A friend(ish), someone I have known for years but not very well, someone who I shared strong beliefs about things with, but in the silliest of places like Facebum and twitter, died two nights ago. She got very sick and couldn’t be cured. I am made so sad by her death in the most unexplainable way. I struggle to articulate why it has shaken me so much. Was it the speed and horror of the cancer? Was it because I had always seen her as the voice of my love of Joburg, the nostalgic continued reminder of what I miss about living there? Was it a feeling that she was one of the very few proudly Jewish but loudly anti the Israeli government people that I count on my fingers and share beliefs with? Was it a common history of coming from one particular kind of struggle into another as artists in South Africa? Oh I don’t know. I think I am made so deeply sad by how much she lived, and how huge it was, and how gone that is. And that I wish I had known her more, and better.