There's a lot of range to the dispatches Nick Cave makes via The Red Hand Files, but they're all poignant. Following his beautiful evisceration of ChatGPT's AI-generated lyrics and stirring essay on Love Island, the musician has now responded to a pretty rude question about when he became a "Hallmark card hippie" with absolute tenderness.
This latest submission comes from someone named Ermine, who wants to know where all rage, anger and hatred went. "Reading these lately is like listening to an old preacher drone on and on at Sunday mass," the so-called fan wrote, adding, "Joy, love, peace. Puke!" for good measure.
First and foremost, Cave provided a cartoon illustration of some cute, smiling items you might find in your kitchen whether you're lactose intolerant or not, reading: "This may be cheesy, but I think you're grate." He proceeded to let this Ermine know forthrightly that "things changed" after the death of his first son. The singer-songwriter unthinkably lost 15-year-old Arthur following a cliff fall in 2015 and 31-year-old Jethro last year.
"I changed," Cave went on. "For better or for worse, the rage you speak of lost its allure and, yes, perhaps I became a Hallmark card hippie. Hatred stopped being interesting."
He continued:
Those feelings were like old skins that I shed. They were their own kind of puke. Sitting around in my own mess, pissed off at the world, disdainful of the people in it, and thinking my contempt for things somehow amounted to something, had some kind of nobility, hating this thing here, and that thing there, and that other thing over there, and making sure that everybody around me knew it, not just knew, but felt it too, contemptuous of beauty, contemptuous of joy, contemptuous of happiness in others, well, this whole attitude just felt, I don't know, in the end, sort of dumb.
When my son died, I was faced with an actual devastation, and with no real effort of my own that posture of disgust toward the world began to wobble and collapse underneath me. I started to understand the precarious and vulnerable position of the world. I started to fret for it. Worry about it. I felt a sudden, urgent need to, at the very least, extend a hand in some way to assist it — this terrible, beautiful world — instead of merely vilifying it, and sitting in judgement of it.
Perhaps, Ermine, you are right, and I did, for good or ill, turn from a living shit-post into a walking Hallmark card. But, well, here we are, you and me, sending smoke signals to each other across a yawning ideological divide. Hello Ermine, I drone, hello.
Cave has previously said that his fans have helped him cope with the loss of his sons, perhaps even when they lob "Puke!" at him. Last year, he released spoken-word project Seven Psalms — a meditation on "faith, rage, love, grief, mercy, sex and praise."
This latest submission comes from someone named Ermine, who wants to know where all rage, anger and hatred went. "Reading these lately is like listening to an old preacher drone on and on at Sunday mass," the so-called fan wrote, adding, "Joy, love, peace. Puke!" for good measure.
First and foremost, Cave provided a cartoon illustration of some cute, smiling items you might find in your kitchen whether you're lactose intolerant or not, reading: "This may be cheesy, but I think you're grate." He proceeded to let this Ermine know forthrightly that "things changed" after the death of his first son. The singer-songwriter unthinkably lost 15-year-old Arthur following a cliff fall in 2015 and 31-year-old Jethro last year.
"I changed," Cave went on. "For better or for worse, the rage you speak of lost its allure and, yes, perhaps I became a Hallmark card hippie. Hatred stopped being interesting."
He continued:
Those feelings were like old skins that I shed. They were their own kind of puke. Sitting around in my own mess, pissed off at the world, disdainful of the people in it, and thinking my contempt for things somehow amounted to something, had some kind of nobility, hating this thing here, and that thing there, and that other thing over there, and making sure that everybody around me knew it, not just knew, but felt it too, contemptuous of beauty, contemptuous of joy, contemptuous of happiness in others, well, this whole attitude just felt, I don't know, in the end, sort of dumb.
When my son died, I was faced with an actual devastation, and with no real effort of my own that posture of disgust toward the world began to wobble and collapse underneath me. I started to understand the precarious and vulnerable position of the world. I started to fret for it. Worry about it. I felt a sudden, urgent need to, at the very least, extend a hand in some way to assist it — this terrible, beautiful world — instead of merely vilifying it, and sitting in judgement of it.
Perhaps, Ermine, you are right, and I did, for good or ill, turn from a living shit-post into a walking Hallmark card. But, well, here we are, you and me, sending smoke signals to each other across a yawning ideological divide. Hello Ermine, I drone, hello.
Cave has previously said that his fans have helped him cope with the loss of his sons, perhaps even when they lob "Puke!" at him. Last year, he released spoken-word project Seven Psalms — a meditation on "faith, rage, love, grief, mercy, sex and praise."
