The thing about Morris Hall is that most people don’t even know that it is there. I certainly didn’t. I think that’s the main appeal to the place, that secretive getaway feeling. To tell you the truth, I don’t enjoy most campus buildings; but I have had some of the best times in Morris Hall. It’s a building that feels to me like an old friend.

Morris Hall was designed by John Norris in 1853. It is aged like most other buildings in Savannah and sits comfortably behind the sun-soaked streets. Like all buildings owned by the Savannah College of Art and Design, it had a past life, and Morris’ history was unique in itself. At one point the building had been a prominent social club. I imagine parties like Gatsby’s, full of champagne and women and dancing, bright and bubbly then gone. Most SCAD buildings turn sterile once they transition into their new life. They conform to that distinct art college nonconformity and seem to, on occasion, breathe as you do. The buildings are alive. Morris Hall, however, thrives.

At SCAD, Morris Hall is used for the fashion marketing major. I am not fashion marketing, neither are most of my friends, and yet we found ourselves splayed across the couches in Morris on more than a few occasions. It came on a Sunday afternoon during finals week when my friends wanted to do work together. We always find ways to stay together, and during finals week, it seemed to be that we went on a quest to find a home. It made sense, we were more a family than friends, so surely there had to be a place that would fit just right. Morris Hall both met expectations and exceeded them.

There’s this beautiful room in Morris– when you first walk in, it’s on the left– that seems to always be drenched in that lazy Sunday kind of sunlight. It was that first Sunday, in that room, that I had one of the best days of my life. It was one of those days when things were just different; everyone was in sync, on the same wavelength, in the same breath. Everything was funny to me. I remember I had smoked a cigarette the night before, so that must be why I wheezed every time I laughed. It made Jake and Harrison laugh harder, which made me laugh harder, and our laughs would turn into silence and tears and then disappear.

I would like to take the time to have it said on record that I’m not entirely sure that the couches at Morris could really be called couches. They have a rigidity to them, a lack of give, that makes them feel like slightly elevated floor. Despite this, I slept very poorly on that couch next to two other people that afternoon in March. I slept with my head pressed against Corrie’s legs, on a pillow that felt as if it were stuffed with plastic grocery bags, as Corrie slept slumped against Jake. To say it was bad seems like a rude exaggeration, but to say it was good also seems like a rude exaggeration. I was persistent though. I would never leave them, no matter how uncomfortable. It was for their company that I came, and it was for their company that I would stay, every single time. And I would enjoy myself, every single time.

When we determined that sleep was impossible, we each sat up and joined the others at the table. We got distracted and watched stupid videos, we would say one thing and laugh at another, and we never seemed capable of keeping the smile off of our faces. Jake and Harrison were my people. The three of us were our own unit in our group of friends, our own triad. Harrison was the base note that all music was made upon, and leaning on him was as comfortable as it was natural. Those two guys kept me laughing all day long until my wheeze was gone and my lungs were tight from exertion. If I were to save any feeling in a bottle to keep, to use and experience over and over again, it would be that one.

It is also a good time to mention that my opinion and affection for Morris Hall is built on them entirely. The building houses the feelings that we have left behind. It makes me long for days that were only days ago but feel instead like months ago. Morris, in a way, is timeless. It’s slow, it’s still, it’s steady like a dance. The kind of dance you do alone in your room spinning around and around, soft and slow, to no music at all.

Some of the classrooms on Morris’ second floor are outside. Once you enter from the main entrance, you go up the stairs, and once you hit the second floor you keep walking straight. Through that door, you’ll walk outside and in this little annex area, you’ll find these classrooms. We’ve worked in that computer lab before, and it’s full of windows on each wall. It’s wonderful leaving the blinds open and lights off and filling the room with acoustic tracks and old folk. This was a different Sunday, a week after the original. I still loved Morris, I still loved the people, I still loved that the building was always empty except for us. If anyone were to show up it seemed as if they were intruding.

I remember that day I got to Morris around the same time as Jake, and he was annoyed with me when I took a parking spot he wanted. We met up with Margaret, Marcus, Gabe, and Zach in the computer lab. I took my shoes off. At one point, I napped. I read through books I needed to annotate and I played the Staves and Dave Van Ronk through one of the speakers. Harrison came later, McDonald's in hand, fries and a soda for me. I owed him nothing.

Harrison Russell is one of my closest friends. He is one of the rare types that I fell into quite easily, quite rapidly, and quite unapologetically. To me, he is Morris Hall. He is the feeling left behind there like a ghost or a whisper– or not a whisper, but a bang. He left an impact on me, irrevocable and precious. He is gone now; a breezy thirteen-hour drive away in Connecticut, and Morris Hall has been empty ever since.

There is adventure in Morris Hall, and I found it with Harrison. In that little annex area, right outside that computer lab, there stands a ladder that climbs the side of the building to an accessible rooftop. I don’t know if it was legal for us to climb it and end up overlooking the city, but we did so anyway. I climbed to the roof with an iced chai in hand and feared I would slip off the ladder and fall, but yet I clung ridiculously to both drink and ladder. Harrison did the same, and when he climbed before me, I followed his example, laughing senselessly the whole way. It was me, Jake, Harrison, Margaret, Zach, and Gabe, standing taller than the treetops. But Morris could go even higher, if only you could find the way.

No one else came with us, but that was typical. We followed each other like the tide to the shore. You never got one without the other but miraculously, it wasn’t clingy, it wasn’t suffocating. There was an unspoken comfort and safety between us. There were no walls. There was no desperation to share our secrets or spill our tragedies or cram a lapsed silence with noise. It was an organic growth through a sidewalk crack, and I soaked up the sun each time it shone. It seems to me that now I’m wilting.

Transferring was complex, SCAD needed money, and Harrison had to pack and leave. There and gone, there and gone. I have never had such an ardent relationship with another person. Harrison became my compliment and counterpart, my go to, my person. I talked to him every day. I saw him every day. My times with him are now little poofs behind my eyelids, there and gone, there and gone. Harrison resting his head on my lap and me running my fingers through his hair on the floor of the Barnard common room. Me, resting my head against his shoulder in the hallway of my house. Us sitting in his car, talking about struggles with faith and family and future. Together, all the times we spent making the other roar with laughter, saying shut up, shut up, shut up; only to laugh all the harder. I miss him as though he had died, and thank God he didn’t; but when he isn’t here to hold, him being real doesn’t seem real at all.

Morris has this tower, you can see it from the outside. When you do, you tend to wonder what’s up there, how to get there. Well, there’s another staircase in Morris, you’re sure to see it when you’re there; it’s a rustic wooden spiral staircase. It’ll creak beneath your feet, but don’t worry. It leads directly to this little tower, the tallest part of the building. There is no door to the outside, but that’s okay, there’s a window. It’s hard to open but because of that, it’ll stay open. This was how Harrison and I got to the tallest rooftop of Morris Hall.

He laughed when we climbed through the window because the window could only open halfway. We had to mount and slide through it like we were in a spy movie. He told me to be careful because the roof bubbled beneath our feet and in some areas, felt a little more like wet cardboard. He sat down near the end of that gentle slope, and I sat beside him. There were a few words spoken, but not too many. It was the silence that lapsed, the sound of the city that we both loved that was more prevalent. In that moment, Morris Hall was a capsule. I have wanted to stay in the moment ever since.