

So many of Prince’s songs came out at important moments in my life. When I hear him it sort of takes me back to that time. There’s a connection there. He’s woven a thread through my life.

I found Penny’s fabric on Spoonflower.com one night when I was looking for Prince-related original artwork online. Her beautifully designed fabric captivated me, so I ordered some, writing in the “message to seller” text box something like, “Purple Fam Forever!” Penny got back to me, and I told her about my project. We agreed to meet the next time I was in Minneapolis.

Penny was recognizable the instant I saw her. She was wearing a Princeemblazoned dress she made herself. Her blue-black hair was artfully adorned with a simultaneously elaborate and understated purple hair clip. Pushing back her sleeve, Penny showed me a large, delicate-looking tribute tattoo – one of many she has commissioned since Prince died. Then she reached into her handbag and pulled out a purple scarf she’d knitted for me earlier that day. When I asked if she thought she was a serious fan she answered, “Ya think?”

Background and developmental history.

Penny is a 59-year-old, Caucasian, heterosexual woman. She lives in Minneapolis but grew up elsewhere in South Dakota. She has been married to her husband for a decade, and she has three adult sons. She has multiple advanced degrees and is a production engineer.

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Growing up in a “big small town” in the 1960s and 1970s, Penny had “an average, middle class life.” Her dad was the high school principal, and her mom raised the children. Penny was the youngest girl of three. Her brother was born when she was eight. Penny was interested in typical kid things. As an adolescent, she liked makeup and wore clothes her mother didn’t like. She “got a little lippy.” She also got pregnant her senior year in high school and kept the baby – her first son.

After trying out marriage briefly and having a second baby, Penny says, “I needed to make a better life for us, and I decided to go back to school.” Her college years weren’t easy, but Penny was able to make it work. Although she slowed her pace during her final year to accommodate the infancy of her third, “surprise” boy, she completed a rigorous engineering program in five years.

Penny followed this with two master’s degrees and got a job teaching at a university. After designing a minor in her field for that university, she was told she was under-qualified to work in the new program. Frustrated, she quit, moved back home, and began to put together her present career. In time, this led her to Minneapolis.

In 2006, Penny met her husband, Gary. At 44 she’d had a series of relationships with men who didn’t commit fully to her or to whom she didn’t wish to fully commit.

Penny and Gary “mostly have a lot of fun,” but sometimes Penny feels claustrophobic.

Fortunately, she has ways to find the space she needs. She enjoys weekends when Gary goes camping. She also enjoys being a fan.

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Fam story.

Penny has known what it is to be a fan since she was a pre-teen and Donnie Osmond burst on the scene with his white jumpsuit and his band of singing brothers, but she didn’t discover Prince until she was a young woman. Growing up far from a city, she didn’t have access to a wide variety of music. She outgrew the Osmonds and moved onto hard rock bands like Aerosmith and Pink Floyd. Music was primarily a social thing for adolescent Penny, who liked hanging out with her friends and “doing regular teenager things.” Music connected her to “good times with friends” and evoked pleasant feelings and memories.

My first exposure to Prince wasn’t until 1984 when a male friend – who’s just a friend – took me to see Purple Rain. I wasn’t living in Minneapolis yet, and I wasn’t aware of Prince until I saw that movie. That was probably the hottest anybody’s ever gotten me.

Penny remembers sitting next to her friend in a dark movie theater, feeling turnedon and embarrassed. She says, “All I could think was, ‘holy pockets, that man’s hot!’”

She hoped her friend wouldn’t look at her. She was immediately and irrevocably smitten, to the bewilderment of many of the males in her life. “They were like, ‘he’s only five feet tall!” Penny didn’t care.

Penny’s attachment to and appreciation for Prince “evolved over time.” At first she was attracted to him as a “music sex god.” Then she grew to appreciate his genius and his immense talent. She says, “His music is fun. His lyrics are fun, and the music just makes you . . . feel . . . things.” She admired the actions he took to control his own music, and she identified with the loving and spiritual messages he put forth in his songs.

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Penny was disappointed when Prince – known for his music filled with messages about openness, authenticity, and connectedness – appeared to shut down parts of himself to fit within the mold of the Jehovah’s Witness faith he adopted in the early 2000’s. She says, “I always really liked his open embrace of, ‘It doesn’t matter, just be who you are,’ and then all of a sudden he narrowed it down to this rigid thing.” She thinks the death of Prince’s child and the end of his marriage to his first wife, Mayte, broke his heart.

Penny considers herself to be a naturalized citizen of Minneapolis. As such, she took pride in Prince’s love for and loyalty to his hometown. She liked that he was “just a regular guy living in the community – who also happened to be this other, world-famous person.” Penny says, “Everyone in Minneapolis has a Prince story,” and reports that Gary once saw him out riding his bike and called out, “Hey, Prince,” and Prince nodded at him.

She appreciated the quiet good Prince did in the community, “giving money to support the arts and music in the schools” under an alias. She also loved that he hosted parties at Paisley Park and did many other things to show his hometown a good time.

I’d get a ping, and – Ohh! Dance party tonight at Paisley Park! He’d have these pajama parties, like, “Come in your pajamas. We’re going to have s’more pancakes,” and all the other things he loved . . . People would take their sleeping bags. They’d camp out and just wait for him to come down and start playing. Sometimes he wouldn’t start until four in the morning.

Penny was on Paisley Park’s mailing list, so she knew about the pajama parties and secret concerts. She had friends who went, but she never did because she had a job and couldn’t stay out all night.

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Everyone was like, “You gotta go! You gotta go!” I kept thinking, “One of these days I’m just gonna go. I’ll take the next day off, and we’ll just go and have fun.” Then Prince died.

Penny learned that Prince had died from a coworker who liked to gossip and had “a knack for spreading bad news.” She came into Penny’s cube and told her, “They found a body at Paisley Park. They think it’s Prince.” Penny ordered her out of the office and frantically searched the internet for information. After learning that the gossip was fact, she hid in the bathroom and cried. “Everybody knew I was a huge fan,” she says, “I couldn’t take it.” Her husband offered to take her home, but somehow she finished the workday.

That evening, because they already had tickets, they went to see a comedian at a theatre downtown. After the show, the audience spilled out onto the street and right into the large crowd that had gathered in front of First Avenue.

We just joined the throng. It was so quiet, and – I want to say – oppressive. It was very solemn. There was a deep feeling of such sadness.

There were all kinds of people there – all races, all age groups, all genders.

It was – everyone was just together. I couldn’t stay very long, maybe only 30 minutes. I felt too – I could feel everyone’s grief. It was suffocating.

For the first year after Prince died Penny couldn’t even drive past Paisley Park.

She never knew when a song might bring her to tears. At first she thought she was being “ridiculous.” She would think,” You’re a grown-ass woman. Why are you crying? You didn’t even know him!” Since then, she has made her peace with this strange phenomenon. On the first anniversary of his death she drove out to Paisley Park, and she

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found many other people making the same pilgrimage, expressing the same sadness that she felt. She says, “There were so many people there, but I just sat on the hill by myself and cried.” Now, with more time to ponder the meaning of her feelings, Penny says, “I still don’t have an answer.”

Since she first saw Purple Rain, Penny has felt a connection to others who love Prince. She always liked, “being acknowledged with a smile or a thumbs up when I’m wearing a Prince button or tee-shirt in the airport,” and since Prince’s death, she’s felt supported when she interacts with other fams. Fams, Penny says, know how she feels when “some random song comes on, and . . . why am I crying again?” She mostly interacts with fams through social media.

Through online groups, Penny has become friendly with fam artists all over the world. Penny trades with them, buys their work, introduces them to each other, incorporates their work into her own, and shares it with the larger community. She has donated artists’ work to Paisley Park. She says, “When they dismantled the memorial artwork that was on the fence after Prince died, they documented every piece, and it became part of a permanent archive.” Now Paisley Park displays items from the fence on a rotating basis and continually adds new items.

Penny has her own permanent archive that continues to expand. She has spent “more money than my husband needs to know about” on her purple room. She has paintings, drawings, sculpture, framed records and newspaper clippings, a giant mirror with the Symbol etched on it, Symbol light covers, Symbol light fixtures, tiny shrines to Prince with amethyst crystals and purple candles, and much more. Her fabric is arranged artfully according to color.

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Perusing her fabric designs online reveals Penny’s love for other fan objects such as Barbie and the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. She also likes Tom Petty and thinks Chris Hemsworth “is pretty hot.” She loves TV shows NCIS and Ancient Aliens. Penny has room in her heart for many things. But Prince is in a class by himself.

Categories of meaning.

When Penny was a young woman, she was hit with a lightning bolt of attraction when she saw Prince in Purple Rain. After that, she loved him forever as a source of fantasy and fascination. In the aftermath of his death, a real event that stunned her, she turns the loss over and over in her mind, trying to solve it. She is doing things in her real life, too, to try to find ways to incorporate the loss and free her grief.

The meanings of Prince.

It’s kind of a safe relationship. You know what I mean? There’s no real commitment. They can do what they want, right? It doesn’t really affect you. You can have this admiration from afar without all the other entanglements that go along with it. Yeah – I can look at you, and you’re beautiful, you’re awesome, you’re sexy. I’d love to date you, to go out with you, to touch you once. But it’s also a safe love because there’s no risk.

Prince functions for Penny as a sexually desirable fantasy, and as such he provides a pleasurable, safe escape from material reality and acts as a pressure valve for other materially real relationships. Famhood has been an important part of Penny’s life

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since she was young, and through it she has found space just for herself that exists only for her enjoyment. Prince has been in her mind, providing good feelings for over 35 years, and she has sustained interest in and attraction to him all that time. Unlike people in her real life, he never disappointed or overwhelmed her. But then he died, and his death upset her internal world, radiating out into her real experience.

Teenybopper.

He [Donnie Osmond] was pretty cute, and pretty harmless, and my parents couldn't object too much to that. My brother still likes to remind me of the time that he shot – he had a little dart gun with those little suction cup darts on there – and he shot my Donny Osmond poster. Hit him in the forehead. I was so mad.

In ways, the groundwork was laid for Penny to become a fam when she became a 12-year-old “teenybopper” fan of wholesome, inoffensive Donny Osmond. Penny lived in a small town, in a house where she was always surrounded by siblings and parents.

The fourth of five kids, she never had any privacy. After her brother was born when she was eight she became his “little mama,” which – for all she liked it – entailed responsibility and even less privacy. Penny does not describe a traumatic, unhappy childhood, but she describes constant, mild impingement.

One time a friend and I took a train to Chicago so we could see the Osmonds playing at the Illinois State Fair. We were so far away we couldn’t really even see the stage, but we went, and that was the first concert I ever saw – big adventure!

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Her pre-adolescent crush was a way for Penny to carve out room in her mind where even her little brother couldn’t follow, although he tried to kill Donny with a suction cup arrow when he realized Penny’s heart had strayed. It was a way to differentiate herself from the other people in her family who were too old or too young to understand. Donny gave her something to think about that was other than her family, a way to distinguish herself in her own mind from them. But his allure was transient and she switched to other more adolescent pursuits.

After Donny I moved on to – let’s see – whatever other kids were interested in at that time. I liked music and fashion. I got into sewing for a while, and makeup. I wanted to look good. Really, I guess I just wanted to hang out with my friends. I started to get into rock and roll, and Donny faded away.

Penny talks about Donny in an amusing, tongue-in-cheek way, looking back at her 12-year-old self with indulgence. She was so mad when her brother shot Donny! But there’s something there. She’s long since left Donny, but she attaches him to her Prince story. She makes the connection that Donny is where it all began.

Prince was a man – a sexy man who made Penny’s heart beat fast and who had serious staying power in Penny’s life. Prince wasn’t wholesome. Prince wasn’t harmless, but he hooked into some of the same places Donny once did. Donny was an imaginary, temporary home away from Penny’s home and a means to say, “I’m my own girl.” No one else in her family got it, so Donny was all hers.

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Never alone.

I was pretty mild mannered until I hit my teenage years, and then rebellion struck as it so often does. And yeah, things with my parents kind of went south because I didn't agree with what they wanted me to do, and things like that.

Between childhood and adulthood many things happened in Penny’s life. She transitioned from Donny to Led Zeppelin, and went from playing at separating to truly separating from her family. She argued with her mom, preferred the company of her peers, found her way to real boys, and had a baby. Penny went from being a kid surrounded by her family to being a mother, with no break.

It was tough. It was really tough being a single mom in the 70s and early 80s. And trying to go to college, too. A lot of very whacky things went on in our house, but, you know, you just do what you have to do. I raised them, and I guess I did an okay job. They were always my first priority.

