I miss you too

How do you explain it to normal people when a person meant the world to you but you lived an Ocean apart and you only met in real life a handful of times? I think you don’t, I don’t think you can, but I have to try. I met Jay Zallan during my first Autodesk […]

How do you explain it to normal people when a person meant the world to you but you lived an Ocean apart and you only met in real life a handful of times? I think you don’t, I don’t think you can, but I have to try.

I met Jay Zallan during my first Autodesk University in Vegas. I was a speaker, and he was… well, he was Jay. Striding across the Venetian, an ankle-length sleeveless black and white fur over flared trousers, metallic blue boots with high heels. He was carrying half a dozen beers in his hands while holding an impromptu lecture on innovation.
Like many others, I was star-struck by his unapologetic wit.
We connected at BILT Singapore, not many months later, when he gave an amazing lecture called Batshit Crazy Revit, which started as a collection of all the insane stuff people persist on doing with the software and quickly turned into an incredible dissertation on innovation, working ethics and the unsustainability of mediocrity.

This was a lesson I will never forget.

A few years later, I was in a very dark place, and few people knew that. He was one of them. It was my first time in his beloved Los Angeles, and he was my guide, my friend, my confidant. When I was thinking of falling through the cracks and disappear entirely, he held me and cradled me.
I will never know whether he was conscious of how much he meant to me that he was there.
And if you knew Jay, you can have a very clear picture of what we did: we fooled around like kids, and had very profound conversations, and talked philosophy about the construction industry, Lady Gaga, Angry Birds. That was Jay. A man who was able to change the temperature in the room with just a couple of words or a couple of rehearsed gestures, a man who was fully conscious of the impact we can have on others and yet I could never be sure whether he was correspondingly conscious of the impact he himself had on our industry. Of the impact he had on me.

I will forever be inspired by his persistence, by the pureness of his determination to pursue excellence, to drive forward innovation, to shake people from their prejudices and preconceptions. His very existence constantly admonished me that it’s possible to never give up, to hear the very same reactionary bullshit over and over again and still be pissed off as if it was the first time. He reminded me that life is not easy, when you’re not complacent and you’re unwilling to compromise on your beliefs, but it’s a path that’s worth pursuing, over and over again, regardless of the uncertainty, of the struggle, of the enemies you make along the way, of the pain it brings when yet another innovation project goes up in flames. And when the struggle never ends, and the world seems stuck, and nothing you do seems to matter, you can still find it in your soul to be an artist while you carry the fuck on.

So yeah, how do you explain it to normal people when a person meant the world to you but you lived an Ocean apart? I think you can’t. But when you have such a person, make sure they know. Pick up the phone and tell them. Hop on a plane, if you can, bask in the warmth of their company and make sure they know. Make sure they know how much they mean to you, even if normal people would never get it, because you might run out of chances to do it. I hope I did enough to tell Jay how much he meant to me.

Farewell, my friend.

You left a hole that won’t be filled.

5 Comments

    1. this was beautiful. i’m unsure if you’ll even see this, but i’m his daughter. he spoke so highly and frequently of all his friends, both the ones he was close to in proximity and those oceans apart. i found this today, and will be coming back to read this often. i always knew he was someone big in the architecture world, but this helps me realize that he was more than just my Dad, that he was someone special to so many people; that his love and sense of humor could affect so many. the last sentence is something i’ve been saying since i found out, and the title is just perfect. everything about this is perfect. thank you so so much for writing this, it means the world to me to be able to read this and honor him in this way. much much love <3

      1. Noya, of course I know who you are. He always spoke a lot about you, with pride and joy lighting his face. He loved you beyond words.
        I send you my warmest hug from across the Ocean.

  1. You tried…and you succeeded. And you did it so very well.
    I am still in shock as I just learned of this news today. Tears are flowing and my heart aches. There is an emptiness that I know I will eventually fill with all the good tines we shared.
    I am also ashamed. As I did not live an ocean apart. In fact, in optimal traffic conditions we were less than an hour apart. Yet the last time I reached out to Jay was on his birthday.
    Like you, I too hope he knew how much he meant to me…to us ..to a lot of people.

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