Artist Diary

This is a touchy topic that vegans are going to hate me for. I wondered if I should bring it up at all. But it is the truth, and I feel that I must say something, because it is something that will affect many if it is not openly discussed at all.

I have noticed how Prince’s name has been used to promote “veganism”, and this is just  not right. Although he may have tried a vegan approach to eating, he was only vegetarian. He was partially vegetarian. I say partially because eating fish is not considered vegetarian. People who have worked for him report that he is vegetarian, and that he did not allow any meat on his Paisley Park premises. But these were people who only worked for a limited period of time, so who is to say that he did not change his eating over the years?

People are probably going to dispute with me and use old information to argue. But here is proof. The last person who worked with him closely was Kirk Johnson. In his statement to police, he said “Yeah, he ate pretty healthy, he’s a vegetarian, the only thing he would eat sometimes fish, sometimes eggs.”

But there is other proof from previous years that he only considered himself as a vegetarian. On The George Lopez Show in 2011, when Lopez asked him, ” You’re vegan.. or vegetarian…?” Prince answered vegetarian. And in 2015, on The Arsenio Hall Show, when an audience member asked what was a something that he does that people don’t expect from him, he said that he can cook, “But only one thing… omelettes”. I had also heard of another story from a graphic designer working with P on the album artwork for LotusFlow3r. They were working late one night and P ordered up some scrambled eggs and apple juice for them.

When I looked through the files from the investigation of at Paisley Park, they showed his medication and supplement bottles. The medications and supplements that he was taking would suggest that he was concerned with chronic pain, fatigue, immune system efficiency, muscle weight issues, and brain function. These are typical issues that can result from a long term mostly plant based diet.

You may be asking, why do I feel so compelled to make it clear what his eating habits were? What does it matter? It matters because Prince’s name is being used to promote the diet, and there are many things wrong with the diet that is detrimental to human health. The press has been alleging that he was vegan, and animal rights organizations has been encouraging people to make a pledge to be vegan usingg his name. Many people look up to people like Prince to uphold their beliefs. Veganism has been promoted by using celebrity names to make it something that society should accept and adapt to as an example. There are very few stories in the mainstream media nowadays that isn’t attached to promoting a political agenda, conditioning you to take on an idea.

What I am about to say is going to upset a lot of people, those who do not understand nutrition and do not want to acknowledge truth.  I would speculate that Prince’s diet may have been a significant contributing factor to his untimely death. Many ex -vegans report that they experienced chronic pain, fatigue, and brain fog after going on a strict vegan diet. They would spend years trying to “get better”, believing the lie that their pain was a result of the body going through a “detoxing” process. But this would be proven untrue, as those who come off the vegan diet go on to eat meats, eggs, and dairy; and report feeling significantly better with evident improvement to their health. Prince’s diet may have been one of the factors that lead to his chronic pain, leading him t need hip replacement surgery and needing pain medication to cope.

From my personal experience, I was mainly vegetarian and tried veganism for roughly ten years. I was never very strict, but I still showed symptoms of poor nutrition. I was tired and cold all the time, hungry often, struggling with skin blemishes, peeling nails, and hair loss. And on top of all that I had tooth decay and bleeding gums. I had four deep cavities that had to be filled. I was so shocked by it, because I did not eat sweets and up until that point, I had no cavities at all after all my adult teeth came in. I would later discover from my research that all these health challenges were due to following a vegetarian diet. I was not getting enough of the essential fats and minerals. After the damage to my teeth, I have since changed to eating a diet that includes eggs, fish, chicken, and sometimes lamb.

The vegan diet diet should actually be a huge public health concern as it is gaining in mainstream popularity, but it is not. Doctors are not dieticians, and they are only trained to prescribe drugs. There is so much politic correctness involved in the issue, that no doctor is going to tell you to stop it. Doctors are only equipped to treat symptoms, not find the root cause of illness. I once spoke to a Chinese medicine doctor, and she told me that the majority of her patients are on vegan and vegetarian diets, and that their diet was making them sick.

