I've sort of been avoiding posting anything here. In part, because Kye was a lovely and magnanimous person who I'm sure was important and influential to a lot of people, and I'm always a bit hesitant to share emotional thoughts while there are eyes around. But in larger part, because Kye was a huge part of a brief but important part of my life, somebody who I attach some incredibly empowering emotions and feelings to. In one of my favorite books, Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino, there is the following passage:
"Every time I describe a city, I am saying something about Venice. Memory’s Images, once they are fixed in words, are erased. Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at once, if I speak of it. Or perhaps, speaking of other cities, I have already lost it."
I feel this so intensely when I think and speak about Kye. He was this glowing source of energy in a time of growth and self-discovery for me. We lived together in St. Andrews, sharing a flat, me as a first year student and he as a third year exchange. We instantly clicked together. I had, for most of my of teenage years, struggling with self-confidence and self-image, and only begun to leave those thoughts behind the year prior. I was eager to explore myself and have new experiences, and so was he. He was something of an engine behind me, somebody who never even imagined he couldn't do something, and somebody who never imagined you couldn't do it with him. He was always pushing himself, and you, to chase what you want, to believe in your own abilities, and to see the world around you for as complicated and beautiful as it was. But more amazingly it wasn’t with words so much as with his sheer presence. His energy and drive just to experience life and meet new people and see new things had a way of punching straight through your preconceptions, so thoroughly it was sometimes disorienting, and definitely often frustrating, but it always carried the tinges of respect and perspective that made you know he was just having fun pushing you and the conversation. He was a stellar friend, and he brought out the best in me in ways I only dimly suspected could happen and forms I wasn’t sure were there.
But I mentioned memory for a reason. For all of our talks and drinking and traveling, it’s hard for me to tell any specific story. These memories are so important to me, and so infused with emotions and perspective I often struggle to come by myself, that I just don’t want to put them into words. For me, attaching language to them removes that emotional, nebulous, almost dream-like quality that they carry. It weakens or even severs those emotional tendons that attach them so firmly to my soul and self. For as brief as our time together was, Kye was just too important to me to allow that to happen. But… there is one short story I have shared before with others who knew him, and it just so happens to be one of my favorite memories of him, and so I’ll share it here:
Four of us were taking a road trip up to and around the isle of Skye. It was Kye, myself (American), Stamatis (greek), and Patrick (scottish.) After a night or two of drinking, our time on the isle was coming to an end, and the morning we were to leave we decided to do at least some sightseeing. We couldn’t come all this way just to drink, right? So we asked the bnb clerk downstairs about sights nearby, and she pointed us to a quick hike 15 minutes up the road, a quick hike that was supposed to be gorgeous. So we drove up and got started. It was a March morning in coastal scotland, so it was wet, muddy, misty in every direction. We were all hungover, dressed casually, and 40 minutes into this “15 minute hike” it was clear this was a lot more than we had thought. We reach this flat field, beautiful in the Scottish mist, and we pause to rest a bit. We can’t see much, but suddenly in front of us the mist parts a bit and we see this muddy path turns what seemed like 60 degrees up, and vanished a ways into the fog. Collectively, we decided enough was enough, we were turning back. Except for Kye. He wanted to keep going, and he said “Come on guys, if we stop now think about how much we’ll regret it! We’ll never live it down.” And Patrick turned to him and said “Mate, you’re talking to a Greek, a Scot, and an American. The fact that we came this far today is enough of an accomplishment for AT LEAST today.” We laughed, and turned back. It was only years later that I remembered that the path we were on was to the Old Man at Storr, the legendary rock formation, and Kye was almost certainly right all along.
Unfortunately the years after he left St Andrews were... turbulent for me, and over time I lost sight of that energy he brought out in me, but it's resurfaced now with this awful news and I hope to use it to keep his memory and legacy alive in my life, and pass it on to those around me. If I can succeed in brightening even one person the way that Kye did for me in that year, then I have lived a life worth living. Thank you Kye, and godspeed my friend.
