The I remember going into school that Monday. It also was Homecoming Week, so it was Spirit Week.

And there was this really weird juxtaposition of people who didn't

know Alicia didn't know what was going on and were dressed for I think it was

tacky day or something and they were all dressed up it was just just odd. Like it was a somber mood of here

all these people who are really happy and here are all these people who are clearly struggling and the people

who are really happy like, well why is everybody not dressed up? I thought this was going to be like all the past years and so I think that whole week was just odd.

I think I realized it would be tonally dishonest to do this very grief-stricken, sappy peace on Alicia, as if that's the effect that her death has had on me, because it's not. Alicia's death is what I look back at as the turning point of when I became alive.

Alicia was an artist.

She was prolific.

She was making art non-stop. Her parents' house is full of her art. I have pieces of her art. Her parents have

an apartment in Paris just full from ceiling to wall to wall of Alicia's art. She left an imprint on this world and

she left one on my mind. I became an artist, which was not the plan. I heard people teach teenagers how to drive

when they're 15 and 16 because they're not afraid of dying yet.

You have to learn to drive a car

before you learn to fear death. When people try to learn when they're 25 26 it's too late they have car anxiety they have death

what I'm saying is Alicia died before fear grew into her point of view.

And so I want to make sure that as we conclude this show,

that we do it in a way that would resonate with her.

She wasn't a somber person. She was alive. She was alive until a split second when she was dead.

That's not how it goes for most of us. I think La Lae probably has an even more acute point of view on who she was an artist because she was literally sitting right next to her in those art classes.

I remember a lot of the things that she worked on. I remember I did The Alphabet and it was a nature theme that I did.

And she did the Alphabet, but she did it with hands and feet and it was unbelievable.

...