Penny had three kids by the time she was a young adult. She opted to raise them by herself and didn’t marry until she was in her 40s, shortly after her house emptied out.

For a woman who likes solitary activities like sewing, gardening and getting graduate degrees, Penny has had very little solitude in her real life.

I never wanted to get married, but my husband is very traditional. For such a long time I couldn’t imagine being with somebody for the rest of my life. It’s hard to be that way and have people understand it. You can love someone and still not really want to make a commitment. It took a long time of me figuring out who I am before I could say, “Okay.”

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Penny is ambivalent about people and space. She is a very personable, entertaining, witty person who – she makes sure to say – doesn’t get as close to people as she appears. I can tell by the way I’m left wanting more at the end of our meetings that this is true.

Is it hot in here?

He might have been a little person, but man, he had the best eyes and the best facial expressions, and he just made me want to melt. It was amazing.

And the music was awesome. I fell absolutely in infatuation with him. In fairness to Donny Osmond, you know, he was my teen crush, but then I grew up and I didn’t just want cute. I wanted heat. Prince fulfilled that. I go back and watch Purple Rain again and, those eyes! I’m just like, Whew! Get me a fan!

Fantasy love reappeared and exploded with Prince, who was unbelievably attractive, mentally absorbing, and completely non-impinging. In this new hot fantasy relationship, there could be no ambivalence because there was no risk. She didn’t have to worry about him showing up at her door and demanding that she come away with him (as much as she joked with Gary that she’d like that). She didn’t have to figure out what he wanted from her and whether she could give it. She didn’t have to withstand him. She could just have him in her mind, making her world happier and more beautiful.

It feels kind of like a relationship because you follow his music, and you follow the things that happen in his life, but it’s safe. There’s a barrier up

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there that keeps you protected, so you can go on living your life, but you still sort of have this ideal that’s out there somewhere.

Penny is the only participant who disclosed that her attraction to Prince was sexual. She is attracted to him in other ways, but hotness is where things started and it never subsided. But Penny never wanted to be a groupie. She wanted Prince to be hot in her mind. She describes objectively real relationships with men as “claustrophobic,” “confusing,” “never gonna happen.” She’s had a history of relationships with uncertain margins and hazy courses. The men want her more than she wants them, or vice versa, or she’s not sure until after the fact what they – or she – wanted.

I feel sometimes like I have a kinship with him in his need to keep people at arm's length because I felt that way my entire life – that I needed to kind of keep people at a distance, not let them get too close. Not because I necessarily didn't trust their motives, it was just I didn't trust them. I don't trust people. It's very hard to let people get close. Prince and I have that in common.

Prince was never going to overwhelm or confuse Penny. He was always going to deliver exactly what she needed and wanted, and he wasn’t going to push for more. And he was hot. Time kept passing, and he did let himself go a bit, but Penny could have whatever vintage Prince she wanted, whenever she wanted.

Safe love.

I know there are some fans that I might call “rabid,” who might go to the length of stalking and that type of thing. Certainly I’ve seen some of that

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on some of the Facebook pages where people are just, they act like they knew him or had a relationship with him. It’s like, we still live in the real world, and that didn’t really happen.

Penny is disturbed when she talks about fans who seem to blur the boundaries between real and fantasy in their feelings for Prince. She says, “It’s one thing to imagine something in your own mind, but it’s different to talk about it like it really happened.”

Penny loves her fantasies of Prince because they exist in fantasy and do not threaten her real life. They are a “retreat into the mind for a while.” She may like to think about living there, but she’s glad she can find her way back.

There are some fans that, they’re not, they don’t know the boundary between their reality and the fantasy world they’ve created of a relationship with Prince that didn’t really exist. But they’ve created one in their minds, and somehow it’s become real to them. That’s dangerous, I think, because it can really harm the relationships that you have. I have all this imagination, but I’m firmly rooted on the reality plane.

Loving Prince is good for Penny because it is “like a relationship,” but it avoids the ambiguousness and ambivalence of real relationships. Penny’s fantasy relationship with Prince is a respite from the tangle of real life. Penny states that she can’t imagine what it would be like to lose the boundary between fantasy and reality, but her concern for the fans who “call Prince their little sweet pea and things like that” suggests that she has some idea. If the margins were to dissolve between her imagination and reality, the fantasy would cease to function, and Penny might lose both her fantasy “safe love” and her real loves.

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Burning within.

Tim Burton sent him all the stuff – clips and such – from the movie [Batman], and said, “I really want you to write the score for this,” and Prince said, “Nope, too busy, can’t do it, don’t have time.” Sat down, and in 24 hours wrote every single song for it. Showed up at the studio, handed it to him, and said, “Here you go!” How does somebody do that?

In interviews, Penny’s mind is constantly moving, creating associations from associations made from original questions that she wishes to answer or puzzles she wishes to solve. She circles around topics, moves far away from the original source, and always returns. She has an active mind, and she enjoys using it. She loves to look at problems from many possible angles and imagine herself within them. She does this when she talks about Prince and about her feelings for him.

You know, there’s a vault of songs that was never released. I can’t even imagine. The only thing I can think is that he didn’t just play music. He was music. I’m not a music person. I couldn’t carry a tune in a bushel basket, but I read things every now and then like, in 1984 Prince recorded “When Doves Cry,” and it was the first song without a bass line, and you know, then I go back and listen to the song and I’m like, “I just thought it was a cool song, but I hear it now.” And now I hear that there isn’t a bass line on this other song, either . . . and in this one he’s got an orchestra instead of a bass. Whoa . . .

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Solving puzzles in her mind is another way Penny creates space that is just for her, un-impinged upon by others. She can be in the presence of others as she solves them – as when she enjoys crime-solving TV shows with Gary – but the mental and emotional activity belongs just to her. It is obvious in the non-linear way she speaks about her feelings and ideas that these are not generally intended for conscious communication to others.

Sometimes he wouldn’t even sleep, he was just writing songs. I feel like he didn’t, I don’t know that he ever said this, but my thought is he must have felt like the music was in him and if he didn’t get it out he’d explode, that type of thing. Like it’s here, it’s turning in my head, and I’ve got to let it out.

It is also apparent in the ways that Penny’s ideas proliferate and effloresce that she shares something of Prince’s unbounded creativity. She identifies with this part of him and idealizes it. She is, like Prince, an independent spirit transcending rules. She would never make this comparison. In fact, she demurs at first when I call her a fabric artist, but the comparison can be made.

A thread through life.

He always wrote music about the things that he was feeling at the moment.

You can see how his music evolves . . . where he was in his own evolution. Everything was very sexual when he was younger, you know, “Darling Nikki” and such. And then there was a shift toward more ethereal and transcendent types of things. But it's always, either it's really fun to

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listen to . . . or the lyrics and the music make you feel . . . a certain way.

So, the music reaches in and touches your soul, your heart, who you are in every moment of your life. It just touches that.

Prince functions for Penny as a fantasy object, but for many of her years of famdom he also existed as a living person in the material world. This is important for several reasons. He came along at an opportune time for her, and his arrival did things for her psychologically. It provided raw material for her fantasies and gave her fun, happy music to enjoy. He created music, impacting popular culture and providing the “thread through her life” that gave her a sense of going-on-being.

Prince is a different kind of fan object for Penny than some other things she loves, like the TV shows, NCIS and Ancient Aliens. She enjoys imagining her favorite shows and thinking about the characters and what she would do in their shoes, but Prince was a living person who came along at just the right time for her. He grew and changed and had a life that happened simultaneously with hers.

Through all of her changes – career developments, child-rearing, geographical moves, romantic relationships, and conflicts with family members – Prince was putting out music, putting on shows, and adding to her soundtrack in real time. Prince did more than provide entertainment and fuel her fantasies. He added something real to her life. He existed.

Meanings of Prince’s death.

It’s like the whole Star Wars thing. “A million voices cried out in terror, and there was suddenly silence.” It was like there was suddenly a void

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where there used to be love and music. It was just suddenly gone. There was a hole. Nothing has been the same since Prince died. It’s like the world has gone to hell. His death created some weird rip in the fabric of the world, and now it’s just falling apart.

Prince existed as an important object for Penny. As an object in fantasy, Prince had a role in maintaining Penny’s sense of well-being, and his music was a deep thread that contributed to Penny’s experience of a fun and continuous life. Her love for him was unambivalent, and she could tap into her music and feel connected to “memories of good times” and a sense of someone “traveling the way with her.” Prince was a fantasy who was also living simultaneously to Penny, meeting needs exposed in her first moment in the darkened movie theater. His distant, corporeal existence added an essential element to her happy life, providing points of identification and idealization and a touchstone in her life. Then he was gone.

Before his death, everything that I associated with Prince had to do with really being happy and hopeful, and just excited, there was always that.

Now a lot of times when I think about Prince, it just makes me sad.

The loss of Prince as a cultural icon, touchstone, and thread through her life left a hole inside Penny. He had come into her life at the right time, and over the many years between that dark movie theater and his death she came to assume that he would always be there, on the outside, bolstering what she carried inside. She never knew him, but she used him. With the real Prince no longer out there, the songs don’t just recall happiness.

They also recall loss and the reality that people leave and die, and nothing can be done.

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Sometimes I don't even think about it. It's like, oh, I love this song. I'll be cleaning the house and dancing and singing with it and stuff like that.

Then 10 minutes later another song will pop up and it just hits me. You know what, I love this song too. I'm never going to have more songs that I'm going to love like I love these songs.

What hope is there? Prince is dead, and where does that leave Penny? Sometimes she forgets and just enjoys the music, plays in her mind for a little while, but then the shadow falls across her happiness. “All of a sudden you have that moment when it hits home again, and you just go, Oh . . . “

Floodgates open.

I think about him alone in an elevator, dying, when help was just hours away. He’d finally reached out to someone for help. It’s all so senseless.

That’s probably another reason I hold onto him. His death didn’t need to happen.

Penny cries when she talks about Prince dying. His death doesn’t make sense, so she asks Why? and What if? and she looks for ways to change the outcome in her mind, but there isn’t any way. Whether she gives a new, happy ending to the story (“If he’d had a family he would have had a reason to lie”) or she tries to resign herself to the facts of the situation (“He didn’t know what he was getting, and I had a nephew who died that way”), the sad truth of Prince’s death cannot be denied.

I’m trying to find out more about all of the parts of him, find out who he was as a human being even more than the music. There will be more

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music coming out for us to enjoy, but I want to know who he was, so some of the books are giving me that insight. His physical being is gone, but his legacy is being built now, and people are talking about the good things he did. I hope it continues to unfold in a positive way.

Since Prince has died, Penny says that “the floodgates have opened” and people, including Penny, are talking about him, making art about him, considering him in ways they didn’t do when he was alive. Prince did many things to control his public image, keeping very much to himself and avoiding the spotlight in any but the most controlled ways. Now that he is dead, there is nothing to stop an onslaught of curiosity about and devotion to the real person of Prince.

Prince was always so protective of his image, of anything that was his, no one could really express his admiration or their love of him because he would sue you. You could do it, but you had to keep it in your own house or keep it to yourself. When he was suddenly gone, the dam burst.

Making art, writing and reading books, participating in online groups and fan events, sewing, painting – all of these expressions are multifunctional. They express devotion, longing and grief. They aim at understanding. They provide points of connection. They are efforts by many people to do something with loss.

I didn’t used to pay a lot of attention or focus on anything about Prince because he was there. Now I make a point of seeking it out and making it a part of my life because that’s what I can have. I have to find what people have made and include it in my collection. I don’t know why, but it’s

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important to me. I like wearing it or reading it or hanging it on my walls because we share a love of this person.

In response to her feelings of loss, Penny tries to find Prince and take him into herself by reading whatever she can, learning more about him, and collecting people’s Prince-related artwork. She uses creating, and supporting other artists to manage her feelings by joining with others who share those feelings.

Other people.

A couple of weeks after he passed, my mother-in-law came down and wanted to go to Paisley Park. It was still cold, so it couldn’t have been that long after he died. It was a really rainy, lousy day. My mother-in-law will talk to anyone. She was telling people about my tattoo. Somebody took a picture, and then other people were like, “Can I have a picture, too?” Then I was hugging people I didn’t even know, and it was great. Then I had to be alone.

Prince’s death left a hole that Penny attempts to fill with understanding, knowledge, creation, activity, and sometimes with people. Penny has always liked to see and be acknowledged by other fans, but – as described above – her famdom has been largely internal and private, and she sometimes feels “claustrophobic,” oppressed and overwhelmed “by other people’s energy” when they get too close. Still, since Prince’s death Penny craves the recognition of other fams.

