Someone died this week.

I am not speaking metaphorically, he really died. He was an inspiration to me as an artist and I am especially grateful for the few times I had the pleasure to chat with him. I will always be amazed and inspired by his talents.

I have anecdotes about talking with him or seeing him perform or even direct. But right now I am slightly bothered by what I seem to be inundated with in my social world. I cannot escape the anger that people have towards the individuals trying to catch the people who sold him the drugs. See, this man died from an overdose. A pretty serious amount of narcotics was the culprit. It is horrible, tragic and painful for all who loved him. Now, his loved ones and the authorities want to catch the people behind the drug deals.

This has a lot of other people angry. Angry because they feel that if he had been black or not famous – no one would care about catching the dealers. Maybe this is true. Maybe we don’t hear about the not so famous dealers getting caught because they are selling to not so famous people. I agree that drugs and their abuse is a massive problem in our society. I believe that racism is a massive problem in our society.

I want to just encourage anyone who reads this to think about this for at least 24 hours.

Someone died. Some mother’s child died. He had an illness, an addiction and the family is hurting. They have enlisted their loved one’s fame in order to catch someone who could be dealing to not so famous people, black people, brown people, purple people. Maybe we can give the family a day longer to hold their loss dear and feel empowered to make positive change happen through this loss