Word: merritts
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...life story of songwriter Stephin Merritt can be told in three anecdotes: 1) A few years ago, Merritt was getting out of a cab when he was struck on the head by a hailstone the size of a golf ball. He picked up the piece of ice and put it in his freezer, where it remains. 2) As a birthday present, Merritt once decided to give himself isolation. He avoided speaking to another human being for nearly 24 hours, then ventured out to a bookstore and ran smack into his ex-boyfriend. 3) Merritt was browsing in another bookstore when...
...would choose pain, misanthropy and terrible luck as the recurring themes of a life, but Merritt has at least put his misery to excellent use. He is the great tragicomic songwriter of his age--equal parts Cole Porter and Charlie Brown--and love is his unkickable football. "Maybe it's being gay," says Merritt, "but for me, everything related to love is so awkward, it's automatically funny. Just the idea of love is embarrassing to me. It's the equivalent of singing in the street." In 1999 Merritt and his band the Magnetic Fields released 69 Love Songs...
...Merritt formed the Magnetic Fields in 1990, when he was sporadically taking classes at Harvard and writing an astrology column for a Boston gay weekly under the name Madame Cheva. He does not deny that he can be "deliberately unusual." The spelling of his first name comes from an attempt to trace the origin of his junk mail. He is prone to disconcertingly lengthy pauses in the midst of even the simplest sentences. His tiny Manhattan apartment is crammed with more than 90 musical instruments, all of which he can play. He rarely socializes. "I'm not a party type...
Writing is where Merritt gets his kicks, and he endures the recording process. "But I don't enjoy playing live very much," he says. "I don't like being stared at for an hour and a half while I'm unable to take a trip to the loo." The Magnetic Fields (which consists of Merritt, guitarist--banjo player John Woo, drummer Claudia Gonson and cellist Sam Davol, plus occasional accordionist Daniel Handler, a.k.a. author Lemony Snicket) will tour briefly in support of I, but Merritt is increasingly focused on composing for film and theater. He wrote songs for last fall...
BusinessWeek’s survey also includes a questionnaire filled out by school administrators, which Merritt noted is “the most time-consuming element of all of this.” Lampe said HBS would still cooperate with BusinessWeek on the school questionnaire...