I want people to come up to me and say, “I like your dress. I love Prince.”

I want Purple Fams to see me wearing something I made and realize, “Oh,

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here’s a purple sister. I’m going to go talk to her about Prince and about what he means to us.”

Being part of the Purple Family is another way Penny tries to master her loss, to take in what she can of Prince through Love 4 One Another in his community. She has many ways for doing this, including concerts and visits to Paisley Park. But sometimes these feel unmanageable, and she has to “sit on the hill by herself,” which makes her feel alienated. She manages the tension between yearning to be close to others who felt close to him and reluctance about closeness by finding ways to engage that she can control. Her primary way to do this is through participating in Facebook fam groups.

I always feel like I have family somewhere, even though I’ve never met them and don’t know them. I feel like we could come together, and it wouldn’t matter if you were white, or they weren’t, or whatever. We’re all family. We’re all connected. It’s nice to know there’s someone there who gets it when I hear that song I love, and I’m dancing with the vacuum cleaner, and – oh - now I’m crying again.

Sometimes the onslaught of information, photographs, other people’s outpourings of love and sadness can be too much, though, and Penny thinks about getting off some of the groups. Even online it’s hard sometimes for Penny to titrate the intensity of other people’s needs so she can get what she wants.

Conclusion.

I can go see him any time – all the time. He does concerts here all the time, and you just, I think you just, for some reason, people like that, I

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think you just always believe they’re going to live forever. They’re always going to be here, so there’s always going to be time.

While Prince was alive Penny didn’t have to think about him, or think about what he meant to her, or think about how she was going to get enough of him, or how she was going to fill herself full of good feelings associated with him and his music. She never thought of him as a mortal human who could vanish from the planet. He was a fantasy, an internal object. He was music that felt “a certain way.” He was a conduit to memories of good times. As a bonus, the person of Prince lived down the street and could occasionally be spotted, peddling around town on his bicycle. Now the person is gone, and Penny is left with unexpected wreckage where those good feelings once were. “I never knew him,” she says, “So why am I so sad?”

I think I’m less blasé about life now than I used to be. If I do think, “I can do that later; let’s take that trip later,” I remember there might not be a later. When you want to do something, you should do it. Just do it. Do it because there might not be a later. You just don’t know. And people – tell people you love them because you might not have tomorrow with them.”

Prince is not the only important other Penny has lost through death. Prince is not even a person Penny knew, and the meanings he had are not entirely clear to her. But “he was always there,” and his death recalls other deaths and losses. The death of his real person points to the fragility and brevity of life. Penny feels loss and the grief and also an urgency to act – to do more and love more, to pay more attention, and to not take this life for granted. Perhaps someday his music will only make her smile, will only make her want to dance, but she is not yet there.

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Chapter V

Discussion and Conclusions This project explores the question, “What is the experience of the devoted Prince fam, and how has it been impacted by the superstar’s death?” In Chapter IV I described the fam experiences of five participants. In this chapter I discuss my findings through a cross-case analysis of their narratives. After reintroducing the five participants I consider prominent themes that are common to all or most of them, and I point out cases where findings were strikingly different. Findings are grouped into three broad Categories of Meaning: 

The fantasy object,



The impact of the death, and



The group.

Although the literature reviewed in Chapter II foreshadowed this discussion and provides the basis for it, the participants’ narratives suggested additional psychoanalytic ideas beyond what was presented. I will incorporate these ideas into the discussion of the findings, including concepts associated with British object relations theorists Melanie Klein and Donald Winnicott, self-psychologist Heinz Kohut and contemporary theorist Christopher Bollas. Following the discussion I comment on the process of creating this study and suggest areas for further study.

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Reintroduction of Participants All participants volunteered to be part of the study, and I got to know each of them within the context of this project. Everyone exceeded my expectations – inviting me into their homes and offices, sharing time and experiences, and demonstrating through words and actions what it means to be fam.

Chris: My own, special family member.

A source of fascination and “sustainable funkiness,” Prince provided the soundtrack of Chris’s life. Prince has been like Chris’s “own, special family member,” an older brother, a cool uncle, and a good father, showing Chris the world as it is, will be, and could be. Prince has been a source of knowledge, pleasure, security – someone with whom Chris could both identify and idealize.

There has been an element to Chris’s fam experience since Prince’s death of growing up quickly and shouldering responsibilities. He notes that this is like when a parent dies. The external parent is no longer there, but the internal parent continues to guide the child. Chris knows from experience about stepping up and filling the shoes of an ideal other. Even if he is not ready, he is responsible for living the way he has been taught to live, and for using his tools. His experience is about family, growing up, and becoming who he truly is.

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Freya: Meant to be a fam.

Prince has always been in Freya’s mind. When she was little, he was identified with her father, to whom she looked up, literally, as he introduced her to Prince’s music.

When Prince was alive he was a focus for her creativity, a retreat in times of difficulty, something to look forward to, and a way to occupy her mind. He was a promise.

Freya is using Prince’s death as an opportunity for personal growth. Before Prince died she felt buried in her internalized interpretations of other people’s expectations of her and in projections/fantasies about who and what she was supposed to be and do. In the wake of Prince’s death, Freya has made a decision that it is time to be bold and become happier, more authentic, and more herself. She supports this with an idea that Prince’s death had a spiritual part to play in her transformation.

Foster: Feel good, feel better, feel wonderful.

Prince was a source of fun, of connection, and of fantasy for Foster. Prince was always something to look forward to, something to build on, and a pleasurable way to engage with the world. Prince and other 80s icons were also a place of internal retreat for Foster. As Prince grew as an artist, Foster was also growing, and as Foster’s needs for fandom changed, Prince remained perfectly aligned.

Foster’s feelings about his fandom changed years before Prince died. As Foster become more confident within himself and secure in his world, his need for Prince as an idealized, fantasy object was overshadowed by awe for Prince’s artistic production and artful persona. Prince’s death was numbing, disappointing and disillusioning, but all it signaled for Foster was the end of a pleasurable pastime that made him happy. He

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remains strongly identified within himself and among his family and friends as a Prince superfan.

Carolyn: At home in my life.

Music was a source of conflict in Carolyn’s childhood home. Popular music was a forbidden world, something that Carolyn and her sisters engaged with secretly. Prince was sexy and dirty, but Carolyn says, “How could I not have been a fan? He was everywhere. He was the voice of the generation.”

Like Freya, Carolyn is using Prince’s death as an opportunity to grow and transform. A fan – but not yet fam – Carolyn was struck out of the blue by an uncanny sense of purpose that seemed to pull her toward Prince’s hometown after he died.

Carolyn is pragmatic and skeptical, but she also has a sense of magic and destiny. She sees herself as the hero of a quest. Searching for meanings of Prince within his community, she’s found that reality is better and different than she imagined. She is using her new experiences as a fam to explore ideas about herself and her world, and to provide corrective experiences related to her family.

Penny: A thread woven through life.

Penny was sitting in a dark theater when she first saw Prince on the big screen and was hit by a bolt of desire. He became a lasting source of pleasurable fantasy and a pressure that relieved her from her prematurely adult life. Everything about him made her happy. A naturalized citizen of Minneapolis, Penny felt like Prince was “always there,” and that he would always be there.

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Several years after Prince’s death, Penny still grieves. She is shaken, even though on the surface of things life goes on. Penny is surprised by her lasting grief. The world has been impoverished by Prince’s departure, and his absence is a wound that won’t heal.

With time, however, she is becoming more Prince-like in her own ways, experiencing an explosion of creativity, and fostering creativity in others.

Introduction to Common Themes Prince was a materially real superstar who had a well-crafted, opaque persona, a long career and a large catalogue of music and other artistic productions. The subjective meanings Prince has for these participants, however, are most important to this study.

Prince has special significance for each of them. His meanings are tied to their identities, and they define what it is for each of them to be a fam.

For all participants, Prince is a fantasy object that functions in ways that enhance their lives. Famdom addresses things that each believes (or has believed) are lacking or in need of shoring up in themselves, and it accentuates things that are positive. Being a fam inspires all participants to be their better, truer selves. Famdom is a source of good, and Prince is a good object.

Far from diminishing the intensity of their love for him, Prince’s death has intensified or positively altered most participants’ feelings. Everyone felt loss when Prince died. Everyone would prefer that the human superstar Prince was still alive to delight them and frame their lives with his music, but each has internalized the loss in unique and adaptive ways, and Prince persists as a positive internal presence. Four

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participants believe that Prince’s death is bringing about personal growth or transformation in their lives.

In addition to identifying with Prince, each participant identifies with other fams, or with a fam group. Each participant has, at some point, utilized other fams as a key component of their famdom. Most have intensified their group participation since Prince’s death.

Meaning category one: The good object.

Prince was an iconic superstar who has myriad subjective meanings for his devoted fams. Prince crafted a persona imbued with ambiguity and unknowability. An intriguing mix of humanity and mystery, Prince is a good object, capable of receiving and containing participants’ idealizations and identifications. In both life and death Prince has provided a fascinatingly opaque screen on which participants can project their desires, dreams, hopes, wishes, beliefs, and values.

As described in Chapter II, fantasy and objective reality are qualities of a unitary experience, but fantasy does not have to align with material reality to be experienced as subjectively real (Isaacs, 1948). People use fantasy throughout their lives in the service of creative living (Freud, 1925; Isaacs, 1948). We look to creative people like Prince to daydream for us and help us connect with our own daydreams (Freud, 1909).

Freud (1908) posited that fantasies are wish fulfillments linked to the pure pleasure of infancy. As children grow they must relinquish their desire for such pleasure in order to fit into the rules of society. This desire is repressed into the unconscious, but it is not gone. Disguised, it reappears as fantasy (Freud, 1917).

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Freud wrote primarily about conscious fantasy and daydreams. Internal object relations theorist Melanie Klein and her adherents developed the concept of unconscious phantasy. Unconscious phantasy, they said, begins almost at birth and is founded in sensations associated with bodily processes. As children interact with the world their focus turns outward, and phantasy becomes the basis for symbol formation, creativity, and a sense of what is real. Phantasy creates all meaning in unconscious life, and it comprises each person’s subjective experience (Isaacs, 1948, 1952).

Fan objects like Prince are particularly well-suited to become objects of fantasy because they are objectively unknown to fans, who can use them as they like in their minds. Both the choice of the fan object and the fantasies/phantasies associated with it contain that which gives meaning to each fan’s life. Fams find things they desire and need in the fantasy object of Prince. Through fandom participants access feelings of home, courage, escape, continuity, boldness, comfort, creativity, and sexuality.

For most participants boundaries are relaxed between their internal fantasies and phantasies of Prince and their external experiences of him. Prince and his music are transitional objects, functioning both inside and outside the participants. Most participants experience Prince’s music as transformational, and it speaks very deeply to them. His music is their soundtrack and a ribbon through their lives. It exists in time and is timeless. He is associated with Mozart, a musician whose music is immortal.

Theme A: Hidden and seen.

During his lifetime, Prince controlled his image tightly, and, for the most part fams only had access to what Prince wanted them to see. His reality was always held in

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contrast to his mystery. His ultimate unknowability made him an excellent source of and repository for fantasies. Far from limiting fantasy, his hiddenness allowed and continues to allow fantasies to proliferate.

For the participants in this study, glimpses of the flesh-and-blood Prince were seductive, fascinating, and alluring. Each participant has a story of a near-encounter with Prince that stops short of personal engagement. Chris was invited to Prince’s inner sanctum at a club but Prince was already gone. Prince swept past Foster in a hotel lobby but Prince didn’t speak. Freya’s seats at her first concert were so close to the stage she could feel Prince sweat. This almost-there quality was exhilarating and exciting because it was unpredictable and controlled by Prince, himself. He was so regularly hidden that to see him was almost overwhelming. Chris sounds unexpectedly relieved when he relates that Prince had gone from his private room before Chris arrived. Spying Prince in the club was a thrill. Getting invited to Prince’s lair was delicious. But more could have been too much – the satisfaction of a desire never intended for satisfaction.

Unlike some fans who seek to obliterate the barriers between fantasy and reality by striving to create some kind of corporeal relationship between fan and fan object, the fam participants in this study rely on the boundary between their fantasy object of Prince and the materially real Prince. Utilizing various strategies, these fams reinforce Prince’s unknowability. Penny says, “I was never a groupie. I could’ve been, but I had kids.” This may be an accurate statement, but Penny never wanted to be a groupie. Her love of Prince hinged on his mystery. Her fantasies were free to roam without the constraining limits of a real person. In some way, this is true for each participant.

