A missed Prince album review led to a critic's unexpected firing
A few months after his death, in September 2016, Prince's final album was released. I was commissioned by a major German weekly newspaper to "review" it—as we music critics say. To do so, I needed to sign up for a specialized streaming service in the U.S. that provides advance access to music for journalists. I was running late, but I wasn't worried. Normally, this kind of thing is quick. Not this time. The service was mysteriously "down"—because of a "holiday," to be precise: Rosh Hashanah. Apparently, the stream was run by Orthodox Jews.
Rosh Hashanah is the two-day Jewish New Year celebration marking the birth of the universe, a time when the shofar is blown, sweet raisin bread is eaten, and work—including, it seems, maintaining internet servers—is forbidden. That's how I first learned of this spiritual spectacle. I ended up filing my piece with a painful delay, and not long after, I lost my job at the big weekly. Lovely.
Let's not mistake my internal eye-roll for antisemitism. It's really just a touch of anti-Abrahamism—the kind that turns atheists into atheists in the first place. If you want to observe Eid al-Fitr, Eid al-Adha, or Lailat al-Qadr with sincerity and fervor, you have my secular blessing. But personally, I couldn't care less about any of them—just as I couldn't care less about Christmas, Easter, or Pentecost. (For the record, that's a solid three meters sixty of indifference.)
Calendar Confusion
Well, that's not entirely true. Christian holidays are the most ubiquitous—even people who couldn't care less about religion use them as default reference points. I neither can nor want to remember when exactly someone was blessed or resurrected. When are our friends coming to visit? "On Good Friday!" When were we planning that motorcycle trip in the Vosges? "Over Pentecost!" When's my sister flying to Tenerife? "On Ascension Day!" What the hell? What's the actual date?
These days, I fight back. When exactly did we book those opera tickets again? "Oh, on the Immaculate Conception! You forgot? Or was it the Annunciation?" When were we supposed to go hiking? "Palm Sunday or Maundy Thursday. Could've been Trinity Sunday or Epiphany!" Isn't the big spring clean coming up soon? "Of course! On Corpus Christi, Eternity Sunday, and the Day of Repentance and Prayer!" And when was the Feast of Our Lady of Jerusalem again? "Exactly when? On the Feast of Our Lady of Jerusalem, obviously!"
By the way, Prince's final album dropped on September 14—the Exaltation of the Holy Cross—and, naturally, it was a revelation.
