I'm going to translate a series of articles that Stefán Karl wrote for the news website of Kvennablaðið, unfortunately Kvennablaðið has been discontinued and the site no longer exists.
But thankfully, the articles that Stefán Karl wrote were archived on archive.org and as a way to archive them further, I'm going to translate all of them.
Something to note first, while the text is intact, a lot of the images weren't archived properly so they're lost, I'm also going to leave some misspellings as is in the articles just for the sake of archiving.
Original article: https://web.archive.org/web/20170720095645/http://kvennabladid.is/2015/08/08/paradisarfuglinn-chad/
The bird of paradise Chad
Published on 8 August. 2015 Categorized as COUNTRY & NATION Tags: CHAD JASON • MAKE-UP ARTIST• HAPPINESS • GRINCH • SYMPATHY • FRIENDSHIP
I will never forget the night on Hverfisgatan. Bar 46. It was in the June of 2012. One of my best friends and colleagues, Chad Jason, took hold of me, kissed me and pressed himself against me. I was saying goodbye to him for the last time, but I didn't know any better than that we would meet again in autumn just as last autumn when we started our work in the play of the Grinch.
There he made me up every day and brought me into the role, sometimes several times a day. Then we'd look deep into each other's eyes many times a day.
But when I looked in front of him that night, his eyes were full of tears, he had never shown me so much emotion before, he had never really shown me when he was depressed or sad. If something went wrong he laughed and smiled, made fun of it all. When he got angry, he was quick to put things in a different context, make a mockery of himself and make someone laugh and think that everything was fine.
Chad Jason died in October 2012, alone at a hospital in Queens, New York, after refusing treatment for a disease that plagued him. When he finally fell into a coma and his strength dried up, the doctors were able to start the treatment and give him a cocktail of injectable medicine, but by then it was too late.
He didn't need to die, he could have kept going, he could have continued to live life but he chose not to.
Why, we never get to know for sure, but he had already told me many things, told me what had driven him in his day.
He had already told me how his mother made him eat out of the trash at home when he was little, how the siblings had to pee in a bucket in the yard because she didn't have time to pay the water bill, that his siblings had to steal food as to not starve and later how his sister and brother rejected him because of his homosexuality.
He also told me about how his sister later became a psychologist for homosexual couples and tried to reconcile with him. He told me he couldn't love anyone, how he has no respect for himself and how he works around the clock so as not to have to listen to his thoughts - because then he always heard those voices of the past that told him that he was not free to love anyone he wanted.
The makeup artist is not just a makeup artist
Good make-up artists become one's best friends, psychologists. The first people you meet when you come to work in the theater and those who leave the theater with you in the evening.
The make-up artist reads you immediately, shocks you or calms you down, depending on what you need when you step into the theater from the whirlpool of reality outside the theater.
It can be compared to having a lover which you can tell everything to and that tells you everything. We trusted each other, and during the thousands of hours we spent together in closed locker rooms across the United States, I heard his stories, stories that I am only now able to put into context. I don't think it's fair when I think back and the more I think about it, the more I hear him repeat the same things over and over again. Maybe I'm only now listening to him.
Now I understand why and much better how important it is for us to come together, all as one, and to support diversity.
Now I understand so much better what it means when Páll Óskar sings "I am as I am" and now I understand how important it is when we walk together today and listen to each other and hear what we say, loving, hand in hand.
Chad was like that lover, the lover I needed then and I love him for what he really wanted to be but never got to experience.
I loved him as himself, this wonderfully beautiful drag queen he wanted to be with the gold and silver feathered wings that rose to the sky in the final tone of the night queen. Unforgettable as a national hero, the Argentinian Evita Peron.
In heaven, the audience stand around his soul, I'm sure. They shout:
"Bravo Chad, you are beautiful, beautiful like a bird of paradise."
Here is a video that Chad put together where he shows how Grinch came to be:
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