Prince, Painter Pancakes... and me.
A story of legacy, a higher purpose and friendship.
I met Dan Lacey the day after Prince died. The heartbreak I was feeling was paralyzing me into a shock where life both stood still and moved rapidly in front of me completely out of control. I didn’t want to go, but after much begging, I had taken my daughter to the gate of Paisley Park. She was grieving, too and wanted to go. The gates and the lane in front of Paisley Park were filled with memorials, gawking trespassers, a whirlwind of activity and no familiar faces.
Except for one. A former Security Guard from all the parties was standing at the gate with a megaphone. For the sake of her privacy, I will call her Maria. Maria was yelling into the megaphone and trying hard to bring some semblance of order to the chaos, but it was breaking her apart. She kneeled to the ground and started to wail. I understood her deep pain and ran to be with her, but she was frightening my child.
Dan Lacey, or Painter Pancakes as many know him by, was also there that day. He was standing at the gate painting a beautiful, colorful portrait of Prince. I had talked to him just moments before and asked him why he was painting it upside down, he told me he could get better detail that way and asked if he could take my picture. He liked the reflection of the memorials in my glasses. He told me he was called to be there and paint. I didn’t understand that day, but life would have a way of revealing itself in the years following.
As I stood there that day, not knowing what to do, Dan came over to me and asked if he could help. I asked him to sit with Maria while I called another friend. I hugged my daughter tightly and called for reinforcements. My friend dropped everything to come and Dan promised to wait with Maria until help arrived. I left with my daughter and tried to tell her how wonderful it was that this stranger came to help and that everything was going to be ok because people are still good in the world.
From that day on, I visited Dan many times at Paisley Park and we became friends. He took up residency at the gate, the yard, the empty lot across the street and painted for months. He gave his paintings to schools, churches, libraries and people close to Prince. People took notice and began to donate to him. One month to the date after Prince died, the estate removed all of the memorials off the gates and asked everyone to go home.
Painter Pancakes did not go home. As the memorial went up and got taken down again and eventually moved to a small area of fence just off of Prince’s property, Daniel Lacey was there. He listened to people mourn for Prince and he cared for strangers every single day. These strangers became his friends and he became an iconic part of Prince’s legacy. He spent hours and hours every day painting, repairing and laminating tributes, cleaning up the area and caring for our grief. He became the keeper of the people’s legacy of Prince.
Astoundingly, Dan Lacey has never really been fan of Prince nor has he been inside of Paisley Park. He had had a few interactions with Prince years prior as detailed in a recent article in the Star Tribune:
“In 2000, he created a now-defunct Christian comic strip, “Faithmouse,” in which he once questioned how Prince could sue his fans for posting copyrighted videos online. Then he received a “weird message” on his blog: “Dan, u don’t know how it feels. One day u’ll be famous and then u’ll understand.”
“Yes, it was Prince.” –
The foreshadowing of this conversation feels prophetic, like so much of what Prince would say and do. It is hard to imagine this to all be just a simple coincidence.
I didn’t know it that day when I met Dan Lacey at the fence of Paisley Park, but that encounter was not by chance. It is an amazing, beautiful thing when you are called to be of service to a higher power, when you surrender to that calling and you go where you are called.
Dan Lacey was called to Paisley Park. In the beginning he gave his painting away and as time passed, he reluctantly took money for his paintings. Eventually he set up a small, quiet online shop. I don’t know how many paintings of Prince he painted in the last 6 ½ years, but it is a lot. He slowly became famous, but unlike a lot of artists that jumped on the bandwagon after Prince died to paint him and sell his image, Dan never did it for the fame or for the money.
Over the years I would see him spending hours and hours caring for the memorial fence and wonder “Why?” It isn’t because I questioned his sincerity, but it was because I felt there was a bigger reason. I never asked then and he never told me, but I still knew.
During this whole time, I never asked Dan to paint a painting for me. I bought some Etsy prints as gifts, I admired his work, but I didn’t want to be that person that was asking him to paint for me. I have never felt comfortable with asking people to give me things or do things for me. However, when a photo of mine of Paisley Park appeared in Time Magazine, I used the royalties to donate to certain people and I told them the money came from Prince, because in my mind… it had. I always felt like Prince made that happen for me and I never felt like it was my picture, but his. I used the money I got to do good things because that is what Prince taught me to do. One of the people I chose to give to was Dan Lacey. I made him promise not to tell anyone and I would not be telling you now if it were not so important to this story. I will get to that soon.
It has been rough as of late, life has taken a certain and unexpected turn for Dan when he began to have unexplained seizures. He ended up in the hospital and was diagnosed with an incurable brain tumor. Painter Pancakes is being called on for his toughest challenge in this life. True to who he is, he has lived out his last months with grace. Conceiving and painting and frantically trying to finish all of the divine creations that have come through his visions. Painting from his hospital bed, painting from his chemo treatments, frantically painting.
When I found out Dan was sick, I sent him a message. I asked him if he believed in God and if he had accepted Jesus as his Savior. Dan told me that he used to be a Christian, but that God didn’t love him because he was bisexual. We had long conversations about that, and I let him know that God loves all of his children, no matter what we do. I begged him to accept Jesus. I really wanted him to be saved. I felt a very strong calling to help him with this conflict.
