Perhaps like most children, my brother, Edward, was very curious, asking questions like, "How many stars in the sky?" and "How many trees in the forest?" Each time I'd try to answer him, he'd quickly add more questions... back then, this became tiresome after a while; however, now I really miss him, his sense of humour, and his questions.
As part of the inspiration for Superstar X's tagline of "We love different," below are some examples of why Edward was often seen as "different"...
⭐ At age 10, he scored an IQ of 140
⭐ At age 16, he attended Armand Hammer United World College of the American West, located in Montezuma, NM (about 3 hours away from Roswell), whose focus is on "making education a force to unite people, nations and cultures for peace and a sustainable future" - Queen Noor of Jordan is the President of all 18 United World Colleges and Nelson Mandela was the Honorary President
⭐ Also at age 16, he "came out" as gay (I came out much later, at 29)
⭐ At age 18, he received a full scholarship to attend Trinity College but unfortunately was unable to complete his program
⭐ In his early 20s, Edward was diagnosed with schizophrenia, which the World Health Organization describes as "significant impairments in the way reality is perceived," affecting about 0.32% of the global population
⭐ He spent almost 1 year in a mental health hospital, where he began drawing pop-graffiti art (revealing influence of his idol, Keith Haring), which seemed to be very healing for him and inspired me to help spread the message of greater awareness, understanding, and acceptance of "different," through multimedia art
Today, there are many things or symbols that remind me of Edward, such as Tkaronto, graffiti artwork, the letter X, the numbers 10 and 11, cardinals, butterflies, anything related to aliens (he told me that he communicates with them by means of the letter X, zeros, and ones embedded in multimedia), and of course the stars...✨❤️✨
