If we could paint more colours on our walls

Hey populace,

I've been wanting to write this past week, but thought it would not be appropriate without mentioning someone who profoundly touched my life, steered it in a direction I'm forever grateful of, and is one of the only people I have ever truly respected.
Things slipped in to place quite suddenly because of him.

A really close friend of mine, Arun Stewart, died in a freak accident last Friday, the 30th. He was going to a party in Beijing, China (he was studying abroad) on an apartment rooftop, and he lost his footing and slipped and fell and died. Just like that. One instant, there. Another instant, I'm sure he was dead without a pulse or form.
And at first it really upset me because that's a stupid way to die. He was going to a party, for G-d's sake. And he had done rooftop parties a thousand times before, to what he'd told me if I remember right. And he lived almost right across the hall from me my freshmyn year at Brown, and taught me what music was, and made me think about so many things (as I made him think about a lot of stuff too, and generally called him out). He was just an amazing guy, and he was a really good friend of mine, which he may never know. I even tried to (and maybe, possibly had some lovely part in) set him up with one of my other close friends at brown. But I talk about him all the time, even here in Brazil. And he was really important to me at brown.
So I was really upset about it, and couldn't make sense of it. I've never had a close friend die before. I could always hear him banging out on his bass guitar and making awful music with his friends, and he basically introduced me to smoking and thinking, and showed me some of the most beautiful lyrics I've ever heard. He would sit me down in his room at Brown and show me songs that he just knew I would love, and we'd talk about it, and eat lunch, and not once, at any point, did I feel pressured to say something around him, or be his friend. He was one of the most accepting people I've ever had the privilege to be around, which is hard for me to admit, because I'm tough to impress at times. But he genuinely impressed me with the amount of things he taught me and made me think about and showed me.
He loved rap music, and one of the songs he showed me was an amazing song called "Don't Ever Fucking Question That". And it, especially after I heard, made me realize a lot of things about myself through his influence.

"Enough to hold you to the brightest of lights, to place you dangerously close to that sun, enough to acknowledge the flaws you can't ignore and recognize the cause of what's done is done, more than enough to put my name behind my ideals,
and neglect my logic twice daily..." - Don't Ever Fucking Question That, by Atmosphere


What I took away from him was that life is too short to be bothered. By yourself and the limitations you impose on yourself and your dreams, by people around you who bring you down in your own glory, by your surroundings which are nothing but crafted by G-d. You can't be bothered, and you should always put into your body, do with your body, and relate with your body what drives your wildest dreams. Because you can "dream a little dream or you can live a little dream, [and] I'd rather live it, 'cause dreamers always chase but never get it" ("No Regrets", by Aesop Rock).
And I wanted to ask G-d all of these questions. Like, what happens to people when they die? And who's in charge of the universe when all of the bodies have to get swept away from peoples' memories, like crime scenes, no fingerprints but only memorial services, no suspects but only receptions and songs that remind you of conversations you had a long time ago. I don't have many answers, only guesses.
But I also wanted to tell everyone exactly how much they meant to me from now on.

So, I'm sorry if I haven't kept in touch with some of you as much as I should have. The reality is, I thrive on good conversation and quiet magnificence in company, and I get anxious about planning it, or forgetful, and don't get around to that e-mail, or that phone call at times. But I really appreciate my family and my friends. And I'm truly and sincerely dedicated to fixing that from now on. So please, know that if you fall into one of those two categories, I really do love you and care about you. I spoke about Arun so much while I was here, and I had not even really spoken to him more than a paragraph in the past year we were at Brown together before he went abroad. But my friend Amina even told me once that he must have been important to [me], wasn't he? And he very surely was. He gave me a hug the last time I remember seeing him, out of nowhere, without saying anything, and I almost started crying. It meant the world to me. And imagine, if I spoke about him a lot and didn't even talk to him a lot, those of you who are close enough to me to care about what I'm doing here, I surely think about often. There's just too little love that I've given out over my short time in this world in order to expect what I receive, and Arun was the brightest of lights, and I have spent most of my time agonizing over the things I haven't done and the flaws I carry, while I lack the reflection of what I could do in that same time to help what I love the most.

I love the people who help me in my life, of which there are many.
And I love the right to love, and the right to be happy, and the right to live without worrying about what you need.
I really love the world that we live in, and all of its capabilities for truth, and compassion, and care, and we shouldn't ever, ever fucking question what the world has to offer us and what we can do in it.

I love you, Arun. Rest in peace with everything you've ever been and will become in the future of our universe.


If only I could paint more colours on my walls to make a better picture of everything you meant to me. You just can never paint acceptance, you feel it. You never were a sentence to me, not one lyric you showed me, not one sentence you gave me, not one caution you proved to me, never once did you stop giving me ideas to use, and mangle, and put back together as if they were my own.
You lived more in 21 years than I have lived through every powerful person I know, every piece of logic I try to prove, you recurred in my poems more than you did at my shows, and you were every colour I can think of.
I never expected to cry after someone died after my mother, because she meant the world to me. And maybe it still wasn't the same. Maybe I cried with her because she wouldn't be there for me, to care for me, to do what mothers should do and be around for their daughters. With only messages on the internet as proof for you being gone, I cried for who you are and what an absence of every colour you ever spoke that I felt when you left this physical world. You were more intelligent than I wanted you to be, and more persistent of a person with your voice than I could ever hope to be, so thank G-d that instead of sentences, I have ideas, and instead of colours, I have memories of what you sounded like when you lived around me. I'll try to paint wherever I go with the dreams I'll live, instead of wonder what it could have been like to dream more.