An Ode to my Brother
To my brother, my friend, my companion, my player two, my roommate, and so many other things. I remember the first day we met. Sitting down in The Little Theater at Redwood, our first day of high-school. I didn’t know anyone in my class, and Berko forced all of us into the first three rows. I was nervous, but you sat next to me and struck up a conversation. I found it calming to have someone to talk to, and later that day we would find ourselves together again in 7th period Spanish with Ms. Civano. I remember you sharing your headphones with me while we worked on our projects, showing me music and talking as if we had known each other our whole lives, instead of 6 weeks.
We’ve had our differences in the past, there’s no denying it. I’m a stubborn son of a bitch, and living with me for two years, beds 3 feet apart, wasn’t a cruise all the time. There isn’t anything we haven’t been able to work through though. I remember sitting in my basement in the heart of Kentfield, shadowed away under deep oak tree’s and the rolling hills, drinking cheap Vodka and tossing coins at pizza boxes. I remember long drives through the dead of night, playing music so loud we might wake up the sleeping souls of San Francisco across the water. Parking just under the bridge and walking the cavernous tunnels that stretched for miles, was quite regular for us on those early weekends when we were 17. Through those many miles and trails we’ve wandered I’ve never laughed harder.
Your spirit is infectious, and laughter comes easily when all you have to do is choke on it, trying to rehearse for a scene we never ended up performing. I know one of these day’s we’ll end up bringing Felix and Oscar to the stage, but who truly knows when we’ll be able to get through a single read through without breaking character. Your creativity inspires me when I find myself at a microphone, making terrible songs that will never see the light of day. Even when something as silly as a song about a fast food sounds good, I know the serious things will be knockouts.
I won’t lie, I’m still kind of pissed about the stagecraft final. I spent probably 80 hours working on my model, and you threw yours together 30 minutes before the last class and got pretty much the same grade. Now that’s some BS. Your ability to think on the fly, and work off the cuff has always been something I’m quite jealous of. We’ve both done our share of improv work, chasing that cheese crown, only to get shutdown by the same terrible game 5 times in a row. Though I have always felt that you soared high above what I was capable of when it came to improv.
I guess that’s what I enjoy most about our relationship. Every time we get together, it’s always jokes, all the time. The improv and endless bag of inside jokes to pull from might seem like a foreign language to anyone listening to our conversations, but its perfectly coherent to us. You’ve always pushed me to be the best version of myself. Ever since we shared that muted white room with the terrible desks and awful stove, it has been a joy to drop in every so often and see how different we’ve become, but it never feels strange. I might have missed Will 3.0, or even Will 4.0 or whatever we’re on now, but seeing you come into your own is exciting. Now that our paths are soon to cross again, with you moving back to Los Angeles, I can’t help but be stoked to see what kind of stupid things we will make, and incoherent babbling we’ll come up with along the way. One of these day’s I’ll take you to Chicago and show you the whole world I found. Until that day, it’s time to Saturate the hell out of some photos, and talk about nonsense for 3 hours on the phone. My brother, my guy, my dude, welcome back to Los Angeles, and I can’t wait to get some of that insane pastrami down Adams St.
