19/04/2023
On the 26th of March, David Stone died. He is to the right of me in this photo, taken in Grangegorman. We are celebrating, giddy after a concert, surprised that once again we got away with it. I met David when I started to sing with the choir we shared and loved . He was one of the other only men in the choir back then and as such an ally. David and I only talked on Tuesdays or at concerts and I know the grief felt by his friends and family is intense and deep. But David is such a loss to our choir. He is proof to me that people can change you in an instant and that connections with people depend as much on those fleeting Tuesday moments as much as decades of time spent. He showed me that the connections you form with people are not defined, or predetermined, they are of their time and place. What you can call a friend can vary, they find their own form, their own register. And, surely the best kinds of connections are the ones that arrive when you need them.
David was there when I was terrified of being s**t and he would shrug and just open his mouth and sing. David taught me how to take singing seriously but never to take myself seriously with it. He did not ever tell me this, he lived it. His hard work, his tenacity, his joy and his humour when singing was infectious and inspiring and unique. Once, when a one-line solo was taken off me because I could not get the notes loud enough over the sopranos, David never let that go, never missed a chance to mock me, but never to make me feel bad, but instinctively to let me know that it did not matter at all, that to sing one more note, even quietly at the back line, was a gift. “What are ya going to do!” he would sing at me recalling the Paul Mc Cartney line I lost with a grin, any time things got tough. I wonder now indeed, what are we going to do David.
David Stone, 10.07.71 - 26.03.23