The Magnetic Fields – Holiday

Holiday sounded very 80s. We carried all of their early singles on our mail order stock. ‘100,000 Fireflies’ was on Harriet Records, and I got swapping records with them. Tim from the label would come over and stay in my record room, and head out to do research for his PhD all day. This was my kind of payback to artists who have given me such beautiful music.

I saw them three times in one week – one time at The 12 Bar Club on Denmark Street with hardly any people. Then again at The Water Rats and Subterania in Ladbroke Grove. I got talking to them, and shortly after I started emailing Stephin Merritt. I remember sending him The Gestalt Prayer – ‘I do my thing and you do your thing. You are you and I am I.’ He thought it was a sinister thing to send him, but I never thought that. I wanted to share how I connected so deeply to his music.

Things just seem to filter into your life like a little cobweb of connections. We have Nadis [a term for energy flow in Indian medicine and spiritual theory] in our bodies. I feel that sometimes music is the same.