stu amp oh Stu I ache to echo you. Stu Aaron Christopher Josh. Stu. Jeff. Stu. Stu Stu. Stu. and one more. Stu. 040412 ... raze he was the most interesting part of the band the night i saw him play, and he was so low in the mix you could barely hear him. he was doing some really cool things with a looping pedal and his violin. he speaks softly and sometimes looks a little embarrassed in an endearing way. while he was over here doing ghostly violin things, we came up with the character falsetto stu, who never speaks in his chest voice. maybe it'll stick and become a running joke. 140517 ... raze it stuck. it runs. he was in iceland for a few weeks. now he's back. i asked if it felt strange coming back here, after being there. he said the thing he noticed most was the air. in iceland the air was so clean, it took four or five days of almost no sleep before he started feeling tired. not so here. he could almost taste the dirt in the air after being away from it for a while. he says i should write something for his brother to play cello on. says his brother's even quieter than he is, knowing what a funny image that is. 140731 ... raze he outdid himself this time. i need to come up with some way to thank him for the musical magic dust he's been spreading around. he doesn't want to be paid for session work, but there has to be something that'll make his falsetto ring brave and true. 141127 ... raze pressure took him away from something he loved, until death and togetherness brought it back to him. you learn the most interesting things about people when you ask the right questions and then just listen. 150524 ... raze he was speaking the words to a song he hadn't heard, that almost no one has heard yet, that he couldn't possibly know the words to. i was about ask him how that was possible, what kind of crazy psychic powers he was keeping quiet about, when i remembered i'd left the words sitting on a music stand and realized he was reading them aloud. 150710 ... raze missing "to" oh missing "to" where on earth did you get to? 150710 ... raze cleaning out a closet, i found the musical saw i bought six or seven years ago and quickly abandoned when it felt like trying to bend the blade into an S curve was going to give me carpal tunnel. couldn't even get a sound out of the thing. i was positive i gave it away, but no. it was just hiding. so i gave it to stu today, because he's handy with bowed things and i thought he might have some fun with it. he got more out of it than i ever did on his first try. when he was leaving he held out the saw in its case like a hand so we could do a fist-to-saw bump, and my knuckles kissed the tip, protected by black faux-leather. respect. 150726 ... raze the saw has a happy life now with him. he had a handle put on it to make bending easier. he calls it a cheat. i call it a useful advance. he makes it sing. 160302 ... raze he made himself into a whole virtual string quartet, just for something to do. the only appropriate response to a thing like that is to open the door singing "don't stop 'til you get enough". 160327 ... raze couldn't tell if he said i was his favourite person or one of his favourite people. one or the other. one of those "did you really say what i think you just said?" moments. it was a surprise either way, and the sort of thing that deserved a boomerang of truth. you favourite me, i'll favourite you, only because i already do. 160415 ... raze when i thanked him for giving me a free copy of his band's last album, he said it was the least he could do after all i'd done for him. "i think you're the one who's done a lot more for me," i said. "you've played on all these different things for me. all i've really done is give you a saw i wasn't using, and sing your praises to the angels." "well," he said, "that counts for a lot more that people think." "singing to the angels?" "yeah." 160809 ... raze he'll forever be the most soft-spoken person i know. but the day i told him about singing his praises to the angels, he told me about the two times he snapped. the first time it happened, he was sharing a house with a friend. they were going to university together. stu had an exam the next day. he was trying to study in his bedroom. his roommate had some friends over. they were playing music in the living room. they were getting rowdy. stu asked them to turn it down. they told him to fuck off. he went back into his room and tried to ignore the noise. he tried to concentrate. he couldn't. the music got louder. he asked them to turn it down again. they laughed at him. his roommate had a red fender strat. stu picked it up and threw it out the window. it landed on the street in front of the house. it bounced, and then the neck broke off. his roommate stared at him, too stunned to speak. stu aced the exam. the second time it happened, he was at a bar to see a few bands play. some guy started heckling one of his friends. he was getting in his face, saying all kinds of vile shit. his friend just took it. he was scared. he didn't want to start a fight. they were standing outside between sets, having a smoke, when the heckler started up again. stu walked up to him and punched him in the mouth. the heckler stopped heckling. he got the hell out of there. "that's why my hand's kind of sore today," stu said between takes. "mistakes were made." 211005 what's it to you? who go blather from