Life fucking sucks right now.
Today I woke up to one of the worst possible news I could have received. One of my best friends passed away last night in his sleep. It's very hard to process because he was very young and there weren't any signs that something might be wrong, at all. I don't have anywhere or anyone else to mourn him, so this small blog post will have to do.
I met my friend Blake in 2006/2007 at a music store I used to work at. I was a drummer at the time and he went around with a friend of his videotaping with his camcorder and we became friends after bonding about music, eventually recording a few silly videos and thinking of forming a band together after mine had broken up. It was through him that I met Horse The Band, pioneers of the Nintendocore sound, and I remember the all-nighters we pulled playing videogames, recording short films and hanging out at local shows.
We would hang out at one of his friends' house late at night wearing makeshift masks made of tin foil on the late 2000s version of Omegle, we would chase him being chased (it makes sense) by our lead guitarist as he was throwing up on the street after a spaghetti binge with our singer filming them as I played Slipknot riffs on an acoustic guitar laughing our asses off the whole time. When Horse The Band came to our town, he filmed the whole show and I was in charge of stage lights (horribly btw) and after they played, we hung out and talked to Nathan and Dash backstage. Gig after-parties were dumb and hilarious, dealing with drunk-ass dudes and watching fans thrashing the stage on one occasion. Fun fucking times.
On one occasion when I was going to leave town to study music (one of my many life failures), he and our lead guitarist would come pick me up after work when I sold my drum kit and we would go drive around town smoking pot. The high I had that day, I'll never forget. I felt like I was trapped inside my own body watching everything as if it was through a screen and yelling "I'M GOING TO DIE!!" next to a fucking patrol and him telling me to shut the fuck up. I never had a tastier pastry than on that day, and we ended up getting Carl's Jr after my high came down and I was in a zombified state, munching slowly at my Western Bacon cheeseburger.
These were but a few of the many adventures I lived with my friend Blake. He had dreams of becoming a filmmaker, and even prepared a short film with some very prestigious actors which sadly got canned due to budget reasons. He spent the final years of his life making Fucking Ugly Drawings (Pinches Dibujos Culeros) filling them with his personality and feel. Always the affable guy, he gave me some of the strongest hugs anyone ever gave me, even lifting my skinny ass on many occasions. We laughed together, cried together, ate and got drunk together, and even made music together. Even though life drove us apart, we managed to stay in touch, with him even wanting to feature me in one of his comics, which sadly never came to be.
I'm sorry I missed your birthday, man.
I'm sorry I didn't stay in touch with you more often.
Now you are gone, and it breaks me to my core to know that I will never hear your laughter or feel your hugs again.
I'll leave you with a clip I found on YouTube of us playing a show back in 2008. The video is obviously crap quality, but the audio is pretty clear. He plays the lead at the very end of the song, called "Fuga de Cometas" which was written by our lead guitarist, and was the song that brought us together.
I love you, brother. Godspeed, Blake.