I’m still really quite emotional about Stornoway’s farewell
I’m, quite possibly, the world’s worst goodbyer. To the extent that I usually avoid it or minimise it: a quick hug and a ‘see ya soon’, even if one of us is booked onto a one-way flight.
I also, like most people, attach a huge emotional importance to music. I’m never without my headphones, the only time my room is quiet is when I’m sleeping, and I have on more than one occasion, missed my bus stop because I was too engrossed in a song to get off the damn bus.
Stornoway's music saw me through my teenage years and early twenties. It saw me through unrequited crushes, through messy, sticky, unfinished breakups, through depression and therapy, through almost dropping out of university and then graduating triumphantly, through the deepest holes of anxiety and all the sunny days in between. Brian’s voice has been my companion when I felt like the loneliest person in the world, and has been there for joyous celebrations of friendship at festivals, gigs, and car rides.
Each song reminds me of a person, or a time, or a conversation. Of memories of lying on the grass at Latitude in the blissful sunshine, only to have to jump up and run into the crowd because it was too good not to dance. Of late nights in uni flats introducing friends to their back catalogues. Of gigs with old friends, (ex)boyfriends, and flatmates.
Thank you for the music, for the melodies and poetry, for teaching me that a bonxie is a bird, for being unashamedly passionate about many and varied things; that lesson was perhaps more important than any other.
We’ll miss you, and eagerly await the reunion x
jbbartram-illu
theartofmadeline
turnnoffyourmind
gummygunk
