'Malcolm was this atom bomb of pure light and energy. That kind of person doesn’t just disappear, they live on in their work.' - MillerMcCormick
Here, McCormick and Mason jump on the phone to reflect on the process —at times painful, at other times exciting — of honoring Mac’s memory.MILLER MCCORMICK: I feel like I’m going to throw up right now.
MASON: I think we started in April. I remember, I had just finished some projects, and I was about to go on vacation, and then…MASON: Yeah. How the hell did you find me? I still don’t really understand.MASON: Was “Colors and Shapes” her favorite song? MCCORMICK: Honestly, in all of this, my only guiding principle is that I’ve got to feel okay. When doing all this stuff, you really have to ride with the gut. I showed my mom your video and was like, “How do you feel about this?” On one hand, she’s my mom and we’re buds, so we talk. But on the other, we’re navigating the same impossible thing together. We both felt the same sense of nostalgia in Sam’s work — this combination of looking forward and backward at once.
MASON: I do. I begged to have some sense of a starting point, and you two made this special folder. It was full of pictures of Malcolm as a child, pictures of his toys, Polaroids from the studio around the time he was recording, and pictures of Ralph, the dog. You told me that the studio was called The Sanctuary, and that Malcolm spent some of his best moments there, surrounded by these objects. So, we really started there.