When Peacocks Cry
What if Prince had met Flannery O'Connor? An exercise in artificial intelligence and human imagination
Today (June 7, 2026) would have marked the 68th birthday of Prince Rogers Nelson, but he departed this earth ten years ago.
Apparently, Prince was raised Seventh Day Adventist and became an observant Jehovah’s Witness in his later years. (Both denominations emerged in the aftermath of the "Great Disappointment" of 1844. William Miller, a Baptist preacher, predicted that Jesus Christ would physically return to Earth on October 22, 1844. When this event failed to occur, the movement splintered.)
For some reason, Prince’s sensibilities seem more Catholic to me than Jehovah’s Witness. But that might just be my bias as a Catholic.
Though I lived much of my life just a few miles down the road from Paisley Park in Chanhassen, Minnesota — incidentally, his studio was built on land that had formerly been my grandfather’s horse farm and one of the first places my parents lived their married life together — I never met Prince.
No one knows if Prince was familiar with the work of Catholic novelist Flannery O’Connor . But something in me believes he would have found in her a kindred spirit. Yesterday, I decided to put Prince in conversation with Flannery via the magic of artificial intelligence:
Setting: A quiet corner of some eternal Southern porch at dusk. Spanish moss hangs like purple veils. Flannery O’Connor sits in a wicker chair, crutches leaning beside her, a glass of iced tea sweating in her hand. Prince, in a lavender suit and ruffled shirt, perches on the railing, one heeled boot tapping an invisible rhythm. A peacock struts past them both.
Flannery O’Connor: Mr. Nelson, I’ve been reading your lyrics the way some read scripture. All that talk of doves and rain and little red Corvettes. You ever worry you’re giving the devil too much silk to wear?
Prince: Miss O’Connor, the devil can wear whatever he wants. I just play the music loud enough that even he has to dance in the light. You wrote about people getting saved in the worst possible ways. I sing about the same thing. Only difference is I put a backbeat on it.
Flannery: (laughing dryly) A backbeat won’t save anybody. Grace comes like a freight train with bad brakes. Or a bull. Or, in your case, maybe a purple motorcycle.
Prince: Grace got a good groove, though. You ever notice how the Spirit don’t come in straight lines? He comes in 7/8 time, off-beat, just when you think the song’s over. I been chasing Him since I was a boy in a one-room house in North Minneapolis. Same way you chased Him with those peacocks and your typewriter.
Flannery: My peacocks scream like demons at sunrise. Your guitar screams like angels falling. I reckon we’re in the same business: making the comfortable uncomfortable. Only you do it in sequins.
Prince: Sequins catch the light. People need to see the light before they’ll admit they’re in the dark. You ever hear “The Cross”? Not the one on the hill—the one I wrote. Same wood. Same blood. Just got a different tempo.
Flannery: I like that one. Reminds me of my Misfit. Both of you understand that the truth don’t always arrive polite. Sometimes it arrives wearing heels and a halo made of neon.
Prince: (smiling, eyes half-closed) You Catholic writers always talking about the body and the blood. I just put the body in motion and let the blood catch up. Love, sex, God—same fire, different names. People scared of all three.
Flannery: They should be. Fire purifies. Most folks prefer to stay lukewarm. I wrote about grandmothers getting their necks wrung so maybe, just maybe, they’d see Christ in the face of the man who killed them. You made a whole career out of making folks confront the holy in the profane. We’re both terrible dinner guests, I suspect.
Prince: I’d rather be a terrible dinner guest than a boring one. Boring is the real sin. You ever dance, Miss Flannery?
Flannery: Only when the lupus lets me. And even then, it’s more of a dignified hobble toward the inevitable.
Prince: Then let me play something for you. (He mimes picking up a guitar, fingers moving silently.) This one’s in E minor. Feels like Georgia at twilight. Feels like redemption with a little dirt on it.
Flannery: (closing her eyes, listening to the silent music) Not bad, Prince. Not bad at all. Almost makes a body believe the Kingdom might arrive wearing a little glitter.
Prince: It already has. We just gotta keep playing till everybody hears it.
The peacock screams once, a wild, beautiful sound that could be either damnation or glory. Neither of them flinches. They both smile, as if they’ve heard it before.
Amused, I took this conversation and returned to AI to ask what a musical tribute by Prince to Flannery might have sounded like. Here’s the result:
Flannery O’Connor died at the age of 39, and Prince at 57. They only overlapped for six short years on this planet. Who knows what epiphanies of beauty could have been had their lives been longer, or if their paths had overlapped? Then again: Who knows what epiphanies of beauty have never appeared to us, but are hidden in the heart of God, only to be witnessed on the other side of the veil?
Surely Prince and Flannery have gotten acquainted over iced tea by now.