@SoftcoreStoner

5 months ago

I went to music college with Stephen (pronounced Steven) for two years. We were both two of the youngest people there, age 16. He was a drummer, like me. He dabbled in guitar but only played once in a performance for a Joy Division tribute and sung one line in a Christmas Band Aid recording. I was the second best drummer in the whole college and Stephen was the best. He was the kindest most humble person there was. A lot of us (often me lol) would often argue or be quite competitive but Stephen would never say a negative thing about anyone or behave boastfully or anything like that. Just a pure truly nice person and everyone liked him. When we turned 18 some of us were getting ready to apply for University and I was really good at all the academic stuff. I remember a speech from our tutor saying to find schools in big cities opposed to better schools in smaller towns. I did all the research and Stephen asked me one time in a classroom which Universities he should apply. I gave him a list. One of them was LIPA, a very prestigious performing arts school in Liverpool which was very hard to get in to. It was the first choice for many of the top students in our grade and Stephen was the only one who got in. I didn't get in the first time and went to a different school but dropped out. Later I went to a university in the same city as Stephen to study business instead, but hadn't spoke to him since college. I ran into him on my first day in Liverpool at a convenience store. I was stood behind him and said 'alright', he looked at me and said 'woah', very surprised to see me, then we quickly caught up and finished with 'I'll see you around'. I saw him again later in the year as I was getting into a taxi and we both laughed and said 'see you around' again. The next time I heard of him was the news that he passed away. I wasn't aware of what he was doing in HERS, or the success he was having. Recently I decided just to look him up and discovered that actually he played guitar and sung in HERS and like you, found the music was amazing. A sad story and there was no one more deserving from him. There were many talented musicians in our school that year and all of them from what I can see drifted away from music for whatever reason, yet Stephen didn't. It's nice to see his music is being remembered, but I will always remember him as being the only peer I ever met who was technically really exceptional, but truly humble and kind to his bones. A very unique person.

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