“Kiss”

“Kiss” is the Prince song that gives Lionel Essrog his first powerful sense that music can inhabit the territory of his Tourette syndrome. Heard in 1986 from the radio in Frank Minna’s Cadillac, its abrupt alternation of silence and explosive sound seems to move his condition outside his brain and into the air. The song becomes more than a favorite: it is a form of recognition, and the beginning of a musical refuge Lionel actively seeks out and collects.

First Hearing and Recognition

Before hearing “Kiss,” music had made little impression on Lionel. He recalls having encountered songs that briefly approached a feeling of claustrophobic discomfort followed by release, but none had seemed to occupy that emotional and rhythmic terrain completely. “Kiss,” by contrast, strikes him as a song built from the qualities his mind knows intimately: guitar and voice twitching and throbbing within sharply defined limits, then falling silent or bursting out. Its order is not smooth or soothing in a conventional sense. The precision of its abrupt changes is what makes it recognizable to him.

The song’s effect is bodily and immediate. Lionel describes its beat as tormented and squeaky, and experiences it as a place where his Tourette syndrome can seem to live outside his own brain. That shift matters: instead of treating his symptoms only as private mental and physical disruptions, he can hear something in the world that seems to share their pattern. The music does not cure or explain the condition. It gives it an audible counterpart, allowing Lionel to surrender to a rhythm that feels familiar without being confined to his body.

The Cadillac and Frank Minna’s Response

The first hearing takes place in the passenger seat of Frank Minna’s Cadillac, making the song part of Lionel’s early musical memory and part of his experience with his mentor. Frank tells him to turn it down; Lionel answers that he likes it. Frank then associates the music with what Danny listens to, using Danny as code for a racial judgment. The exchange places Lionel’s response beside Frank’s dismissive one: what Frank hears as irritating or socially marked, Lionel hears as an unusually exact fit for his own sensory and emotional experience.

The contrast does not turn Frank into a simple antagonist in the episode. His objection is brief, while Lionel’s interest outlasts the ride. The difference is between a passing dismissal and a recognition that reorganizes Lionel’s attention. After hearing the single, Lionel knows he wants to own it. The song’s importance is therefore established not only by its sound but by what he does next: he searches for it, buys it, and finds ways to listen again.

Finding and Collecting the Song

The next day, Lionel goes to J&R Music World to find “Kiss.” His encounter with the salesman includes needing the word funk explained to him, a small detail that shows how new and unclassified this musical interest is for him. He buys a cassette and a Walkman, but the version he acquires is not simply the radio single. It is a seven-minute extended single, with the familiar song followed by four additional minutes of chopping, grunting, hissing, and slapping sounds.

Lionel hears that appended passage as if it were a private message confirming what his brain has recognized in the song. The sounds extend the qualities already central to his first impression: repetition, interruption, and sharply differentiated bursts. His response is intensely personal, but it grows into a practice. He begins collecting Prince records, with particular interest in elaborate, frenetic remixes on CD singles. What starts with one song heard by chance becomes a sustained search for music whose formal patterns can accommodate his experience.

Prince’s Music as Relief and Form

Lionel says Prince’s music calms him as much as masturbation or a cheeseburger, and that while listening he is exempt from his symptoms. The comparison is deliberately physical and ordinary: music is not presented as a lofty cure but as a powerful source of immediate relief. At the same time, Lionel connects that relief to the way Prince works with musical and verbal material. Prince can worry variations out of a single phrase, and Lionel regards that process as the closest thing in art to his condition.

“Kiss” consequently serves as both a particular song and a key to Lionel’s broader account of listening. Its bounded, restless movement lets a private condition take on an audible form; the extended version makes that resemblance more pronounced, and the records he collects carry it forward. The decisive significance of the song lies in this double experience: it offers relief from symptoms while also making their rhythms feel legible somewhere beyond Lionel himself.