January 14th: He Died Yesterday

Most people on this side of culture are aware of the events of the past week. The world lost two great men, two of my own personal heroes. David Bowie and Alan Rickman. This isn't a post about David Bowie. I loved and love his work and his energy, but this isn't about him. 

This is about Severus Snape, Hans Gruber, someone who taught me more than I could possibly imagine. 

So I wanted to say, to scream, in a relatively silent, public forum of my own creation, thank you and sleep well to a man who taught me more about creativity and integrity than I knew I'd ever learned. He scared me and inspired me and I am forever grateful. 

When I got that text from my mum last night saying "I'm sorry, Alan Rickman died," I smiled and then I sank and then I gave in and I cried. I don't deal with strong emotion well, my automatic response to hide behind a classless though regrettably automatic grin. I don't deal with death well. I don't deal with very much very well if I'm truly honest. 

But once we die we're finished, our job is done and we have no more use of things left on the earth. Mourning and memories are a live mans game. So we'll remember. We'll remember someone who taught and inspired us. We'll remember the wise man we saw in interviews, the discipline he showed on stage and screen. We'll remember how it feels to believe we know a man implicitly without ever having met him. We're told by his friends and family that he is, he was, a strong man, a wise man, a funny man, and a great man. So we'll remember that. Always. 

Always. 

Xx