“How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore”

“How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore” is a Prince ballad that gives Lionel Essrog a way to experience both the abrupt rhythms he associates with Tourette syndrome and the grief he struggles to contain after Frank Minna’s death. Its function shifts from symptom relief to mourning: in the candlelight, Lionel plays it on repeat while preparing a ritual meal for the man who never got one.

Sound and Symptom Relief

Lionel describes the song as a slow, melancholy ballad, with piano beneath Prince’s aching falsetto. Its unhurried mood does not erase what Lionel recognizes in Prince’s music: sudden shrieks and silences, compulsive precision, and abrupt changes. The song’s tension between a strolling piano line and startling interruptions makes it, for Lionel, a balm for his Tourette syndrome.

That response belongs to a longer history of listening. Lionel first recognized something familiar in Prince’s music when he heard “Kiss” on the radio in Frank Minna’s car in 1986. He later collected Prince’s records, particularly elaborate remixes, and found that listening could relieve his symptoms. “How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore” brings that musical affinity into a more subdued register: its melancholy is slow, but its precise breaks and silences still seem to Lionel to give his syndrome a form outside his own mind.

A Mourning Ritual for Frank Minna

After Frank Minna’s death, Lionel places a candle on his table beside Frank’s beeper and watch, then prepares food and a drink. He cuts a sandwich into six equal pieces and arranges them evenly. The measured preparation gives him a ritual of his own, and the song becomes its accompaniment: he puts it on repeat and sits by the candle, waiting until he can cry.

Only after the tears come does Lionel eat. He alternates the six portions with sips of Walker Red, making the meal a substitute for the last meal Frank did not get. Lionel’s thoughts turn to the body and blood, though he is far from religious feeling; the ritual draws on religious imagery without expressing religious belief. Grief, food, drink, and music meet in an improvised act of remembrance.

Repetition and Its Ending

The song continues through the meal, finishing and starting again as the candle burns down. Lionel counts as he eats: first three, then four. Counting the sandwich portions and weeping are, at that point, the extent of his symptoms. When he reaches six, he stops the music, blows out the candle, and goes to bed.

The song therefore does more than express sadness. Its repeat supplies a structure for a loss that Lionel cannot otherwise settle: the track returns, each portion is counted, and the meal ends only when the ritual reaches its final number. The sequence gives his mourning a temporary shape while preserving the distinction between his grief for Frank and the compulsions that accompany it.