Page 118 - BFM F/W 2024

I wanted to mention a personal loss I experienced and how much your music helped during the grieving process. But then it occurred to me that maybe this happens a lot — that people often tell you about their grief.
Nick Cave: It actually happens all the time, yeah. I have the same problem as a gynaecologist at a dinner party. People feel open to talking to me about that sort of thing, though I never feel I have the answers when people do talk to me about them. But I’m always interested in what people have to say.
You’ve spoken about moving on from grief, or allowing yourself to feel joy again. Is that feeling, that joyfulness, reflected on the album?
Certainly, I’ve felt acute grief, and I have been able to come out the other side, feeling very happy and joyful about things. That journey is absolutely possible — even though it doesn’t feel like it for people new to these matters. I’m happy that Wild God is out there, and that people feel that it’s a joyful record, but it’s important to understand what joy actually is. I think joy understands suffering. It’s different than happiness. Joy sort of feels like momentary explosions of opti- mism, which come from an understanding of loss.
There’s a line on the song “Joy” that’s very powerful: “We’ve all had too much sorrow / now is the time for joy.” I think it captures the feeling that when you’re grieving, you almost need someone to allow you to feel happy, or to get — Permission. Yeah. There is that. It’s a sort of spiritual position that I’m puttin- forward on some level, to do with the idea of present laughter. That is, we need to understand the moment we are in and be alert to the beauty and the poten- tial joy that exists within the moment — to not be overly concerned with the future. It seems to me that there is a sort of deep dissatisfaction, culturally and
politically and spiritually, about the present moment. We’re constantly pushing toward something better, and we miss a great deal in the process of doing that.
In The Red Hand Files, you’ve written about your interest in cold plunges, or swimming in icy water. Not to sound too woo-woo, but for me, that’s a way of really getting into and feeling the present moment — you can’t think about anything else.
I hadn’t actually thought of it in that way, but that’s totally right. It is a pres- ent-moment thing. But it’s not a gentle activity. That’s what I like about it. It’s sort of subversive, and dangerous, and catastrophic. It’s not a woo-woo moment at all. It’s deeply, physically subversive. I love that about it.
The Red Hand Files is a kind of service to your readers. But it’s also clearly therapeutic for you. Was that always the intention?
It didn’t start that way. What I wanted to do initially was a podcast or something like that, where I sat down and talked to people about certain things. I was interested in the idea of conversation and of having good-faith exchanges with people. But I realized that I didn’t have it in me to do podcasts. It just wasn’t the right — I didn’t have enough control over things. So, I decided to do The Red Hand Files. Ask me a question, and I can answer it. That way, I can find a question that interests me, and write into it in a careful way. It’s become a fundamental part of the way I live my life. It forces me to be considerate and compassionate towards my fellow human beings, day to day.
Is the process time-consuming?
Fuck yes [laughs]. The whole thing takes a couple of days. I’ve got to read all the
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