Dean

He makes vaporizers that look like Aladdin's lamps. Hand-built. The lamp AND the vaporizer, both his own work. When someone uses one, they make a wish. He's been building them because the lamp came to him the way things come to people who are supposed to do something — not as a plan, but as a recognition.

Dean is Syrian by heritage, German by birth, Gran Canarian by choice. He wears traditional Syrian national dress — not as a costume, not as a statement. It's just who he is. The first time I saw him across a crowded hall at Spannabis in Bilbao, I wasn't sure what to make of it. The second time, I understood: here is a man who has absolutely no interest in being anything other than himself.

We went shopping for a rug together. He'd found one he liked and he was considering it, thinking it through, the way you do when you actually care about your home and not just your Instagram. I said to him: you're my purpose today. Whatever you need. And I meant it. That's what the day had told me — that this was why I was there.

His name, Dean, means a learning person. A sage. A mage. He told me this without pride — just as a fact he'd been given and decided to live up to. His family is in Germany and Syria. He was getting married that summer, the wedding in Syria. There's a word for people who carry multiple worlds in them at once, who move between them without losing anything of themselves. I don't know what the word is in English. But Dean is that.

A camera crew found him at Spannabis — Canna TV, there to interview the exhibitors. They interviewed Dean. He gave me the camera to hold. I filmed it. Then they turned the camera on me, and the man behind it said: "You're telling it better than I can. Here's the mic — tell everybody your thing." This is what happens when Dean is in the room. Things find their right shape.

What I carry from Dean: the understanding that showing up as exactly who you are — in your dress, in your craft, in your presence — is not arrogance. It's the most useful thing you can do for the people around you. It gives them permission. It shows them what it looks like. Dean didn't tell me any of this. He just lived it in front of me for a weekend and let me work it out for myself.

The lamp. The wish. He builds the vessel. The person brings the intention. That's about as good a description of what any of us are doing as I've heard.