We’ve heard from a lot of people who knew Prince a long time ago, but last night on my CNN show I spoke with a woman named Damaris Lewis, Prince’s latest muse and part of his current inner circle.
She told me about the last conversation she had with him just last week.
Damaris Lewis – “I think Prince knew how much I loved him. You know, if I could tell him something right now, it would probably be in the form of a joke because that’s how we spoke. But my message would be a message from him to everybody else to really understand that you have to give. You have to. If you have a gift, you have to give. And especially from my generation right now. We’re in really, really, really testy time. But he made sure every person in his life that influenced him was influenced by him.”
Lewis said Prince sounded and looked fine lately.
Because of people like Damaris Lewis, we know a lot about Prince’s last days – especially for an artist and icon who was famously private.
Just one week before he died, Prince played two shows at Atlanta’s Fox Theater, taking the stage carrying a cane.
As he flew home to Minnesota, his private plane made an emergency landing just after one in the morning.
“What’s the nature of the emergency?
An unresponsive passenger
Was it a male or a female passenger or anything?
I do not know that. The West Air getting some of that. He told me unresponsive passenger.”
When the plane landed, Prince was rushed to a hospital in Moline, Illinois.
But the next night he was right back at it, back home at Paisley Park, where he performed for a select group of fans.
Several of them said he looked pale.
TMZ reported that Prince made several trips to his local pharmacy where they posted a photo of the musical icon walking in the parking lot.
Then six days later, he was found in a Paisley Park elevator.
There are also reports of a hip injury and prescription medication being factors.
We just don’t know if any of it is true yet.
In the days and weeks to come, we’ll learn more about what took Prince from us and why it happened at age 57 – when he had so much more to give – including hundreds of unreleased songs locked away in his vault.
Whatever we find out – it won’t change the fact that we lost a genius far too soon.
We all have our Prince moments – mine came when I first heard his song Controversy- with the lyrics ‘am I black or white am I straight or gay’.
Damaris Lewis, who saw a side of Prince that the rest of us didn’t – says what many Prince fans are saying, let the investigation play out, whatever it may uncover.
Damaris Lewis – “I’m so grateful for the love that people are showing and they’re going to continue to show, I hope.”
