April, for me, somewhere became a very reflective month, and not always in a good way. So much is bound up in April 1997, knowing that my career was coming to an end with no plan B to speak of (of course, on April 1 1997 you could have told me “six months from now you’ll be living in the suburbs of Washington DC and taking the Metro every day to your job at National Geographic, when you aren’t spending the weekends driving to see your girl in Akron Ohio” and I would have burned you for witchcraft before you could say “and if you think that’s a show wait until ten years from now”). Of course, ten years on in April 2007 I was suffering from the knee trouble and stress anxiety that would contribute to my leaving Apple. In April 2013 I was suffering the after-effects of the wrong turn work had taken, and by April 2015 I was going to Japan just to get away from the nonsense.
But April 1989 found me in Washington DC, because I spent something like six weeks that semester in out-of-town academic competitions. Jacksonville, Tuscaloosa, and all of a sudden in DC knowing West Point and Orlando were coming. Staying in the hotel where Reagan was shot, going back and forth between the Mayflower and the Omni Shoreham and who knows where all else, and a big dance party at the Old Post Office pavilion where between the band sets, a DJ was spinning tracks. And there’s one song that even to this day captures all of that – the whole sense of “my life is going crazy out of control and there is no limit to the future, and I am doing everything I ever wanted in life with more to come.”
It was “Baby I’m A Star.”
Thanks, Prince.