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The combination of what is and what can’t be known about Prince fuels fams’ fantasies and structures their experiences of famdom. This is not unlike transference in a psychotherapeutic setting. Something of the therapist’s self inhabits the psychotherapeutic space, but the relationship exists only to facilitate the patient’s journey. The clinician invites the patient’s fantasies by creating and holding the space in which they may appear. As it matters that a therapist is a real person, it matters that Prince was a real person whose creations resonated deeply with the participants. His real person, however, is powerfully contrasted with the enigmatic persona that allowed him to become what each fam needed in fantasy.

The epic poet.

This idea can be expanded by returning to Freud’s “Creative Writers and Daydreaming” (1909) and the story of the first epic poet in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921) discussed in Chapter II. It is easy to imagine Prince as the uniquely creative, charismatic, and courageous poet who uses his own fantasies to create art for his community/audience. For the study participants, however, Prince is no mere poetic daydreamer who entertains them. He is the poet who rises from the masses and creates his own story in order to tell their stories (Freud, 1921).

Magic.

In “Magic and the Aesthetic Illusion,” Leon Balter (2002) extends the idea of the epic poet further into the realm of magic. An individual’s or an audience’s engagement with an artist’s creative production is a work of aesthetic illusion or magic in two parts.

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In the first, the artist daydreams for the audience, and the audience takes the daydream as their own. In the second, the individual audience member takes the protagonist of the daydream as his own real person in the world. Prince shares his fantasies with his fams; the fantasies become the fams’ fantasies; and the fams take their fantasied Prince as proxy for themselves. In this way Prince’s fascinating character, shared through his artistic work, becomes the magic that each fam needs.

The participants hear in Prince’s messages – whether transmitted through his music or other constructions of his creative imagination – their own stories, longings, and desires. Prince dreams the participants’ dreams. Channeled through his own unique voice, Prince’s fantasies resonate with their fantasies, and he sings about their longed-for lives.

In this way, the fams’ relationship is reciprocal. He presents his fantasies as art, and the fams receive and mediate his art through their own imaginations (Arlow, 1986). He sings their own epic stories, and they receive and return them with their love.

Theme B – Identifiable and Idealizable.

Participants search for and find enticing evidence of the idealized and identifiably real Prince through his curated persona, the lyrics of his songs, the arcs of his musical career, and his stage performances. They seek to find relatable points of access, and they identify with and idealize what they perceive as Prince’s real human characteristics that reinforce their own desired and actual positive qualities and values. Again, Prince’s usability as a good object for his fams relies on the counterpoint between imagined and known, hidden and revealed. The characteristics that they idealize and with which they identify are both real and fantasied.

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There is something significant for each participant about loving characteristics of Prince’s that are not seen by casual fans or non-fans. Fams experience Prince differently than non-fams, and this matters to participants. Most believe they see beyond the manifest products and persona of Prince to something particularly precious, extraordinary, and unique. They get Prince. Their sense of relating to Prince beyond the limits where less involved listeners go fosters fantasies of specialness, reciprocity and relatedness.

He is like me.

Fams identify with Prince as an anomalous outsider. Being a fam has helped each participant manage ways in which they felt odd or different. Prince was “uncategorizable,” “a unicorn,” and “an anomaly.” As Freya did, a fam who felt weird could look at Prince and think, “I’ll come into my own eventually, and one of these days people will think I’m really cool.”

Prince’s personal imperfection is another source of identification. Prince made unusual decisions about his career, and he also occasionally revealed human faults that were at odds with his carefully wrought image. His mystifying decisions and moments of fragility alienated casual fans, but they deepened the participants’ love. His imperfection elicited empathy, solidarity, and a desire to protect Prince. Their ability to hold in mind both the expansively fabulous Prince and the unfathomably limited Prince separates these fams from non-fams.

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I get him.

Prince’s career exploded in 1984 with the release of Purple Rain. His enormous, worldwide audience awaited his next album with anticipation. Then he released Around the World in a Day. His real fams loved that album. Fams who stayed through the twists and turns of Prince’s long and unusual career have faith in Prince and in their own taste and tenacity. They were and are part of a reciprocal relationship between human and icon. It is because of fams like the participants in this study that Prince is. He exists because they chose him. They are the good fams.

I admire him.

Participants idealize aspects of Prince that are meaningful to them, and to which they aspire. Crucial differences between fams, casual fans, and non-fans are most evident in this area of idealization. Like casual fans, participants appreciate Prince’s music, but that barely scratches the surface of their deep connection. The participants idealize qualities of Prince that are beyond his talent and genius, in the realm of his character.

These ideal characteristics contain fams’ own projected and desired qualities and are foundational to their love of Prince.

All participants idealize Prince for being a musical genius and icon, and most for being “a sexy MF.” All participants idealize his individuality, his restless genius, and his commitment to diversity and inclusion. Beyond this, most (except for Foster, who believes the aforementioned attributes are more than enough) hear central messages that mirror their ideas about how to live their own best lives.

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Because it filters through the participant’s own desires and beliefs, each hears Prince’s central message differently. Their projections connect with Prince’s real products and known narrative, but each hears something that is just for them. Multiple factors, including Prince’s “open message that it’s okay to be who you are” (Penny), and participants’ individual psychologies, facilitate this. Chris hears paternal, ethical messages. Penny and Freya hear messages that are feminine, sensual and spiritual. And Carolyn hears messages about the God of her idealized childhood, worshipped a new way.

Theme C – Holding environment and going-on-being.

For most participants, Prince has provided a sense of going-on-being and “the soundtrack of our lives.” He is “the voice of the generation” and their epic poet.

The templates for all of life are set down in earliest childhood. Psychoanalyst and pediatrician Donald Winnicott wrote about how the infant’s capacity to become a person rests in the very early relationship between baby and mother. The blueprints for holding and going-on-being are set down when the baby is unable to exist separate from the mother. The mother shows love and care by holding the baby and attending to all of the baby’s needs throughout each day.

A good enough mother provides for the baby and does not impinge upon, over stimulate, or traumatize the baby. Within an adequate holding environment the baby is able to grow. The mother facilitates an environment of non-traumatic, ordinary going-onbeing – a sense of continuity in the presence of another who lets the baby be. This helps

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the baby develop a sense of security and trust, as well as a sense that the environment is reliable and will predictably contain the baby (Winnicott, 1960).

For most of these participants, Prince was a non-impinging external and internal presence facilitating their going-on-being for many years. Prince appeared for them when they were children, adolescents, or young adults, and he “travelled the road” with them for the rest of their lives. Knowing Prince was alive contributed to these fams’ senses of safety and containment.

The timing of each participant’s coming to famdom is significant. It was important that Freya had a sense of him during her lonely childhood. Prince helped Foster and Chris, make sense of things when they were young teens. Adolescent Carolyn had a glimpse of outside when she heard Prince’s worldly songs. And Penny, saddled with adult responsibilities as a teenager, saw Purple Rain and tapped into sexy, fun fantasies fit for the young person she’d had to forfeit.

For all participants, even Carolyn whose fandom was more episodic than continuous, Prince seemed to grow and change as they grew and changed, uncannily mirroring or predicting their experiences. Chris says, “I always knew what was coming next.” For most, Prince’s music was a container and a ribbon. They were held by and carried along by the music and by their engagement with him through popular culture and in their minds.

Theme D – Transitional phenomena – Escape and play.

Prince was a real person whose music the fams still use today. As such, he is not merely a fantasy. He and his creative productions are transitional objects existing both

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inside and outside the participants. He provides many things, including places to rest and places to play. Prince holds a potential space where participants can bridge inner and outer reality.

Escape in the mind.

Prince provides a mental retreat for participants. Penny describes him as a place to go in her mind where she can relax and get what she wants. Unlike real people who can be demanding and disappointing, her fantasy Prince is exactly what she wants him to be.

Adolescents Freya and Foster used Prince to “escape in the mind.” When they were listening to music they could access parts of themselves they kept locked away at other times.

Even today, Chris non-verbally reveals his absorption in Prince as a place of retreat. Chris constantly sings to himself quietly, sometimes unaware that he is doing so.

In these moments of singing, Chris is simultaneously in the material world and in his own world. This singing, which is reminiscent of a child’s quiet play, soothes Chris and connects him to Prince whenever he needs.

Transitional objects and phenomena.

Winnicott wrote about the meaning and functions of a young child’s first possession – the first not-me – an object external to the child that is experienced as residing in a space that is not inside and not outside. This object is vitally important to the child, who needs this illusory resting place between fantasy and reality. Parents recognize that the transitional object is an external object, but they don’t challenge the child about

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its location (“did you find this, or did you create it�). The child keeps the transitional object as long as it has meaning (Winnicott, 1953).

The need for transitional spaces and experiences persists throughout life (Winnicott, 1967). Adults, like children, need illusory resting places and playgrounds.

Adults, Winnicott says, find the feelings of wholeness and home that transitional phenomena provide in the creation and enjoyment of the arts, in religion, and in other cultural experiences. Fandom can be a transitional phenomenon (Hills, 2002, Sandvoss, 2004).

Play.

Prince is a transitional object for the participants. Each uses their found and created Prince to discover things about themselves and the world. Like a child’s teddy bear, Prince resides neither wholly inside nor outside each fam but in an intermediate, transitional space. Prince facilitates imagination and play, allowing each participant to learn about and enact himself in the potential space of famdom.

Winnicott wrote about play as a necessary activity promoting healthy development in infancy and throughout life. The baby first plays in relationship with the mother. The mother begins as an external playmate, but over time her early reliable presence allows the child to internalize her as a playmate. As the child matures, so does the capacity to separate reality and fantasy, and the imagination grows. Opposing Freud, Winnicott asserts that humans play throughout life (Winnicott, 1971).

The participants all describe or enact ways of using fandom as play. Chris is playing when he sings every song that Prince ever wrote. Foster plays as he dances in

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communitas with every person in the sold-out arena. Freya plays with belly dancing and discovers the powerful woman she longs to be. Carolyn plays the hero on a quest and finds new ways to relate to people. And Penny explodes creatively like Prince – an artist playing among artists.

Theme E – Music and transformational phenomena.

Prince’s music has provided transformational moments for all participants. Music was the avenue through which all participants were introduced to Prince, and in most cases, his music set in motion their engagement with him as a fan object. In her wideeyed recounting of her first moment of fandom Penny evocatively pantomimes something beyond words – the transformative shock of Prince’s sexy image – preceded by that long, sustained note at the beginning of Purple Rain.

What is Prince’s music? Foster says, “I don’t know, but I l hope you’ll figure it out and tell me.” Chris expresses its inexpressibility by repeating phrases like, “It’s amazing. It’s just amazing. It’s amazing.” Music, like Prince, is both inside and outside the participants. It is a transitional object and a transformational object. It is sound, activity, and feeling. The participants describe their relationship to Prince’s music vaguely. It is easier for them to articulate grief and weirdness.

Music and experiences of fandom as transformational objects.

Prince’s music provides transformational moments. Music is the avenue through which participants were introduced, and in most cases music set their use of him as a fan object in motion. In her wide-eyed recounting of her first moment of fandom, Penny

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pantomimes something beyond words – the transformative shock of Prince’s image – preceded by the long sustained note at the beginning of Purple Rain.

What is Prince’s music? Foster says, “I don’t know, but I hope you’ll figure it out.” Chris expresses its inexpressibility by repeating phrases like, “It’s amazing. It’s amazing. It’s just amazing.” Like Prince, music is both inside and outside the participants. It is sound, activity, and feeling. The participants can only describe it vaguely. It is easier for them to articulate their values or their grief.

Christopher Bollas (1987) theorizes that each person is born with a kernel of something all their own – their idiom. The infant’s earliest relationship with the mother nourishes the kernel. Through her care the mother continually transforms the baby. She is “the mother who makes things happen” (Bassin, 1993, p. 427). She creates the precondition in which her baby can seek and explore and feel connected to the world. The infant feels profoundly known by the transformational object/mother.

Early transformational experiences set the child on the path to searching for and finding aspects of the external world that resonate with the child’s unique idiom. A person’s true self – that includes the idiom – has a drive toward self-discovery and selfexpression through psychically significant interaction with the world (Bollas, 1987).

Aesthetic moments evoke transformational experience. Viewing a movie or hearing a song, a fam might experience a sense of uncanny fusion with the aesthetic object (the long, sustained not and the man in shadow at the beginning of Purple Rain) and experience something reminiscent of the rapport with the earliest transformational experience. Throughout life humans yearn and search for this. Participants have

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encountered aesthetic moments in sudden conversions to famdom, transcendent experiences as audience members, and oceanic feelings of connection to songs.

