When Shane Koyczan was told that a young writer from Arizona wanted to meet him as part of the Make-A-Wish foundation, he was "blown away" that he'd be the one wishes are made of.
“I’m not that cool; I’m not worthy of anyone’s magic,” the Vancouver spoken word artist told Jada Rose King when they met at an Elysian coffee shop in Vancouver in late November.
By the end of their time together, a tearful Koyczan was more of a believer.
“We get to a place where we stop believing in magic, and we stop believing in wishes,” he says, obviously moved by the experience, in a video posted by Make-A-Wish Arizona and produced by Vancouver studio Here Be Monsters. “We forget that what makes the magic real is it exists in what we’re able to do for each other, not what we want for ourselves.
“In that regard, all of us have that ability to grant wishes for other people.”
King is living with two conditions, an immune deficiency disorder called CVID and LHON, which is causing her to become blind. She’s a huge fan of Koyczan’s poetry and wrote him to say how much she’d like to meet him.
He invited her to Vancouver, where not only did they work together on one of her pieces, but she also presented it live in front of an audience of 1,200 people at his Vogue Theatre performance on Dec. 1.
“Shane makes me feel that I’m not alone and like my feelings are valid,” she says. “When he writes his feelings, I feel them.”
“[Jada] has a deep honesty,” Koyczan says of his young protégé. She’s one of those people who can “find the light inside of herself rather than take it from outside.”