I reached out to Dan this fall and offered to take him to Paisley Park one day. I thought a drive in my convertible might be nice. We made plans. Sometimes the best plans are the saddest lost moments. When Saturday came, Dan was too weak to go. We would go soon, he promised. Yet soon never came.
One day, Dan posted a painting he was in the middle of. It was a painting of me, standing at the gate of Paisley Park. The tears came quickly and I stopped and I prayed for Dan and I asked my friends and family to do the same. It was all I could do. I didn’t know if I would ever see him again, yet somehow I felt we would.
In November, Painter Pancakes tumbled down. He had developed a blood clot in his leg and nearly died. He entered the hospital and messaged me and asked me to come see him. I was wrecked because I did not think the hospital would allow visitors. I frantically messaged him. “Please accept Jesus as your savior, Dan. He is there for you and loves you and He will give you eternal life.”
No response.
For weeks.
Then last week I got a message again asking me to come see him so I immediately called the hospital and asked if he could have visitors. They told me he could see me. I had planned to go on Friday, but I didn’t sleep all night on Wednesday night and something compelled me to go sooner so on Thursday afternoon I drove to the hospital, armed with a book of Prince quotes, a purple paisley water bottle and a card. I just really needed to know Dan was saved.
When I got there Dan didn’t recognize me, he thought I was a nurse. His wife pulled me outside the room and told me things were not good, Dan would be moving to Hospice soon. I gave her a hug and she gave me permission to visit him. When I took off my mask for a moment to show him who I was he was so happy to see me!
“Come in! sit down!”
What happened next will stay with me for the rest of my life.
Dan looks very sick, his stomach is distended and full of blood. His arms, legs and torso are covered with deep purple bruises. He is hooked up to machines, he is pale and he is both very confused and very alert at the same time. His brain is on overdrive. He is aware that he is dying.
As soon as I took a seat a man appeared in the room. It was the Hospital Chaplain.
“What timing!” Dan exclaimed. “Please do come sit with my friend, Sara. She has come to pray with me!”
For the next hour the three of us sat and had deep conversations. Dan shared with me the story of why. Why he went to Paisley Park. He told me that as a child his parents were very abusive and as a result, he struggled his entire life. A few weeks before Prince died, Dan had been struggling with money. He did not know how he was going to pay for food. He was deep in his art and could not focus on anything but painting and it was very hard for him and his wife. Then he had a dream, about Prince. He said it was so vivid and real and colorful. In the dream he and his wife were at Walmart. They had their cart of food and went to the checkout, and they were unable to pay. In the dream, someone paid for his groceries. That someone was Prince.
So, on the day that Prince died, Dan Lacey went to Paisley Park to paint Prince a beautiful, colorful painting to thank him for being there when he needed someone. He didn’t go there to make art to sell, to become famous or to do anything but say thank you.
Yet… people showed up. The Prince family from all over the world showed up to grieve. Prince was more to us than a musical artist, he saved many of us in more ways than one. As we all showed up, there was Dan Lacey and we all felt called to him some way, somehow. I was just one of the people that were touched by Dan Lacey’s kindness. And it showed.
So as the years following Prince’s death unfolded, Dan Lacey found his forever family through Prince. I donated money to Dan… from Prince, as did many, many others… completing the prophecy that Dan had in his dream that Prince was there to help. Prince continued to help through us, his legacy of purple family. He compelled us to do the work of helping Dan and helping others who in return, helped us.
“Prince gave me this incredible, purple family from all over the world and I will forever be grateful.” Dan shared.
Dan then went on to tell us he has been having recent, vivid dreams of Prince. In these dreams, he would go back in time to when Jesus was born, when Jesus was on the cross, when Jesus was in the tomb and he was learning that it was all real. And right next to him in his dreams, is Prince.
I was beginning to understand that my connection to Dan, my need to tell him about Jesus and the calling for me to be there that day was much bigger than myself. For some reason I have had a lot of people come into my life before they die. I bring them to God. I always thought I was doing it out of fear of never seeing them again. It has always been a burden to me and I have never understood that until now. I realize now that nothing is by chance. This realization that this is exactly how things are supposed to be has been overwhelmingly healing for me.
During our talk Dan expressed a lot of anxiety for not being able to finish all of the paintings he has promised to do.
“Dan, look at how Prince was able to come and help you, eventhough he is no longer here on earth.” I told him. “You are going to have eternal life and your purpose does not end when this life is over, you can continue to help people from the next place that you go.”
He looked at me with wide eyes. It connected. It healed him. He told me it instantly made him feel better.
The Chaplain left after we had all talked for hours but before he did the three of us held hands and we prayed. Dan Lacey has been saved. This is not a sad story. This is a joyful story. It is a beautiful story of life, love for one another and how God uses us to heal when we show up when we are called.
After the Chaplain left, I stayed for a while and let Dan talk. He kept talking to me and then telling someone else in the room about me and our wonderful breakthrough we just had together. When I asked him who was there he said:
“It’s Prince! Prince is here with us. Can you see him? He is standing right there!”
Yes Dan, I can see him…Prince is here with us. He was there with us at that gate the day that we met, and he is here with us now. He is always with us. He is helping me, he is helping you and he is helping us to help each other.
Prince never left us, Dan… and neither will you.