Forte Means Large: Remembering John Forté

It was one of those days that felt like nothing in particular. Nothing of note. We had plans but I didn’t suspect that those plans would somehow be life altering. And to be clear they weren’t in the ways that I had been taught to notice. There was no chaos or upheaval, there was no loud shock to the system. Everything that transpired that day was quiet. As quiet as the initial invitation.

I met John Forté at a leadership conference in New York City just a few days before that afternoon. I knew he produced The Fugees, and I knew he had recently been released from prison, and I knew that he walked with a graceful presence. I knew that he listened in a way that you could feel.

We were in a room full of titans. People at the tops of their industries who made things happen. We were in a room full of somebodies, and if you measured a person by the things we are taught to notice, in that room, at that time, I was nobody.

I was 23 years old and working as a communications associate at a nonprofit in DC. But we ended up talking, and I told him about what I was working on. It was 2010 and I was trying to get young people to vote in the upcoming midterm elections. He wanted to help. He offered his help. He offered to write a song.

It was a few days later and I was meeting him at his apartment. Over the course of the next couple hours I watched him write and record a song.

It was magic.

Subtle but electric.

Sacred but completely ordinary.

I watched as he seemed to be moved by something. There were moments of thoughtful calm, and there were also moments that almost felt frenetic. Like he was catching something. Like he was a passenger of something.

He laid down a guitar track, and then he layered vocals, and then he layered harmonies.

It always felt like he knew where he was going. And then suddenly, as soon as it started, he had arrived. The song was done.

“You give from time to time

If you learn from yours and mine

It’s what made me

If I’ve learned anything

Four years ain’t enough for us to stay free”

At this point, I had been working in DC for less than a year and I was already growing disillusioned. In an environment of talking points and spinning facts in your favor, John was just speaking from the heart.

It struck me.

He wasn’t really saying something about the election, he was saying something about humanity. He wrote a song about losing the right to vote, something that happens in most states when you are convicted of a felony, and he was asking those who still had that right to show up for him. To use their right, for those who had lost it.

He was asking for help.

“Could you save me… if I can’t help myself?”

When I heard the news that John had passed away a few weeks ago, the memory of that day flooded me.

And it’s not that I haven’t thought about it since, in the last 15 years I’ve had many moments where I’ve reflected on how impactful that afternoon was.

How instructive.

To see someone like him be so generous with his time, so willing to see the heart of a person, so willing to help with nothing to gain. To see someone like him thoughtfully wielding power in the quiet moments where power often goes unnoticed.

John was a giant, but he moved with humility and grace. He lived a dynamic life, and he was thoughtful about the lessons gained and the insights garnered. He was generous just because he could be. And these aren’t opinions developed over years of knowing him, when he walked into the room, this was how he showed up. This was just who he was.

I watched him and I didn’t know it at the time but I was learning from him.

That afternoon changed the trajectory of my life.

When I met John I didn’t know what I was - I didn’t know I was an Artist, I didn’t know that I had music in me.

Two years later when I came upon that discovery, the memory of John is what helped me recognize that something spectacular was happening.

Because of John, I had witnessed a song come to life. So when I learned that I too could birth songs, I knew it was no small thing. I knew it was magic.

I didn’t see the connection in the moment, it’s always in retrospect that the dots connect - but when I look back I can trace a through line between watching John in his gift, and recognizing my own when it made itself known to me.

In retrospect I can see the ways that his generosity shaped how I understood how to be in the world.

As if by existing he was offering possibility.

Forte means large, and large you have been.

It’s been years since I saw or spoke to him. A few years ago he commented on a photo of me drumming.

“Keep going!”

He didn’t have to do that. It meant a lot that he did.

I always assumed that the day would come when I would tell him how much of an impact he had on me. Where we would talk music and how meaningful that afternoon had been for me.

I always put off reaching out - I wanted to have more things together, to have more to show, to feel more sure about where I was at. I always thought there would be more time.

I’m gutted that he’s gone. I’m so sad for his friends and family. I’m sad for the world.

It’s not lost on me that when you lose someone, the loss can never be quantified.

There’s what you know of them, what you experienced, what you remember, and then there’s all the ways that they changed everything. Those little moments that you can’t possibly account for. The evidence of a life well lived.

That kind of life doesn’t just fade into oblivion. It’s like a good song, you can call up the memory of the melody as if by command. It lives in you now, it’s left you changed. You carry it forward. You keep going, but with a song in your heart that wasn’t there before.

We are living with a lot of loss right now. But may we find solace in the fact that our hearts are singing loudly. We are faced with possibility. We can let those songs be instructive, they can teach us how to show up, how to live thoughtfully, how to be here in the presence of pain. They can show us how to move with the kinds of power that often go unrecognized. They can embolden us to show up with love.

We are going to need each other. It’s not a new fact, but struggle often makes it known. And we are faced with the opportunity to show up for each other. To show up for those who can’t - not because it gets us something, but because we can. that

And that’s something I learned from a man named John Forté.

May his song be carried on.