For Nick
When sound carries memory, and listening becomes a form of love
Some days, music doesn’t arrive as discovery or pleasure. It arrives as memory.
This past Sunday, a good man left the room too early. Nick Williams — taken by cancer — someone whose working life was spent close to records, close to sound, close to the quiet rituals that many of us build our lives around. Nick worked at Phonica Records, a place that understands music not as content, but as care. As time spent properly.
Listening spaces like that matter because people like Nick make them matter. The ones who show up. The ones who know the records. The ones who understand that music is often doing something deeper than entertaining us — it’s holding us together.
Today’s note is also for Liz — a dear friend from the Virgin days — and for her family. There are no right words in moments like this. Only attention. Only warmth. Only the quiet acknowledgment that grief changes the way the room sounds.
If you listen today, listen gently.
If you put a record on, let it play all the way through.
And if you think of someone who shaped your listening life, say their name out loud.
Much love to Liz, her family, and to everyone carrying loss quietly this week.
Rafi Mercer writes about the spaces where music matters.
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