Music is sound, and humans hear sounds before they are born. Precursors to music – sometimes even actual pieces of music – are in humans’ minds before they are ever touched or fed. Music feels temporal and timeless, real and imaginary, singular and universal (Cantz, 2013, Zepf, 2013). No wonder it’s so difficult for participants to articulate what music means. Music is an aesthetic moment that evokes both the true self’s earliest transformational object and a sense of destiny (Bollas, 1989).

“Music makes us . . . feel . . . things,” says Penny. Music moves and it moves us.

The participants feel moved by Prince’s music in ways that are beyond words. It evokes their lives before memory. It reminds them of times in their lives. The music contains them and holds them. It’s a potential space in which they create and find themselves.

Fantasies unfold when music plays, but music is real. Music plays, and it is a place to play. Music is uncanny.

Meaning category two: The impact of Prince’s death.

In the immediate aftermath of Prince’s death, participants had reactions consistent with grief – including shock, crying and the refusal to believe the death had happened.

Prince’s death changed the participants’ relationships to him in their minds. The real Prince was suddenly dead. During his life, participants had used Prince’s artistic creations in myriad ways to facilitate and sustain their senses of themselves. His human death disrupted this. For the four participants who had followed him for most of their lives, their sense of him as a presence traveling along with them was upended. Suddenly, the

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fascinating, enigmatic artist who was always out there was gone. His death was, Penny says, “like a thousand voices screaming, and suddenly silence.”

Theme F – Afterlife in production.

Although the stated attitude of all participants was to admit the loss and the pain that arose from it, all demonstrated defensive strategies aimed at managing these. Since his death, participants have been drawn toward events and people associated with Prince.

All have acquired Prince-oriented objects like artwork, music or needlepoint kits.

Everyone but Foster has made many visits to Paisley Park.

There will never be another opportunity to see Prince live in concert or to buy a new album that reflects Prince’s state of mind in the present, but Prince’s estate is creating lots of opportunities for fams to buy Prince-related material. This transference from Prince to Prince-related object, people, events, and places is part of memorializing the superstar and letting go. It also serves as a defense that facilitates a fantasy of an eternally productive Prince. The pain of this strategy is that it fails repeatedly when the inevitable realization that Prince is still dead sets in. No beautiful book or guitar replica can take away that reality.

If you're a true fan and truly appreciate the man himself and everything that goes along with the music, you got a hole - a hole that's never going to be filled - no matter how many vault albums they produce from now until kingdom come. He's not here. He's not here to perform them. He's not here to talk about them. He's not here to get new protégés. He's not here to fight with Morris [Day of The Time]. He's not here (Christopher).

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It has been asserted that when Prince died he had enough unreleased music stored in a vault that his estate could release an album a year for the next 100 years. The idea that his music will proliferate long after we have gone is a defense against loss. Prince will continue to take care of his fams forever. The participants are ambivalent about this music, although most collect it. “You don’t have a choice,” Chris says.

Participants yearn to remain connected to Prince through any available channels, but tension exists between the urges to reach out toward and pull away from new Princeoriented products and experiences. Foster seems especially wary. He’s delaying going to Paisley Park because he is afraid he will find the image of his superstar tarnished by a presentation that is “too Disney.” His Prince was perfect and needs to remain so.

Imperfection revealed in his icon’s house would be a mortifying injury to both Prince and Foster.

Foster also stays away because he is refusing the end. All the participants express ambiguity about the end. The end has happened, and in ways – if the vault keeps dispensing music and the beautiful biographies keep getting published – it will never happen. Foster’s reaction seems to be both a rejection of the hard ending and a refusal of the easier, softer ending. As long as he can avoid the last thing he hopes not to arrive at a place where there is truly nothing else to anticipate with pleasure.

Theme G - Is he still here?

Participants visit Paisley Park for many reasons. As the song says, “Paisley Park is in your heart” (Prince and the Revolution, 1985, “Paisley Park”). It is also a physical space that now exists purely for the fams. The four participants who regularly visit

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Paisley Park long to feel connected to other fams and to see evidence of the superstar’s life. Some of the participants feel drawn to search for some shimmer of his spirit that might still be there. They would like to find that he is still with them somehow – not his music, guitars, costumes, and awards – Prince.

At some point in their interviews, every participant stated overtly that they are “not crazy” (the concern being that by virtue of their intense fandom I might find them so). Each conveyed in myriad manifest and latent ways that they are aware of differences between material reality and fantasy. Participants described various kinds of crazy fams.

Crazy fams believe, for example that Prince enters their bodies, or directs their lives, or is a god. This is magical, omnipotent thinking. Penny scoffs, “Isn’t it enough that he was a world-famous, genius sex god?”

All participants express that crazy fams are unable to tolerate the limit of Prince’s death, so they deny it in exaggerated ways. Several, however, revealed longing to feel spiritually connected to Prince, and two expressed that through their famdom they are having inexplicable mystical experiences that are influencing their lives. All participants use or have used their fantasy Prince to help them find and make their way. The two participants who believe they have had the guidance of a spiritual or destined kind are also using Prince like this, but with the hope and belief that something outside of them is helping and guiding them.

Having a sense of Prince’s spirit helping from beyond death could be a denial of death or a defense against mourning. It could be evidence of an inability or a refusal to accept the loss of the good object. This sense could also truly be something beyond understanding, and it could be part of these participants’ work of mourning. Normal

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mourning is a process that resolves with the internalized good object freed and available to be used in new ways. For these participants, the good object is spirit.

Theme H - Transformations of mourning.

As the study participants move through mourning, Prince becomes a new, good object. Most are using their fantasy Prince and their fandom in the service of manifest growth and change. Somehow the death has provided motivation that makes change possible.

When Prince was alive, participants’ fantasies about him were necessarily tied to his living person. As mysterious and fascinating as he was, and as usable as he was as a receiver of fantasy and projections, the fantasy object Prince was contained within an idea of a living person in the world. In this way his work could provide a soundtrack and a sense-of-going-on being, and participants could use his career and what they knew about his life to “set their life’s clock” (Freya). However, the living Prince erected boundaries that fams couldn’t cross. He was both available for use by his fams, and not.

He invited his fams to play, and he set limits. Freya said, “We didn’t know what Prince meant to us until he died.” Fams could not discover their unbounded uses of Prince while he was materially real. Now freed from limits he placed during his life, fams can use the fantasy Prince however they like, to the limits of their imaginations.

Internalized good parent.

Some of the participants have internalized Prince as a good parent who modeled the world for his children. Chris describes this parental transference with Prince

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throughout his narrative. When Prince was alive, Chris idealized and identified with his message. Prince sang and lived Chris’ values, and Chris didn’t have to do very much or articulate anything for himself because Prince was alive taking care of things. Then he died, and the responsibility shifted.

I’m a little boy, and I’ve already got the characteristic of a Prince fan, because I was born wanting to love one another. I was born wanting to treat everybody fairly and trying to advocate for those who can't advocate for themselves, and all that kind of stuff. Those are traits I had as a kid, right? Then I grow up and I listen to Prince music and all that kind of stuff. The traits I already had as a kid are in the music. You know what I mean? The music is the guideline. It’s the roadmap to how you do stuff, because guess what? You're already thinking this anyway. (Chris) Before Prince died, there was no pressing need for the participants to do things with the messages they associated with him. Now, most feel compelled to articulate and live their values – to internalize the external parental Prince. Chris says, “You have to do for yourself now, because if you don't… who's going to do it?”

Creativity exploding and loving with abandon.

Unfettered from the reality of Prince as a living person, these participants are pushing the boundaries of their own creativity and imaginations, playing in their minds with their fantasies of Prince, and using him with abandon. Penny describes this when she talks about the mushrooming of Prince-oriented artwork. When Prince was alive, he worked constantly, like there was music pressing against his insides and if he didn’t get it

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out he would explode. At the same time, he did not want his fams to create in his image so their sympathetic creativity – the love that pressed against their minds – was dammed up with nowhere to go.

Now fam artwork is booming. This is a tribute to Prince, and it’s an external expression of internal states of love, loss, and longing. It is emotion and expression breaking loose and running over its banks, flooding into the world. Most participants now love Prince with abandon. This becomes evident in the urgent words they use to describe famdom since Prince’s death. What was once “awesome” and “amazing” is now something they “have to do” and ways they “have to live.”

In some ways, Prince’s death has freed these fams. Floodgates are open – floodgates of love, of creativity, and of connection. He is a soul friend. He is like a prophet. He inspires imagination and provides moral guideposts. Certainly every participant believes they would prefer the living Prince, but most participants are finding inventive uses for their unfettered fantasies.

Meaning category three: What is the fam, and how is it used?

The Purple Family is the idea of a group with ideas about Prince as its leader. The fam is an ideal of an ostensibly decentered and egalitarian group. It comes together in various forms – online, on pilgrimages, at concerts, in fan clubs, and through other channels.

The Purple Family provides opportunities for connection and identification, and avenues for expressing positive ideals and love for Prince. It also fosters some negative group tendencies, such as marginalizing people who don’t adhere to norms. Today, the

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fam experience is mediated primarily through the internet. Like other internet communities, the online fam has potential for both good and bad, with risks ranging from mild disappointment to paranoid schizoid splitting.

The online fam sometimes functions as a stand-in for Prince. Fams express emphatic beliefs that they know what was in Prince’s mind, and disagreements flare because other fams believe something else. There can be no negative feelings about Prince, but fams sometimes feel hurt, misunderstood, and judged by one another. This is widespread behavior on the internet, where primitive ways of defending against paranoid anxiety are constantly erupting. This disappoints the fams in this study because it is in conflict with the ideal of Love 4 One Another.

Reiteration of applicable Freudian theory about groups.

It seems useful to keep in mind Freud’s comments about the organized group of the Church when considering the Purple Family. Freud (1921) said that groups were not mere mobs but were organizations that had the potential to promote both negative and positive behavior among members. The force driving the members in groups, Freud said, is love. The kind of love found in the group is identification – libido diverted from its sexual aim – which Freud claimed was the earliest kind of love.

Freud (1921) illustrated his theory using the highly organized, large scale groups of the Army and the Church. Each, he said, functioned because of a double love bond. In the Church, members love Christ, and they love one another. This is important to keep in mind when thinking about the fams. The Purple Army is like the Church in that it coheres

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in the minds of its members around a belief in a double bond. Members love Prince, and they love one another.

In addition to the dual love bonds of Church members to Christ and to each other, members are bound by shared idealization of Christ, their ego ideal. Members love Christ and endeavor to be Christ-like. Keeping in mind that the participants do not ascribe or admit to any belief that Prince is Christ, it is still possible to see this dynamic at work in their idealizations of Prince. Fams love Prince and endeavor to be like him.

Freud (1921) likened large-scale organized groups to the family, in which the father is the ego ideal, and the children aspire to be like him. The double bond of identification plus the aspiration toward the ego ideal coheres the group, which depends on the illusion that the parents love each child equally. Feelings of ambivalence, envy, and hostility exist along with love, as each child would like to be the parents’ favorite.

This isn’t possible, so the children – through identification and a reaction formation – band together around their parent leaders.

Returning to the Church, members are able to express love and tolerance for each other as long as the bonds of love hold. However, cracks and schisms appear when outsiders (or transgressing insiders) threaten the group. Even a group founded on love will be harsh toward people who violate group ideals.

Unlike the Church, which has well-established rituals, theology, and dogma and its highly-elaborated figure of Christ as its leader, the Purple Family is a loose grouping of individuals who share a love for Prince and who claim to have love for one another.

Individuals in the group may share aspirations to Prince’s idealized qualities, but the

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Purple Family lacks the internal structure of an organized group and relies on individual interpretations of both Prince’s meanings and what it means to be part of this family.

Theme I: “ Love 4 one another” – fantasies of a group.

An ideal in Prince’s music that most participants share is Love 4 One Another, a phrase from the song, “New World (1996). Long before he died, Prince’s fams came together to show their love for him. Since his death, however, most participants have felt an increased imperative to connect lovingly with others. Love 4 One Another relies on an idea (or many ideas) of what it means to be part of one another. It relies on a perception that there is an identifiable group that holds the same ideals and focuses on the same thing – love for Prince and for one another. However, like the symbol that Prince became, the idea of Love 4 One Another is multivalent. It contains each participant’s fantasies about and experiences with the group.