I've sort of been avoiding posting anything here. In part, because Kye was a lovely and magnanimous person who I'm sure was important and influential to a lot of people, and I'm always a bit hesitant to share emotional thoughts while there are eyes around. But in larger part, because Kye was a huge part of a brief but important part of my life, somebody who I attach some incredibly empowering emotions and feelings to. In one of my favorite books, Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino, there is the following passage:
"Every time I describe a city, I am saying something about Venice. Memory’s Images, once they are fixed in words, are erased. Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at once, if I speak of it. Or perhaps, speaking of other cities, I have already lost it."
I feel this so intensely when I think and speak about Kye. He was this glowing source of energy in a time of growth and self-discovery for me. We lived together in St. Andrews, sharing a flat, me as a first year student and he as a third year exchange. We instantly clicked together. I had, for most of my of teenage years, struggling with self-confidence and self-image, and only begun to leave those thoughts behind the year prior. I was eager to explore myself and have new experiences, and so was he. He was something of an engine behind me, somebody who never even imagined he couldn't do something, and somebody who never imagined you couldn't do it with him. He was always pushing himself, and you, to chase what you want, to believe in your own abilities, and to see the world around you for as complicated and beautiful as it was. But more amazingly it wasn’t with words so much as with his sheer presence. His energy and drive just to experience life and meet new people and see new things had a way of punching straight through your preconceptions, so thoroughly it was sometimes disorienting, and definitely often frustrating, but it always carried the tinges of respect and perspective that made you know he was just having fun pushing you and the conversation. He was a stellar friend, and he brought out the best in me in ways I only dimly suspected could happen and forms I wasn’t sure were there.
But I mentioned memory for a reason. For all of our talks and drinking and traveling, it’s hard for me to tell any specific story. These memories are so important to me, and so infused with emotions and perspective I often struggle to come by myself, that I just don’t want to put them into words. For me, attaching language to them removes that emotional, nebulous, almost dream-like quality that they carry. It weakens or even severs those emotional tendons that attach them so firmly to my soul and self. For as brief as our time together was, Kye was just too important to me to allow that to happen. But… there is one short story I have shared before with others who knew him, and it just so happens to be one of my favorite memories of him, and so I’ll share it here:
Four of us were taking a road trip up to and around the isle of Skye. It was Kye, myself (American), Stamatis (greek), and Patrick (scottish.) After a night or two of drinking, our time on the isle was coming to an end, and the morning we were to leave we decided to do at least some sightseeing. We couldn’t come all this way just to drink, right? So we asked the bnb clerk downstairs about sights nearby, and she pointed us to a quick hike 15 minutes up the road, a quick hike that was supposed to be gorgeous. So we drove up and got started. It was a March morning in coastal scotland, so it was wet, muddy, misty in every direction. We were all hungover, dressed casually, and 40 minutes into this “15 minute hike” it was clear this was a lot more than we had thought. We reach this flat field, beautiful in the Scottish mist, and we pause to rest a bit. We can’t see much, but suddenly in front of us the mist parts a bit and we see this muddy path turns what seemed like 60 degrees up, and vanished a ways into the fog. Collectively, we decided enough was enough, we were turning back. Except for Kye. He wanted to keep going, and he said “Come on guys, if we stop now think about how much we’ll regret it! We’ll never live it down.” And Patrick turned to him and said “Mate, you’re talking to a Greek, a Scot, and an American. The fact that we came this far today is enough of an accomplishment for AT LEAST today.” We laughed, and turned back. It was only years later that I remembered that the path we were on was to the Old Man at Storr, the legendary rock formation, and Kye was almost certainly right all along.
Unfortunately the years after he left St Andrews were... turbulent for me, and over time I lost sight of that energy he brought out in me, but it's resurfaced now with this awful news and I hope to use it to keep his memory and legacy alive in my life, and pass it on to those around me. If I can succeed in brightening even one person the way that Kye did for me in that year, then I have lived a life worth living. Thank you Kye, and godspeed my friend.
