pasadena xena convention: feb 2002
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| pasadena xena convention feb 2002 click to view gallery |
pasadena
soon became more than it was ever meant to be. kevin smith had died.
every day, we tell our stories. to each other, to ourselves.
every day, we tell the stories of others to each other, furthering their tales.
and perhaps, every day we tell the stories of people we've never even met.
yet they, too, become just as alive to us as the lover who's wronged us, the friend who gave birth to her first child
or the next door neighbor you just know is from an alien race.
for we are all storytellers, telling stories.
and pasadena become one story. kevin's story.
walking through the convention halls, snippets of kevin's life were told and overheard. by the group of four girls in stunned frozen tears, leaning against the wall for support. by the two creation entertainment workers holding an 8x10 of kevin a minute too long before slipping it into the brown paper bag.
by the image of a tender alex tydings holding a sobbing alexis arquette backstage when alexis, arriving in all his glorious drag, was first told the news of kevin's death ten minutes before he had to go on stage and perform. by a magnificently commanding claire stansfield, standing apart backstage and looking off into the distance, then suddenly declaring, "i loved him" and we all knew who and why. by the lone xena fan in the lobby erasing the big white board of all its previous entries, such as, "meet me here?" and "how many xenites does it take to screw in a lightbulb?", to the simplest of words: "kevin smith. rest in peace."
by josie ryan going into the well-lit M.A.C store to test drive new make-up only to have alexis arquette, still in his Eva Destruction drag, suddenly pounding on the big glass window, getting josie's attention. then alexis struck a pose and flipped off the world, receiving wide-eyed aghast stares from the local shoppers, but for josie and for the rest of us, we had our first big rip-roarin' laugh, and it grew and grew, until it became so loud we knew not only the aghast strangers at M.A.C. but even those in elysian fields could hear and understand the magic.
by paris jefferson, who called on the cell phone to tell me the story of kevin singing in a new zealand nightclub, his ease in sharing himself so unrestrained. by renee o'connor and michael hurst bypassing their own private pain and refusing to cancel their performance of "Love Letters," knowing it was more important to be there than not. by rob tapert drawing his sword and taking up arms sending out emails to the entire xena cast and crew telling us he and lucy were already starting a fund for kevin's family.
and by all those who attended pasadena, either in body or spirit, for each unexpected hug given to a stranger, for each extra tear willing to shed for someone else's pain and for each fragment of a memory told to create a greater picture of not only who kevin is and was, but who we all are to each other.
by telling kevin's story, we keep him alive.
by telling our own, we make sense of it all.