There are many ideas of a group, and there is no single group. Participants are part of many kinds of groups, including internet groups, spiritual groups, and bellydancing groups. There are groups that participants label “bad” groups (like conspiracy theorists). There are spontaneous groups that come together at concerts and events. In participants’ minds, all of these gatherings, audiences, and communities are tinged with the ideal of Love 4 One Another.

The ideal of a loving group can facilitate imaginative and playful uses of Prince, a sense of belonging, and a space to express unrestrained love for Prince. In an ideal loving group participants can speak emotionally about what Prince means and has meant to them and make sense of their experiences. In an idealized group, my experience can become

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our experience, and it can expand to hold the promise of a new world. This is what drew Carolyn to the Purple Family, transforming her from a person who appreciated Prince’s genius to a fam.

Impact of the internet.

Many fams, including the majority of the participants, interact with other fams through social networking. Although several already belonged to Facebook fam groups before Prince died, most say their internet exchanges have increased significantly since his death. (Foster, who doesn’t “do the internet” is the only holdout.) Interacting with other fams online decreases feelings of isolation, and it promotes some sense of holding and going-on-being that these participants lost when Prince died.

Participants find that internet groups have aspects that are both positive and negative. Social media participation can create opportunities for friendship and selfexpression, but it can also promote rigidity, misunderstanding, and polarization. There is no social media group leader, although there are chat room hosts and Facebook group moderators. The group leader ideal is Prince, and the ideal practice is Love 4 One Another. Most participants have ideas about what loving another looks like, but none profess faith that their ideal radiates out to the entire group. Carolyn says, “I would love it if the ideal held up, but I see now that – like anywhere – there are factions, people fighting, things like that.”

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Theme J: Good and bad fams.

The group, as the living Prince did, exists both inside and outside each participant.

The fantasied Purple Family contains the characteristics and the ideals of the individual fam. The perception of good versus bad arises because individual fams have no control over the thoughts and actions of other individual fams.

Twinship and the group (attunement and misattunement, rupture and repair).

A useful way to consider participants’ group experience is to think of the group as providing a twinship or alter-ego selfobject function. When Foster describes his fan club as “my tribe,” and Carolyn states that she has found “a family that believes the same things I do,” each is referring to an experience of being attuned with the group in such a way that the group provides a source of self-cohesion.

Self psychologist, Heinz Kohut, developed the psychoanalytic idea of the selfobject (Kohut, 1968, 1971, 1984), an object that is experienced as part of the self.

Although they are most necessary in infancy and childhood, selfobjects function throughout life to promote and maintain a cohesive and vital self. There are three kinds of selfobject needs: mirroring is the need for admiration; idealization is the need to look up to a strong other; twinship is the need for others who are like us. In early life, selfobjects are found in the child’s experience of the parents (Kohut, 1971, 1984; Siegel, 1996).

Ideally, caregivers’ empathic responses to the child’s needs lead to the development of a stable sense of self. As the self solidifies, selfobjects become less necessary. Gradual frustration is necessary for healthy development. Parents disappoint

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the child, and their non-traumatic failure leads to the child’s internalization of the parents’ functions. The process is disrupted when parents are unable to act as selfobjects (Kohut, 1984; Siegel, 1996).

People frequently have difficulties along the developmental path, and even healthy adults experience periods of stress, loss, and trauma. We provide selfobject functions for others throughout life, and we need others to provide selfobject functions for us. Sometimes we fail to be perfectly attuned with one another, and we experience ruptures in our relationships that require repair (Kohut, 1984; Siegel, 1996).

The concept of the twinship selfobject is a useful vehicle for thinking about participants’ stories about interactions with other fams.. Carolyn and Foster clearly describe joyful experiences of finding longed for, like-minded others in the fam community. Carolyn speaks specifically about the experience of being gradually, nontraumatically disillusioned by the community that seemed initially to be a Utopia. She still loves the Purple Family, but she no longer needs it to function in the same way.

Chris experienced a twinship selfobject failure when a “so-called fan” ordered him to stop playing a raunchy Prince song in his front yard on a summer day. Claiming to speak with authority this fan insisted, “Prince wouldn’t like you playing that song.” Chris gets visibly angry when he talks about the audacity of this woman who called him out on his own front lawn. In that moment his sense of exuberance was shattered. This rupture will have no repair.

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Splitting and the group (perfection and imperfection, us versus them).

Four participants sometimes talk about experiences with other fams in terms of good versus bad. These participants describe situations in which groups of fams or individual fams have expressed the need for Prince to be presented as an all-good, perfect person in life. Needing a perfect Prince leads these bad fams to try and control anyone who presents an image of Prince as a fallible human. These bad fams, as described by participants, are unable to tolerate or accept parts of Prince’s life or career that they consider imperfect (e.g., the Prince who danced onstage in women’s thigh-highs early in his career and the Prince who died from an overdose of illegally obtained medication).

The Kleinian concept of splitting was described in Chapter II, in the sections on phantasy and group process and, particularly, in reference to Anthony Elliott’s book about John Lennon’s death (1999). Splitting, the division of objects into all-good and allbad is a primitive defense against persecutory anxiety.

Bad fams who split a perfect Prince from an imperfect Prince deny Prince’s humanity. They expel the bad and identify only with the good. This is a rigid and impossible position to maintain, and it requires further splitting – the idea of an Us (people who agree with us) and a Them (bad people who are against us). As reported by four of the study participants, fams who require a perfect Prince are, as Penny says, “Living in a fantasy world.” They include people who believe that Prince was murdered and people who believe that “Prince wouldn’t like you playing that.”

Ironically, when describing some fams as good and other fams as bad, the participants are also splitting. It is difficult for me to disagree with their assessments, and this has to do with splits of my own. Splitting is a normal but primitive defense that all

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humans use to manage inevitable primitive anxieties that arise. Defenses like splitting are most problematic when they are the predominant defenses a person utilizes.

Theme K: Transcendence in the audience.

The Purple Army may, like any large, loosely organized group, be rife with ambivalence, and sometimes the participants feel disappointed by, and even paranoid toward other fams. But none say this is a frequent experience. Most often they speak about how wonderful it is or has been to be among fams, loving Prince.

The participants are unambiguously enthusiastic about having been members of concert audiences. Every participant declared that Prince brought out the best, most joyful, most loving aspects in his audiences. Together in audiences, fams were swept up in feelings of transcendence. Foster says, “Live music takes things to a whole different level,” and Chris says, “Happy – I just felt happy.” All participants describe oceanic feelings of connectedness – Love 4 One Another – that existed when Prince performed.

Everyone in this study loved that Prince’s audience was diverse and uncategorizable To be part of an audience filled with all kinds of people means something to the participants. To be part of a diverse, multi-racial, multi-generational fandom that “I don’t think you’d find anywhere else in this world” (Carolyn), appeals to the ideals and contributes to the transcendent feelings of all participants. Whoever they are at other times, in the audience these participants were who they wanted to be.

In the audience, differences faded and feelings of connection and promise dominated. These were magical and transformational moments. Participants became “brothers and sisters united all for love” (Prince and the Revolution, 1986) with Prince as

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an idealized leader showing love through his inclusivity, his sexiness, his graciousness, and his “sustainable funkiness” (Chris).

Discussion conclusion.

As stated in Chapter I, to study Prince’s fams after his death is to study a very particular fan phenomenon. I created this project in order to explore and describe experiences of this unique and meaningful phenomena.

The particular Prince experience.

What makes Prince, his work, and his engagement with his fams so unique? Other superstars have had uniquely devoted fans, and some of the superstars have died, eliciting grief and inspiring continued use by their fans. There are undoubtedly similarities among the experiences of Prince’s fams and the fans of other icons introduced at the beginning of this project, but each is unique. Their products and careers are unique. Their involvement with their fans is unique. And each fan is unique.

Prince and his work are sui generis. From his first album he created music and an image of himself that defied attempts to fit any mold. He was an original. He transgressed and transcended conventional ideas about sexuality, gender, and race. He claimed to right to create himself and to be and do what he wanted. After the enormous successes of 1999 and Purple Rain he stepped away from the formulas that made him one of the biggest stars in the world. In doing this, Prince required loyalty and tenacity from fams. He continually challenged norms – including norms about how a star should be with fans.

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At the same time that he transgressed and transcended Prince also went-on-being.

He created and produced an unequaled catalogue of music and toured constantly for decades. Long after he lost the attention of the Purple Rain audience he kept himself in the lives and minds of his fams with his prodigious creative output. Accompanying Prince’s creative productions was his opaque but consistent persona that provided a durable screen for fams’ fantasies. When he died, the fantasies were untethered from the physical, historical Prince. His work, progressing steadily over a long period, ceased to be temporally linked to fams’ unfolding life stories. The sense of a continually productive Prince who travelled alongside his fams ceased.

The going-on-being Prince is gone, and the remarkable fam phenomenon that has existed will end. New fans will find and love Prince’s music, but their experiences will not resemble those of the study participants. New fans will not have a sense of Prince evolving from indefinable teenager dancing in his underwear to mad scientist in his Chanhassen laboratory, or of him being the storyteller that reveals their lives as they are happening. New fans will have Prince’s music, but they will not have Prince as their own epic poet, singing just for them at just the right time.

Conclusion.

For the participants in this this study Prince was a man whose persona, music, and artistic production captivated and delighted. They fell in love with his external presentation and internalized him as a good object, using him in adaptive and imaginative ways to find home and family, values and spirituality, and exploding creativity within themselves.

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Through his persona and his music, Prince showed these participants “sexy fun,” wildness, and boldness. He was uncategorizable and mysterious, an excellent receiver for participants’ projections. He was the object of multiple identifications and of myriad idealizations. He was special, and loving him made them special.

During his life, primarily through his music, Prince created a ribbon through participants’ lives, providing a sense of continuity. He fostered the perception that these participants were part of something larger than just themselves. Knowing he was alive was “a comforting feeling.”.

For most participants, something about Prince’s death has created openness and inspiration to change. Most have a perception that they are being called or are calling themselves to boldly live their values. They are coming to believe that ways of being that they once attributed to Prince are really their own. They can now claim and use the qualities they once projected onto and associated with Prince.

Every participant feels more love, more connection, and more commitment to fandom than when Prince was alive. Two participants sense spiritual forces at work within the positive changes they associate with Prince’s death. Four participants feel more drawn to the larger fam group and to expressions of Love 4 One Another. Even the participant who claimed that he didn’t mourn and that he experienced no changes associated with Prince’s death wishes to bring others to fandom and shares his love of Prince with an ever-widening circle of friends.

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The Research Process As outlined in Chapter III, the psychoanalytic case study method relies heavily on the skills of the researcher who must listen deeply in order to discern both manifest and latent meanings in the participant’s narrative. To move beyond the manifest she must use herself, her clinical skills, and her relationship with the participant to facilitate engagement with and understanding of the text. The researcher must also be aware of her biases, assumptions and personal interests as she listens and formulates ideas about the topic. This method is well suited to this project because it relies on general psychoanalytic theories and clinical skills to view the strongly intrapsychic phenomenon of participants’ engagement with the fantasy object, the superstar and icon, Prince.

Specific project guidelines are outlined several times in this dissertation. Five participants – self-defined, devoted fams – engaged in a series of one-on-one lightly structured interviews that were aimed at understanding their experiences of being fams and the meanings famdom has for them. The content of each person’s interviews, as well as field notes, were examined for themes and Categories of Meaning that were of particular significance to each participant. I wrote a case study for each participant, and then I compared them in order to discern themes and Categories of Meaning that persisted across most narratives.

Challenges and adjustments.

The research process followed the outline presented in Chapter Three with two adjustments made for practical reasons. Dissertation chair, Dr. Jennifer Tolleson approved both changes.

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In-person interviews impacted by Polar Vortex.

I intended to meet with participants three times in their hometowns; a strategy I hoped would put them at ease and yield interesting data. Unfortunately I scheduled interviews for brutally cold winter months. After several interview trips had to be rearranged due to inclement weather I decided to conduct some interviews via Zoom or on the phone. These interviews were sufficient, but I am glad I was able to meet each participant in person, as well, as those interviews were particularly rich..

Completed case studies reviewed and revised by each participant.

When I designed the project, I intended to solicit each participant’s input after I completed the case study. Each participant provided feedback while I was writing, to contribute to the masking of their character and to check the facts of their biographical vignettes and fam story. but I did not share the final document because I ran out of time. I don’t believe this had any negative effect on the research. Engaging the participants in the character masking and biographical fact checking enabled them to contribute to the development of their study, and I believe it helped ensure the project’s trustworthiness as effectively as sharing the completed case studies would have done.

