My friend Jon asked our friend group to write something about Devin for a book he is putting together of his artwork, here is mine:
I knew my friend Devin (It is spelled
with an 'o' but I always insisted on using an 'i' for some reason)
since we were five or six years old and in kindergarten. He came over
once, ate his sandwich weird, played a gameboy game, and his mom was
weird. He always sat next to me on the bus but one day he got on and
walked right past and sat in the back. When I looked I could see him
peeking back through the gap between the seats and the windows
smiling. Don't know why he did that.
He didn't like me and actively made
fun of me after that. I remember we were at a mutual friend's
birthday party and he asked when I was going to leave, he found me so
offensive. Called me fat, interrupted me talking to a friend so he
could talk to them. He remembered this when we were in our twenties
and sincerely apologized, he didn't know why he did it either.
We didn't start hanging out again
until we were around fourteen. I invited him over to watch The Matrix
and he skateboarded down and we watched it. That was the first of a
long tradition of watching movies, anime, shows, playing video games,
and analyzing the stories while coming up with our own. An activity
our growing friend group would be largely based around. Some of my
favorite memories are of watching or playing something for a while,
then pausing to go outside and smoke cigarettes and talk about the
story or gameplay thus far.
The whole rest of the time I knew him
he had his sacred “Gadium” project. A story that changed names
and concepts so many times that I don't even know what it is or what
medium it was intended to be made in. There was a core of Kale (who
was Devin) Tida (who was me) and Leona (who was usually a fantasy
girlfriend for Kale) but the story always morphed dramatically after
he saw an anime or played a JRPG he really liked.
I watched him descend into drugs and
alcohol. I went over to his house after he caused a problem while
drinking the night before. He was drunk again and sat down on the
front steps and said “Of course I hate this.” All I said was “I
believe you.” and his whole demeanor changed, like he was expecting
me to lay into him or chide him for his choices. The only advice I
gave him was maybe sometime before getting drunk take ten minutes
first to write down what was coming up for him, maybe find for
himself some glimpse of why.
He lived with his mom behind an
abandoned empty grocery store next to the coffee shop where I went to
draw so I saw him everyday for a time. He'd come in and ask if I
wanted to sit with him outside while he smoked and I always did even
though I didn't smoke anymore.
Watching him become homeless was like
watching him die in slow motion. When he had nothing, even though I
hadn't accomplished anything with my art, he said “But you're doing
it, you're doing what we all talked about doing.” That always meant
a lot to me. I think about it all the time. And I repeated it while I
lowered a handful of his ashes into the water in the bottom of a hole
I dug at the edge of the tide on a beach whose water he always
admired.
