PRINCE, THE ELEVATOR, AND THE DEVIL

A CBS News article published in the wake of Prince's untimely death just over a week ago explores one particularly ironic detail about the location where the Purple One apparently met his Maker.

Music icon Prince was pronounced dead shortly after being found unresponsive in an elevator in his Paisley Park compound in Minneapolis. 

That detail is haunting fans who point to the bizarre connection to a line in his hit song, "Let's Go Crazy," in which he sings, "Are we gonna let the elevator bring us down? Oh, no, let's go." 

The article goes on to explain why this coincidence was more than just a "spooky" irony for music producer L.A. Reid, a close personal friend of Prince's. 

"One time I was with him privately and he said, 'You know what the elevator is right?'" Reid recalled. "He said. 'Well, the elevator is the devil...' And so for me it was like really haunting when I read that he was found in an elevator."

To some of you, this might sound a bit goofy; like an attempt to add an extra frisson to an event that is sufficiently tragic without having to introduce a supernatural element. Regardless, I beg your indulgence, for a moment at least, as I attempt to take Prince's cryptic comment seriously, and try to unravel his potential theological meaning.

Let's start with the word: Elevator. Cambridge defines it as "a device like a box that moves up and down, carrying people and freight". Merriam-Webster's definition is both more poetic, and more pertinent, describing an elevator as "one that raises or lifts something up". 

Aha! Now we're getting somewhere.

Consider... The Elevator. The One Who Elevates according to His Will, therefore exalting some (those whom He elevates) while leaving others to suffer in a debased or somehow lesser state. 

The Elevator, in this "Princean" Theology, would be the one responsible for propping up such obvious unworthies as all those myriad hereditary, multi-generational elites who live "elevated" lives of idle leisure and comfort while profiting off the toil of those who have to struggle just to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves from the elements.

In other words, the Elevator is beginning to sound a whole lot like the Biblical "Lord of This World", unequivocally identified in scripture as being none other than the Devil.

So when Prince asks us "Are we going to let the Elevator bring us down?", what I hear is the following:

Just because The Powers That Be happen to be a pack of vile, Satanic, Moloch-worshiping elites who've been placed in exalted positions thanks to the malefic supernatural intervention of "The Elevator" (which would account, at least, for the apparent universality of their anti-human perversion), and have thus been granted near totalitarian mastery over every single societal control mechanism (i.e. global finance, science and technology, the media, the arts, academia, the military)... does that mean we Little People, down here at the bottom, have got to give up on everything? That we shouldn't make music? Or make love?

Prince's answer to that question is: "Oh, no! Let's GO! LET'S GET CRAZY!"

And to that prayer, I can only add: AMEN.