The researcher’s use of self.

In the psychoanalytic case study method the subjectivity of the researcher is neither denied nor banished. It is considered inevitable and even desirable that the researcher’s thoughts and experiences color the way she interacts with the research.

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Transparency and mindfulness are key to this approach. To this end, I wrote a foregrounding section in Chapter I, relating my history with the topic and outlining my point of view.

When I was conceptualizing the project it was impossible to predict what would arise and require attention as I engaged with participants and with the data. Hence, despite my enthusiastic and earnest application of myself to writing a thorough foregrounding, I encountered some surprises once the project was underway. I tried not to avoid anything I found, but I struggled against choosing familiar paths over less familiar ones, and I was brought up short by unexpected blind spots.

Sex. I was curious when I went over the interview transcripts that I found little content that was overtly about sex. Prince was known – especially early in his career – for his provocative and outrageous sexuality. Four of the participants’ first experiences with Prince had something to do with sex. Anyone I told about the project who was not part of the Purple Family assumed I was writing about sex. I was surprised by how little traction this topic got when I introduced it. The only topic that got less traction was that of Prince’s reliance on opioids, but I came to believe the opioid topic was truly not a priority of these participants. But where was the sex? I wonder whether the topic of sex is muted, in part, because I didn’t welcome it, somehow.

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Race.

I wondered this again when I realized there was surprisingly light data related to race. All participants acknowledged Prince’s diverse creative associations and audiences and admired his appeal to “every kind of people.� Everyone credited Prince as being somewhat responsible for opening their minds to diversity and inclusion, but I was surprised that only one person spoke at length about this. Again, I have to wonder whether something about me or about the way I facilitated conversations did not encourage participants speaking more in-depth.

The idealized fam.

As foreshadowed by Bruce Springsteen scholar David Cavicchi in Chapter II, a consequence of being personally immersed in the phenomenon of Prince famdom was that I sometimes idealized the participants and their experiences of famdom. I managed this by staying committed to the hermeneutic process described in Chapter III and adhering to the guidelines I established to ensure credibility. Even with these precautions in place my predisposition to feel positively toward the participants and to want to protect their experiences occasionally tested my ability to remain neutral in my interpretations.

The impact of the research process on me.

It would have been impossible for me to undertake this project and not be changed in the process. As stated in the foregrounding in Chapter I, music is, and always has been an integral part of my life. It is inseparable from my sense of who I am. But I have never loved an artist or an artistic expression with the depth of feeling revealed by

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the participants in this study. I admire these fams. I am touched by their love for and loyalty to Prince. It was sometimes discouraging to hear that Prince didn’t care about his fair-weather fans and realize the speaker was describing me, but I recognize that the ways the participants are fam and that I am a fan are not the same.

Curiosity and a desire to understand from an experience-near perspective led me to choose this topic – the experience of Prince’s devoted fams, and the impact his death has had on them – as my doctoral research. This project has made me feel hopeful about the way people can interact with art and with popular culture. It has inspired me to sing and to dance with abandon. This project has led me to love Prince with new and longing enthusiasm – longing to feel as the fams feel, and longing for Prince to still be alive so I could see him again.

It’s not possible to learn how to be a fam. The participants use Prince in ways I can’t. It is inspiring that they have the creativity and passion to love him and make use of him in so many imaginative and useful ways. The Prince in their minds is a force for good in their lives. They believe in him, in the power of his music, in the other people who love him. He is the good. The good is not extinguished by death.

Prince, the artist, is dead, but their internal Prince, the good object, persists. I wish I could teach myself to use Prince like the participants do. Who would not want to have that kind of good, internal object – an object that is your brother . . . and your mother, and your sister, too (Prince, 1979, “I Wanna Be Your Lover”)?

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Implications for Further Study When I began this project I made explicit my assumption that phenomena of popular culture are appropriate for serious psychoanalytic inquiry. My conclusion strongly supports this assumption. And fandom – ubiquitous adaptive fandom – deserves considerably more research. Some ideas for future studies follow: 

Studies about the Purple Family (and other kinds of fans) utilizing specific theoretical frameworks, such as object relations theory or self psychology.

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Studies about the Purple Family that focus more specifically on intersections of famdom and race, gender, sexuality, or spirituality.

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Studies of long-term fandom over the lifetime of individuals.

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Studies of today’s superstars’ accessibility through social media and how this accessibility is impacting fans’ experiences of fandom.

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Inquiries into internal and external factors that dispose individuals to intensely devoted fandom.

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Considerations of the clinical uses of fandom.

Keeping in mind the adaptability, usefulness and creativity of fan experiences, it is clear that further psychoanalytic studies of fandom will enrich our field.

And Finally For the devoted fams in this small-scale psychoanalytically-informed study, Prince is more than a preoccupation or a pastime. He is more than a pleasurable fantasy.

He is a site of play, creativity, transformation, connection with others, and deep, internal

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rapport. He is part of each person’s identity. He is a fantasy and a phantasy object that holds them, sustains them, and helps them be their best selves. Prince is the good object.

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Appendix A Informed Consent

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Institute for Clinical Social Work Research Information and Consent for Participants in Social Behavioral Research 4 All Time I Am with U: The Prince Fam Experience I, __________________________________, acting for myself, agree to take part in the research entitled 4 All Time I Am with U: The Prince Fam Experience.

This work will be carried out by Gina Shropshire (Principal Researcher) under the supervision of Dr. Jennifer Tolleson (Dissertation Chair or Sponsoring Faculty).

This work is conducted under the auspices of the Institute for Clinical Social Work; at Robert Morris Center, 401 South State Street, Suite 822, Chicago, IL, 60605; (312)9354232.

Purpose The purpose of this study is to explore the experience of being a devoted “fam” of Prince and examine how this experience has been impacted by the superstar’s death. The topic of fandom, in general, is underrepresented in psychoanalytic research and literature, and this is a deficit in the field. Most people are fans of something or someone, and fan experiences can be intensely meaningful in the lives of fans. Feelings of loss when a fan object dies can also be significant. Prince Rogers Nelson was a composer, artist and performer of extraordinary talent and charisma, whose virtuosity, energy and imagination seemed inextinguishable. A mega-superstar in the 1980’s, Prince retained many dedicated and passionately loyal “fams” throughout his brilliant, unconventional career. The stories of these fams – their experiences of fandom - are worthy of study. This research project will be of value to the psychoanalytic and clinical social work fields because it seeks to illuminate a ubiquitous - but woefully under-explored - human phenomenon – fandom.

Procedures used in the study and duration The researcher will engage five, individual fams in a series of interviews that will lead to the creation of a case study (that includes stories of and themes related to famdom) of each fam and also a cross-case analysis of meaningful themes shared by all fams.

After a 20 – 30 minute screening interview, the researcher and participant will schedule a series of three, 75-minute interviews. These interviews will be in-person, and they will take place in the participant’s town, in a location convenient to and comfortable for the participant. Interviews will be lightly structured, the first containing administrative tasks (such as signing this consent form), demographic questions, and specific questions about the participant’s fam story. The second and third interviews will be more flexible, and the focus will be on the researcher and participant engaging in a spontaneous conversation about experiences and meanings of famdom. Interviews will take place at least a week apart, and all interviews must be completed within a two-month period.

Interviews will be recorded on a Sony, handheld recorder, and the researcher will listen to the interviews immediately following each to discern patterns and themes and to reflect on the interview process as it unfolds. Recordings will then be transcribed by a

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transcription service that works with confidential records (more below), and erased.

Transcribed interviews will be used as the basis for the creation of the individual case studies. With participant’s consent, interviews may also be video recorded. This is optional. Do you consent to be video recorded? Initial one: ______ yes. ______ no.

After the individual case study is completed, the researcher will send it to the participant for comments and corrections in a password-protected file. The fam’s comments are as important to the process as are the ideas of the researcher. The researcher and participant will meet a final time – either in person or via FaceTime or Skype, to go over the case report to ensure that it reflects the fam’s story adequately and accurately.

If desired, you may receive a copy of your completed case document.

Benefits The benefit of the study to the individual fam is the opportunity to share your story and talk about your unique and meaningful experiences of famdom with a researcher who is uniquely prepared and interested to hear it.

The benefit of the study to the psychoanalytic and clinical social work fields is to shine a light on a particular phenomenon of fandom.

Costs If we meet in a public place, there may be an expense for your transportation. Otherwise, there are no costs associated with this project.

Possible Risks and/or Side Effects It is hoped that risks and side effects of this study will be minimal. However, talking about experiences of famdom, especially in light of Prince’s death in 2016, could be emotional for participants. If you become emotionally distressed during an interview, you can minimize your discomfort by:     

Changing course in the interview and discussing a lighter topic, Taking a short break, Talking through what is upsetting to you with the researcher, off-record, Ending the interview early and completing it on another day, or Leaving the study if it is too painful.

For more information, please see the document, “Strong Emotion Strategies for Participants,” which is attached.

There may be other minor inconveniences – related to time and expense - to participating in this study. You may incur expenses, such as gasoline and parking, associated with the interview process. It will take time to travel to interviews, unless the interview is in your home. Then you may be inconvenienced by the interviewers presence in your home. The interview process will take approximately five hours, plus the amount of time it takes you to read the case document.

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You are a valued volunteer to this research process. Your participation is greatly appreciated, and it is voluntary. You have the right to refuse to answer questions, to terminate an interview, to leave the study, and to contact the dissertation chair, Jennifer Tolleson (312-342-3184) or the sponsoring institution, The Institute for Clinical Social Work (312-935-4232) if you feel you have been treated badly or unfairly.

Privacy and Confidentiality A number will identify all data you provide for this study, and your identity will be masked, which means that information about where you live, how old you are, your physical characteristics, your career, and other demographic information, will be obscured. Some details, such as racial, sexual and gender identity, may be included in your study, but you’ll have the opportunity in your feedback session to tell me how you would like this to be happen. You’ll also have the opportunity to choose your own pseudonym for the case study report.

All data – recordings, transcriptions, notes, emails – will be password protected on my MacBook computer or stored in an archival box in a locked closet in my office. Audio recordings will be erased after they are transcribed by a HIPAA-compliant, medical transcription service. Transcribers for services that handle confidential materials are required to sign non-disclosure agreements that ensure your privacy. I will have copies of these signed agreements.

Any files that are sent electronically from me to you or to members of the dissertation committee will be identified by a number, not by name/demographic info, and they will be password-protected. Files sent between the dissertation committee and me will be sent over the Institute for Clinical Social Work’s email system.

If you and I correspond outside of the research process for any reason, we will not talk about the research process in writing unless we have created a password-protected file.

All data will be kept in locked storage for five years, and then destroyed (except for sound recordings, which will be destroyed as soon as they are transcribed).

Your case study and the discussion of the themes that transcended the individual studies will form the most important pieces of the dissertation. These will be bound and kept in the library at ICSW. The dissertation will also be available online at icsw.edu.

Subject Assurances By signing this consent form, I agree to take part in this study. I have not given up any of my rights or released this institution from responsibility for carelessness.

I may cancel my consent and refuse to continue in this study at any time without penalty or loss of benefits. My relationship with Gina Shropshire, or with the staff of the ICSW,

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will not be affected in any way, now or in the future, if I refuse to take part, or if I begin the study and then withdraw.

If I have any questions about the research methods, I can contact Gina Shropshire (Principal Researcher), at 708-703-6007 or Dr. Jennifer Tolleson (Dissertation Chair/Sponsoring Faculty), at 312- 342-3184.

If I have any questions about my rights as a research subject, I may contact Dr. John Ridings, Chair of Institutional Review Board; ICSW; At Robert Morris Center, 401 South State Street; Suite 822, Chicago, IL 60605; irbchair@icsw.edu.

Signatures I have read this consent form and I agree to take part in this study as it is explained in this consent form.

__________________________________________ Signature of Participant

_____________________ Date

I certify that I have explained the research to (Name of subject) and believe that they understand and that they have agreed to participate freely. I agree to answer any additional questions when they arise during the research or afterward.

__________________________________________ Signature of Researcher

_ _____________________ Date

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Appendix B Mental Health Resources

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Strong Emotion Strategies for Participants You are a valued volunteer in this project, and your participation is appreciated and essential. It is the researcher’s intent that you have as enjoyable and stress-free and experience as possible.

I hope that talking about your experiences as a Purple Fam, including your experiences and feelings since Prince’s death in 2016, will be satisfying and meaningful for you, but if it you feel upset as a result of our conversation here are some strategies we can try: If you become overwhelmed or upset during an interview: Shift the upsetting topic to something less emotionally upsetting. The interviewer will help you do this.

