For Liberty.

Posted by Clint W. Heidorn on June 30th, 2007 filed in liberty

 Liberty was someone you heard about before you met him.

Let’s say, for example, you’re a nerdy little tubster packed into an ill-fitting Deicide shirt, more of a death metal sausage than a man, who’s barely passing his preschool-level math classes in high school because he spends too much of his time brushing his golden hair and daydreaming about the styrofoam aircraft carrier’s worth of orange chicken he’s going to eat when 3:00 rolls around. Let’s say you’re living with your best friend, his parents, and a parrot in south Diamond Bar, and one night you’re sitting on the floor of your friend’s room, in front of his stereo, both of you sweating like glasses of iced tea, absentmindedly making wet handprints in the carpet. It’s hot, but you’re young and there’s CDs on the ground, and you’re so full of grade-D dark meat chicken that you can barely move, so you’re just sitting there, both of you, listening to whatever is within arm’s reach. All too quickly, the song ends, the CD spins to a halt, and you’re left in silence, wondering what to do next.

This is a portrait of Chris Negrete and I in our sophomore year of high school.

On this particular night, engrossed in our usual routine, smelling like poultry, Chris slid his backpack across the carpet and pulled out a seven inch record - something I hadn’t seen before. It looked like the Sesame Street 45’s I used to play on my plastic Fisher Price record player when I was six, except it had a smaller hole.
“Dude, you’ve got to check this out.” He said, putting the record on the player and sliding the needle over. He handed me the jacket.
“Shelter.” I said, flipping it around. I wasn’t sure what it would sound like. It lacked an indecipherable, evil-looking band name and it also lacked skulls. I was afraid. “Where’d you get this?” I asked.
Chris turned the music down, just as the band kicked in, and told me that he’d heard about them from Liberty. He sighed, took a breath, and hunched over. “Dude… have you met Liberty yet?”

I hadn’t. Not yet.
Chris’ posture, his facial expression, and his body language changed as he started to speak. He hung his head and leaned in close, like he was about to let me in on a grand, important secret, and his tone of voice swept down into the kind of reverent whisper I’d only heard people use when they were talking about hurricanes, earthquakes, forces of nature. I’d never heard him talk about someone that way.
He told me about this guy, Liberty, who seemed to be not only the most intelligent and passionate person he’d ever met, but the all-around coolest - and so much so that it was all kind of overwhelming. Liberty, he told me, was into this whole other style of music - it wasn’t quite metal and wasn’t quite punk - and there was a whole lifestyle surrounding it, a whole movement called straightedge, which, for both of us, Liberty might as well have started himself. Liberty was a vegan, passionate about his belief in animal rights and environmental activism, and all of this tied into the music in some way - this music with views. He read books on philosophy and wrote for zines and was deeply involved in life and understanding our place in the world. It all sounded pretty intense to me. “There’s something about this guy.” Chris told me. “He’s not like anyone I’ve ever met.”
This, of course, was a portrait of Liberty as a high school student, a time in most peoples’ lives where the biggest impression they leave on others is that they have lips and like Sprite.
“And you should see his room!” Chris said, in awe. “Dude…..” He paused for a second, shook his head. “It’s like, so minimal. He’s got a mattress on the floor, a dresser, and a stereo. That’s it!” The way Chris was talking, and how intensely, if he would have told me that Liberty slept in a levitating, golden orb, I might have been inclined to believe him.
But it wasn’t what Chris said so much as the look in his eyes when he spoke. We’d met a lot of people, but never had I seen Chris so affected, so awed. As I got to know Liberty, as I got to know his friends, and as we hung out during some of the best years of my life, not only did I quickly understand the reason for Chris’ earnest speechlessness, but I realized that everyone stumbled over their words when trying to describe Liberty. Even now, I can barely think of the words to do it myself. Like most of us, I’m a bumbling idiot when faced with trying to encapsulate a personality so passionate, so expansive, and just so totally fucking cool.

And there was something about the way Liberty’s friends seemed to circle him, as if he was the center of their group - the source of a positive, peaceful energy they treasured and protected. It seemed like if you wanted to get to Liberty - the master, the yogi, the source of the light - you’d have to get through them first. And it wasn’t as if they were overly protective or precious, it was only that they knew what we all know, what everyone who crossed even the briefest of paths with Liberty knows - that he was special, important.
At Liberty’s funeral yesterday, watching as hundreds of people of all ages, races, and colors gathered around him and followed him to the end, I realized that all of us, no matter for how long we’d known him or how closely, had been so affected by him and the way he lived that the circle at which he was the center only began with his friends and then widened out far into the world.

And that’s profound.
For my part, I can only say that I am deeply sorry for the loss his family has suffered. I can say that Jake and Kevin and everyone involved with this website, with the ongoing case, with the memorial service and the funeral have handled it all with an awesome and inspiring grace.

And, finally, I can say that I’m terribly sad that I waited too long to write him up and reconnect. I suppose I learned a lesson.
I’ll miss you, old friend. The world is a better place having had you in it. Rest in peace.

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