I found out he passed the way we find out everything now—fast, impersonal,
And I froze.
Not because I was surprised that death comes—it always comes. Not even because of what I remembered of him as Theo—the boyish laugh, the missteps, the way he made failing seem soft enough to try again.
I froze because I didn’t know I would miss him.
I knew the actor. The icon. The cultural marker that helped redefine what it meant to be young, Black, and trying to find your place in a home that wasn’t perfect, but at least pretended to be.
But I didn’t know the man.
Not really.
After the shock wore off, I did what so many of us do now when we grieve—I searched. Not through photo albums or eulogies, but online.
That led me to Apple Music.
I typed his name.
And that’s when I found it.
Miles Long.
I didn’t know what to think at first. But no—it was him. His name. His band. His voice.
Miles Long. A play on his full name. A double entendre wrapped in legacy and intention.
I started at the beginning: The Miles Long Mixtape. Pressed play.
And something strange happened.
It wasn’t like discovering a new artist. It was like recovering a part of myself I didn’t know I had lost.
The music pulled me into the 90s, yes—but not the polished nostalgia of playlist rewinds or streaming service suggestions. This was a lived-in sound. The kind of R&B and early Neo Soul that knew about heartbreak and healing in the same breath. You could hear the weight of lessons that never made it into scripts. You could feel the poetry of someone who had been quietly documenting what wasn’t televised.
Basslines that whispered.
Grooves that curled like smoke around memory.
Lyrics that didn’t beg for attention—they just stayed.
Like grief.
Like wisdom.
And I couldn’t help but ask: How did I not know this?
How did I live under the illusion that he stopped at Acting?
What does it mean that even in my admiration, I had still reduced him?
We talk so much about giving people their flowers, but we rarely ask if we ever truly saw the full garden they were planting—quietly, consistently, in the cracks where cameras don’t go.
Malcolm wasn’t chasing fame. He was chasing truth.
And the music proves it.
He wasn’t sampling culture. He was documenting it.
In bass. In breath. In bars of spoken word so raw they sound like prayers.
I listen now not as a fan, but as a student.
As someone ashamed that it took death to open the album.
As someone mourning not just the man, but the years I could’ve been learning from him and didn’t.
There is a unique ache in discovering the depths of a person after they’re gone.
It feels like theft.
Not by them, but by time.
By distraction.
By the illusion that we know people just because we remember who they were on our screens.
I didn’t know him.
But I know something now.
I know that he created art without seeking applause.
I know that he raised a generation onscreen and then tried to heal that same generation with poems, melodies, and grooves that felt like balm.
I know that Miles Long was more than a name—it was a statement.
About the journey. About pace. About the distance between how we’re seen and who we really are.
Tonight, I’ll play the mixtape again.
Not because I’m trying to hold onto something, but because I finally showed up.
And it is the most devastating beauty—to arrive late and still be welcomed by the work.
I don’t know how to explain this grief.
It’s not celebrity worship. It’s not nostalgia.
It’s the sorrow of realizing you almost missed someone you should’ve known intimately.
It’s the ache of belated recognition.
It’s love, delayed—but no less real.
Rest well, Malcolm.
By Kyle J. Hayes
kylehayesblog.com
Please Like, comment, and share
Salt,Ink, & Soul 