The artist currently known as amazing

Prince has left Los Angeles; long live Prince. He was at Staples Center until last Saturday night on what seemed like an artist-in-residence program or some kind of rock ‘n’ roll Fulbright -- but which, when I checked, turned out only to be five shows sprinkled over three months: a date March 29, then another two shows May 26 and 28, and finally two more, on June 3 and 5.

Five shows in three months doesn’t sound like much, but this ignores Prince’s aura, which tends to linger, like something in the air, particularly among the womenfolk. Talking about him, they glow, and their bodies go limp. Their voices get funny and their eyes seek out a middle horizon, where I imagine Prince is standing, in a field of flowers, wearing his guitar and something tapered and frilly in the lapel area.

I have observed this Prince-ification in a remarkable array of women -- single and angry, single and not so angry, married, straight, gay, what have you.

“Prince is amazing,” they say.

“Tell me what you’re feeling,” I say.

“It’s just, you know, Prince,” they say softly. “He’s amazing. He’s an artist.”

“Yes, you’ve stated that before.”

I imagine it was like this with Sinatra or Elvis. Every generation has one. The unfathomable aphrodisiac in human form, the man who to men (or some men, anyway) just sings songs. Saying you don’t get it, or dismissing Prince as a geek, is tantamount to not understanding what women want.

Prince, then (and here I refer to Prince less as an individual than a state of mind, an altered consciousness), is bigger than just the person Prince. Or maybe what I mean to say is that Prince has superpowers. Imagine, if you will, that you are in couples therapy, and Prince is the therapist. Don’t you just imagine that whatever was wrong in your relationship Prince would fix, with a few choice words, a discreet smacking of the lips and an impromptu ballad on his guitar?

I’m not sure, but I think that’s the kind of power he has.

It has taken me a while to understand this. I sat there as a freshman in college and watched “Purple Rain” and tried to glean from Prince all that there was to glean. I saw the movie again. I could feel the music; I observed his methodology vis a vis women. But perhaps I studied the image too hard, or took it too literally, it now occurs to me. For here was this little guy, it seemed, sharp-eyed and wearing makeup, with a pencil mustache and wearing a purple suit. If you are white and of medium build, what are you supposed to do with this?

Then he changed his name to a symbol and entered a more experimental phase, I am told. I wouldn’t know; I had moved wholeheartedly into what a number of people have called “music to slit your wrists to.”

“I think of him as a modern Mozart,” says a friend who went to two of Prince’s Staples Center shows. She went on about his dancing, his singing, his songwriting, his ability to gather a wide range of people (black, white, young, old, gay, straight) in a 20,000-seat arena, united in song and joy and love.

Also, she was impressed by his backside, down there, below where the spine ends.

And she was heartbroken that she couldn’t figure out a way to get into the House of Blues, where Prince did an after-show Saturday night. Apparently the whole time Prince was in L.A. on his Staples Center Fulbright he was also doing these late-late shows on the Sunset Strip. Because Prince doesn’t just do a concert and repair to his boudoir. He continues to spread the love. He’s a giver.

A friend, a male friend -- it seems it really isn’t just women under the influence of Prince; it’s men too -- attended a number of his Staples Center shows. He also flew to Vegas to see Prince and attended several of his House of Blues after-shows, including last Saturday night’s. This is what he reports:

“It was insane.”

“Insane or amazing?” I asked. “Because amazing seems to be the consensus on Prince. Rather than insane.”

“He opened with Zeppelin’s ‘Whole Lotta Love,’ ” my friend said.

I could hear that thing in his voice and thought, “You too?” He came onstage at 2:15 and played until 4, my friend said. He called what ensued a two-hour dance party. I asked him to describe the scene better. He couldn’t. You had to be there, was the impression I got.

I pictured the House of Blues that next morning, the Prince aura still in the room as the tourists filed in for the gospel brunch. I could be wrong, but I don’t think Prince hung around for the gospel brunch. By then he was gone, into the ether, arguably his most tangible form.

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Paul Brownfield can be reached at paul.brownfield@latimes.com.