Nigo never smiled to me. For some odd reason, every time I drew his face, he was always thoughtful, looking into the distance, detached, unattached, emotionless, seeing things with clarity and understanding their roots and connections, constantly searching, his thoughts sometimes buried in the unknown, dwelling within the unimaginable. Perhaps those are the best words to describe him.
Trying to draw Nigo smiling never even crossed my mind to be honest, it didn-t fit him and he was not in the mood for it. Whoever says that his characters are his own creation and that he puts the moves and thoughts in their heads is a liar. Nigo never allows me a moment-s rest when he-s around and he has a mind of his own, I rarely influence him and he does whatever the hell he pleases, when he pleases, how he pleases.
If ever he would be published, I would probably be asked to change that stupid duck hairdo of his and honestly I wanted to let his hair loose but he said no and I knew he was right. That stupid duck hairdo is his thing, it-s totally him because he doesn-t give a damn.
He wears pink army printed hoodies because he doesn-t give a damn, because that-s so much like what he does. He will say with the calmest voice while looking straight in your eyes that I am calm, but on the inside I am falling apart. But it-s all good. with an honesty and balance in his voice that is almost disarming.
Because that-s so much like him.
Some odd afternoon a few days ago though, he smiled.
I don-t know what happened, it just came out of the blue, pen on paper, in my notebook, that notebook with white pages and black covers where I release my inner world and talk about my life and what I feel on the inside making the paragraphs in my head turn graphic.
He looked at me, his arched eyebrows, eyes as blue as ever, and while drawing his mouth, it just curled in that faint smile, aimed at me.
The picture lacked the perfection and obsessive attention his pictures usually have, most lines are not properly made, but it matters very little.
For the rest of the day, it was the only thing I wanted to look at; I kept on opening the notebook and throwing it short glances every now and then.
I owe a lot of Aisha and I owe a lot to Nigo.
He is another me from somewhere else, just like...oh I don-t know...the key that opened the door to something beautiful inside me that I kept hidden for too long and that now just wants to explode in flashes of color, shimmers of neon lights and relaxed, chilled, hip hop beats.
He-s with me when I wear my hoodies, feet in my bunny slippers, listening to Yao Li singing her Could Not Get Your Love, an old song from the 40s, while eating sushi I made myself. Because we don-t care. We mix and match things in our lives and try to make things complete, a relaxed manifest of who we are, in a world of un-manifest.
Nigo...opened up a world of color and patterns and quiet search for me, a feeling I was looking for for so long, where I am not delirious and exasperated in a demented search for answers but walk past life at my own pace and take my time reading, understanding, asking questions, finding answers, trying to understand myself, and keep prejudice at a minimum because there-s some answer for life in everything and in everyone.
A world of color where story-telling turns into patterns and designs that move around, sometimes like Japanese paper dolls, sometimes as stick figures, and many more.
Whatever I feel like using to get the message across, there are no limitations.
I truly do love him. We-re one and the same, yet in understanding him, I understand myself.
He-s one of my celebrations of life.
B.
