Here's a picture of Andrew

He's got rhythm

"Is there any reason I should bother to click on this link to the thing you wrote?" I asked Andrew. (This is why I don't use LJ cuts! I know they'd leave all of you asking this and, without me across the room to tell you otherwise, you'd just assume the answer's "no" and move on.)

"It's just about the songs I've been listening to lately," he said, which didn't really answer the question, but I think I'd flustered him a bit by asking. He always thinks things are obvious. I can never tell whether he's going to decide he's better than everyone else or the scum of the earth; it's a good thing he doesn't have any intermediate opinions or things would be even more confusing for me.

I clicked on it anyway, eventually. It's either sit here or clean the house, y'know. And then one of the songs surprised me because, for a supposed list of Songs He's Been Playing A Lot, I hadn't heard it. Then he ponted out that some were just songs he's played a lot Today, while I was out slaving over a hot computer and he stayed at home, which would explain why I haven't heard it at all recently. Here's what he said about it:

Stew – Nows Eternity is the song that means more to me than any other. My wedding was as far from ideal as you could get in most respects. My wife's brother had died a few weeks earlier, and her whole family were still in shock. Add to that the fact that the wedding was in her family's hometown (in the US), while I live in the UK and was taking her back here, that I have a mild phobia of new people at the best of times, and that it was a traditional religious wedding to keep her mother (who I didn't meet til the week of the wedding) happy, which neither of us wanted, and you can begin to imagine how stressful and unhappy the wedding was.

Now, my wife Holly and I met online, and one of the first things I did when I started to get to know her was make her an MP3 compilation CD, including Stew and The Negro Problem, and they'd become as much favourites of hers as they are of mine, and so I decided to do at least one thing to make the wedding enjoyable for her. Stew occasionally takes comissions to write songs about people, for Xmas presents and so on, and so various friends (to whom I will always be grateful) and I chipped in to get him to write a song about Holly for our wedding. I didn't tell her about it until the end of our wedding vows, at which point I announced what the song was. I will always remember the look of utter shock and delight on her face as she realised what I was saying, and heard Stew and Heidi singing a song about her.

Even if it didn't have these associations, this song would still be a favourite - Stew really is the best songwriter working today - but as it is, I'll always remember this song as the first thing to make my wife smile in our marriage.

Aw, he's just trying to make me feel bad for barely bothering to read the thing at all!