Take a break during the interview and talk about your feelings off-record with the interviewer.

Ask to end the interview early and pick up again at another time, when you are no longer upset.

If you become overwhelmed or upset after the interview: Call a friend who will understand what you are experiencing and talk to that person.

Email, call or text the researcher and tell her about your feelings, so you can spend time at the beginning of the next interview talking through them either onor off-record (Email – ginshrop@gmail.com; Cell phone – 708-703-6007).

If you feel like you do not want to continue this study: As a volunteer you have the right to leave the study at any time.

If you wish, you may contact the study’s Chair, Dr. Jennifer Tolleson at 312- 3423184), or Dr. John Ridings, the Chair of the Institutional Review Board at the Institute for Clinical Social Work at 312-935-4232).

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Appendix C Screening Interview Questions

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Participant Screening Script and Questionnaire I am writing my doctoral dissertation on Prince famdom. The name of this project is “4 All Time I Am with U.” This dissertation is one of the requirements for completing my PhD at The Institute for Clinical Social Work in Chicago, where I study psychoanalytic psychotherapy.

Briefly - I want to tell Prince fams’ stories. After this introductory interview, if we decide we would like to meet for more conversation, we’ll meet three times, face-to-face, and talk about your experiences as a Prince fam. Then I’ll write your story and send it to you for feedback. We’ll meet one more time – on Skype or in person – and you can tell me if I’ve got the story right or if there are things about it you would like to change.

So that you can speak freely, I’ll disguise your identity, so no one will be able to tell who you are. You’ll also be known by a pseudonym you’ll choose for yourself.

I’m going to tell five people’s fam stories. In addition to the stories, the project will contain a chapter about Prince, a chapter about fandom, in general, and a chapter about how psychoanalytic ideas can help understand the phenomenon of Prince famdom.

My intention is not to diagnose fams but to use these ideas to add depth to the stories of fan experience. Psychoanalytic ideas are just one way to think about fandom. I hope you’ll like the ways they help me tell the story.

A lot of people have expressed interest in being part of this study, so it’s possible I will not use your story. My choice may not be about who tells the best story or is the most devoted fam. It may be about demographics. I want to talk to a diverse group, and that may be a challenge since I’m only going to present five cases.

Now I have some questions for you. Some are general, and some are aimed to give me a feel about your famdom. You don’t have to answer anything you don’t feel comfortable answering!

First, what is your name?

Are you a Prince fan?

How serious do you consider your fandom to be?

What would your friends and family say if I asked them that question about you?

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Why do you love Prince?

How long have you been a fam?

How did you become a fam?

What is your favorite Prince song/album/concert?

What do you do as a fan (i.e. listen to music, go to shows, participate online)?

Are you a fan of anyone (or anything) else? If so, who?

Where were you, and what was going on when you heard the news that Prince had died?

What did you do when you heard?

How did you feel when/after you heard?

Have you taken part in any of the events that have occurred since he died (Celebration, etc.)?

Has your fandom changed since Prince died? If so, how?

Are you part of a fan community – do you talk to other fans?

What is it like for you to talk about this?

Now I’m going to ask more general questions about you: Where do you live?

Where did you grow up?

What is your age?

Are you employed? If so, what do you do?

How far did you go in school?

Are you Single? Dating? Married? Divorced? Widowed? Something else?

How do you self-identify your gender?

How do you self-identify your race or ethnicity?

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What kind of person are you attracted to, romantically?

And finally . . .

Would you be willing to take place in this research – three, 75-minute interviews, followed by reading the story of your famdom, followed by a feedback session when you tell me whether I’ve got the story right?

Interviews will be set at least a week apart, and I’d like to complete them within two months. We will meet face-to-face. I hope we can meet in your hometown, because I imagine that will be easiest for you. Will that be okay?

Do you think you can be open and honest with me - not just about your famdom, which, of course, I want to know everything about – but also about yourself, including how you’re feeling during the interviews.

Knowing that I will do everything to disguise your identity so your privacy and confidentiality are protected, would you be willing to let me tell your story in my dissertation?

If the answers to these last questions are “yes,” and I have no concerns, I’ll say, “Thank you so much for doing this interview with me. Could we set some times to meet?

How would you like me to contact you if I need to - may I have your email/phone number?

If any answer to this last set of questions is “no,” or if I have concerns about the potential participant’s answers or affect, I’ll say, “Let me think a little about our conversation, and I’ll check back in with you in a couple of days. How would you like me to contact you? May I have your email/phone number? Is there anything else you’d like me to know?

If, after thinking more about the screening interview, I decide that participating would not be beneficial for the potential participant or for the project I’ll send an email that says, “Thank you for talking with me. I’m not going to use your story at this time, but I imagine my interest in this topic will continue long after this study is completed, so I hope our paths will cross again.”

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Appendix D First Interview Questions

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First Interview Procedure and Questions

1) Thank participant for agreeing to participate.

2) Reintroduce project (ten minutes). a. This project is about you. It’s about what Prince means to you. The name of the project is 4 All Time I Am with U: The Prince Fam Experience.

My name is Gina Shropshire. I’m the researcher, and my contact information is on the Consent Form we’ll sign in a moment. The person overseeing this project is Dr. Jennifer Tolleson. If you have any problems, you may talk to her. Her information is also on the Consent Form. I’m doing this research as part of my doctoral studies in psychoanalytic psychotherapy at The Institute for Clinical Social Work in Chicago. b. My field has overlooked the topic of fandom, which doesn’t make sense.

Psychoanalysis is interested in human experience, and most humans are fans of something or someone. When Prince died – it hit people hard.

Many fams are still trying to make sense of it. I want to hear your experiences and understand what Prince means to you. Knowing about this will be of value to my field, and hopefully it will be of value to us, too. c. I’m conducting this research using a Psychoanalytic Case Study method.

You might hear “psychoanalysis,” and worry I’ll diagnose you or describe you in a pathological way. That is definitely not my intention. I’m curious about how the mind works. To me, psychoanalytic ideas are about opening up understanding, not about shutting it down. But, also, it’s just one way to look at life. If I were getting my PhD in theology or music I would be telling your story a very different way. d. I’m talking to five, individual fams, doing a series of interviews with each that will lead to the creation of a case study. The case study will contain the stories you tell me and my interpretation of themes that come up in your stories. You’ll have a chance to comment on what I’ve written and correct any mistakes I’ve made. Each case study will be included in its

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entirety in Chapter Four of my project. After that, I’ll look at all the studies together and look for themes that come up across all of them, and I’ll discuss those in Chapter Five. e. You and I will have three, 75-minute interviews, at least one week apart.

They’ll be in-person, and I’ll come to your town to do them. During this first interview I’ll ask you questions that will be the same for everyone, and we’ll also do administrative tasks, like signing the Consent Form. The second and third interviews will be more flexible. I’ll think about what happened in the previous interview, and I’ll ask questions if we didn’t have a chance to fully explore something, or if I didn’t understand something you said. Hopefully the second and third interviews will just be like conversations. f. I’ll record the interviews on a Sony, handheld recorder. The sound recording will be enough for me to write up your story, but, if you agree, I may also video record your interviews on an IPhone 6. This is optional!

I’ll listen to the sound recording after we meet, and I’ll take notes and reflect on what happened in the meeting. Then I’ll send the recording to be transcribed. The recordings will be transcribed by a service that does medical transcription. They adhere to HIPAA guidelines and do other things to ensure your privacy – and I will also take extra care to do that.

For example, I will only refer to you by a number in the files I keep on you, except in your actual case study, in which you’ll have a pseudonym.

Your paper files – the process records and my notes about our meetings – will be kept in a locked archive box in a locked closet in my office, as will the thumb drives containing the only copies of your sound and video recordings. I’ll keep these files for five years, and then I’ll destroy them. I don’t plan to do this, but If I keep any files on my computer they’ll be password protected inside my password protected MacBook. If I have to email a file to anyone (like when I send you your case study to review) I’ll send it via a password protected file.

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g. Your privacy will be protected in your case study in a couple of ways.

Like I said, you will be identified by a pseudonym. What would you like to be called? Also, your identity will be masked so that someone else reading the report won’t be able to tell it’s you. I’ll change your appearance and things like your job and where you live. When you read your case study, if you don’t think I’ve done a good enough job masking your identity, tell me, and we’ll fix it. h. The final project will not be destroyed after five years. It’ll be bound and kept in the library at ICSW. It will also be available online at icsw.edu. i. After I write your case study I’ll send it to you, and before our feedback session you’ll go through it and make sure I’ve gotten it right. In the feedback session you can correct mistakes I’ve made and make sure I’ve represented you and your story well. Please tell me what you really think!

When you’re satisfied, it will go in the project. You can have a copy of the final version, too, if you’d like it. j. There are some costs, risks and benefits to being in this study. i. If we meet someplace other than your home, you’ll have the cost of traveling to and from that place, and possibly parking. It will also cost you some hours out of your life – 30 minutes for the preliminary interview, almost four hours for the interviews, and another hour for the feedback session – plus the amount of time it takes you to read your case study. ii. One risk is that you might not like what I write! This is somewhat in your control, as you can help me get the story right in the feedback session. If you really don’t like it you can talk to my director, Jennifer Tolleson, or you can withdraw from the study. iii. Another risk is that talking about Prince could be emotional. If you feel distressed or overwhelmed we can take various steps. We can talk about a lighter topic. We can take a break. We can talk through what’s upsetting you, off-record. We can stop the interview early and finish later. And if you are really

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uncomfortable, you can leave the study. You’ll also have my email address and phone number, and if you are distressed by anything about the study, you can check in with me. iv. The benefits are that you will have a chance to tell your story and talk about your unique experiences to me, a researcher who is also a fam. You’ll be contributing to literature in at least two fields. The psychoanalytic field will finally have a study about fandom, and the fan studies field will have a psychoanalytic study about individual Prince fams. k. We’re finally coming to the end of this speech. The most important thing is that this project is about you. You’re a valued, essential part of this research, and you’re also a volunteer. You have the right to tell me to back off, or not answer questions, or terminate an interview, or talk to my dissertation chair, or leave the study if you don’t like the way it’s going. l. Do you have any questions? I’m happy to go over any of this again.

3) Everything I just told you is on the project’s consent form, which we’ll sign now.

I’ll keep a copy, and you’ll keep a copy. Your signed form will be kept with other project records, but it will be kept separately from your other documents. (Present form.) a. Two copies – interviewer + participant. b. Ask again if there are any questions. c. Sign form together. d. Give one copy to participant. Keep the other copy.

4) First interview questions (Eleven questions, a – k, are the substantive ones. The sub-questions are optional prompts): a. Tell me about being a Prince fam. b. How do you express your famdom? c. How important is your famdom in your life? d. What does Prince mean to you? e. Why Prince?

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f. Prince died on April 21, 2016. Tell me about what that was like for you. g. Do you consider yourself to be part of a fam community? h. Have you changed as a result of Prince’s death? i. How do you think being a Prince fam impacts/has impacted your life? j. Is there anything else you want me to know right now? k. Do you have any questions for me?

7) Conclude interview.

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Appendix E Facebook Post

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Short intro Posted on PrinceFamUnite Facebook page on January 17, 2017 Posted on Make the House Shake Facebook page on August 1, 2017 Each time I posted this I received many private messages from fams who wanted to be part of the project. I wasn’t ready to move forward with my research, but a number of these fams have kept in touch and remain interested in participating.

I am considering writing my doctoral dissertation about Prince’s fans, and I wonder if this is a project that would interest you – either to participate in or to read after it’s completed.

When Prince died I felt a real sense of grief that surprised me. Allowing myself to experience my feelings of loss without judgment I came to realize that I was grieving both the loss of a favorite musician and the loss of part of myself. Prince had been with me – providing the soundtrack - during some of the most formative years in my life. Now I felt like a best friend had died. We hadn’t been in close touch for a while, but I always thought I’d see him again.

For some of his fans, Prince was centrally important to who they were from the first time they heard him to his death (and beyond) - forever in your lives. This project will be about Prince’s loyal and devoted fans – those of you who accompanied him through his incredibly productive and illustrious career, from For You through HITnRUN Phase Two. Who are you? What were your experiences of fandom during Prince’s life, and what are your experiences now? What is happening to your love for Prince now that the living Prince is gone? And what do you believe will happen next to Prince’s music and his memory?

I believe this could be a fun, interesting, exciting, illuminating project – undertaken in the shared love of an irreplaceable, extraordinary artist and person, Prince. What do you think? Please feel free to send me a private message if you’d like to hear more about this.

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