For me, having seen it from both sides, it has made me realize just how much of what we are told is a lie. We have been conditioned from the day we are born to believe in things that are not based on truth proven by evidence, but on lies to serve another person’s agenda. Why this should be a concern to society is this, people deciding to raise their children on a vegan diet are unknowingly doing damage to their child’s growth and development. Not only is their physical health at risk, but so is their mental health, as a vegan diet can cause one to become emotionally unstable and angry, while losing their ability for rational thought. The human brain is made up of fat, and it requires fat to maintain its well being. A vegan and vegetarian diet is often lacking in the cholesterol needed for the train to replenish itself. A society of emotionally unstable people that cannot be reasoned with, spells trouble for the future.

I know how disappointing it can feel when you realize that the truth is not quite as you thought, hoped, or imagined. Prince was a true idealist in the way that he lived, but sometimes ideals are not met with reality. Veganism has been promoted as the most healthy diet that can prevent illness. It has been promoted as something that humanity must do to stop the “destruction of this planet:. It feels disappoint to learn that we must eat animals to survive as human beings. But that is reality. And if this is the reality, why is the opposite promoted as truth? One can speculate that it is a bid to curtail the human population.  This plan has been outlined in Agenda 21.

So my friends, if you are still reading this and you haven’t sent me hate mail by now, here are some final thought. Think for yourself. Do not follow movements. Educate yourself from all angles. And don’t let others influence you without having done your own research. Role models can fail, we are all human. The truth is very hard to find in this day in age. And when we find error in our ways, we should be humble enough to self-correct.

Image above: “Fish stall at Borough Market, London” by Andrea Mai.

©2018 by Andrea Mai. All rights reserved.

(Go here for Part 1)

Last night I watched Funny Girl for the first time, and there was a scene in there where I got this intense visceral feeling that this scene was were P got the inspiration from when he wrote Dance 4 Me.  “I like it when I hear a knock on my door. You are standing there in your Christian Dior. Dark sunglasses in the pale moonlight. I like it when the scene is right. You can take your wrap and lay it on the chair. If anybody finds it I don’t care.” I’ve always imagined the Christian Dior as a blue blue dress. In the Funny Girl, there’s a scene where Fanny shows up at Nick’s room wearing a huge wrap covering her whole body. He offers to take it for her, and in dramatic fashion, she lets go of the wrap and drops it to the floor. He picks it up and places it on a nearby chair.

So I was reminded to post the second part of this list of DVDs Prince had.

I was able to find another photo from Paisley Park that showed more of Prince’s DVD collection. I couldn’t read all the titles from it, but I was able to make out some. There was also a photo of an Amazon packing list that showed some DVDs that were ordered.  Some of these titles do not have links because either they are not available, or I do not know which one it is, this were the case for the music related titles.

Three Amigos

The Way We Were

Coming To America

Funny Girl

Swept Away

The Nutty Professor

Art of Rap

Duke Ellington

Curtis Mayfield

Montreux Jazz Festival 1993 Al Green

Montreux Jazz Festival 1986 (?) Anita Baker and George Duke

The Painted Veil

The Dick Caveat Show, Rock Icons

Rhythm, Love and Soul

W.C. Fields Comedy Collective Volume 1

It’s a Wonderful Life

Dangerous Liaisons

Average White Band

Bend It Like Beckham

La Dolce Vita

Maceo Parker

Hot Hot Heat (?)

2046

If you are knowing of Prince’s lyrics, you will notice on the list, It’s a Wonderful Life. Prince made reference to that movie in All The Midnights In The World on the Planet Earth album, “Like Zuzu’s petals, a wonderful life the two of us shall lead”. He was referring to the flower petals that were in George’s pocket when he realized that he existed after the angel had shown him how things would have turned out if he was never born.

I wish there were more of these records from Paisley Park that would tell us more of what books and movies P was into. Any person who is seriously studying his work should be looking at the sort of materials he was looking at. That is where you are going to see what he was inspired by when he wrote his music. You can see that he was inspired by old movies and musicians from previous generations.

I know that he loved The Matrix movies. These are just the tiles I could read from the photos. There were a lot more DVD cases scattered around Paisley Park, but they were not legible in the photos. If you know of more film or book titles, I’d love to know.

I wish I could do a list of CDs, but they are too hard to read from the photos. I was able to identify one of them, which was A Decade Of Steely Dan. I get the sense that the kind of humour found in Steely Dan lyrics rubbed of on Prince.

Be sure to check out Part 1 if you missed it.

Updated December 2, 2019.

©2018 by Andrea Mai. All rights reserved.