Nick Cave
Australian musician, songwriter, poet, author and actor.
My responsibility as an artist is to turn up at the page or the piano or the microphone. The rest is up to God.
I don't particularly believe all love is doomed. But I guess, one is usually kinda suffering from some aborted love affair or association, rather than being at the peak of one. I think it's fairly obvious that a lot more suffering goes on in the name of love than the little happiness you can squeeze out of it. But I wouldn't like to dwell on it. Perhaps you could lighten up a bit.
I heard Nick Cave for the first time on an independent radio station in Australia, and the way he uses words is breathtaking. And it’s very melodic at the same time, very anthem-like. He also wrote a book called And the Ass Saw the Angel, from the perspective of a fetus in a womb. He’s really arrogant, but he can afford to be.
I took her from rags right through to stitches,
Oh baby, tonight we sleep in separate ditches.
The boy watches his father cross the road and thinks there is something about the way his dad moves through the world that is truly impressive. Cars screech to a halt, drives shake their fists and stick their heads out the windows and curse and blow their horns and Bunny walks on as if radiating some super-human force field, like he has walked off the pages of a comic book. The world can't touch him. He seems to be the grand generator of some hyper-powerful electricity.
One morn I awakened, a new sun was shining,
The sky was a kingdom, all covered in blood.
The moon and the stars, where the troops that lay conquered,
Like food left to wither, poor spirital food.
I'd rather see what makes me different as something almost congenital. And I have these inklings that what you commit or endure in this world, relates to some kind of justice or balance. Maybe if you get a bad deal in this world, it is because of something you did, or were, in a previous life. Which is why I don't feel sorry for the poor.
In a clap-board shack with a roof of tin,
Where the rain came down and leaked within,
A young mother frozen on a concrete floor,
With a bottle and a box and a cradle of straw.
Hold me up baby, for I may fall,
Hold my dish-rag body tall,
Our bodies melt together, we are one,
Post-crucifixion baby, post-crucifixion and all undone.
The carny had a horse, all skin and bone,
A bow-backed nag, that he named "Sorrow",
Now it is buried in a shallow grave,
In the then parched meadow.
Another ship ready to dock... the rigging comes loose... like Jennifer's Veil.
King Ink feels like a bug,
Swimming in a soup-bowl.
If you're involved with imagination and the creative process, it's not such a difficult thing to believe in a God. But I'm not involved in any religions, and I've never intended to make religious records or records that preach some kind of point of view.
The Captain's fore-arm like buncht-up rope,
With Anita wrigglin' free onto skull n' dagger,
And a portrait of Christ, nailed to an anchor,
Etched into the upper...
In heaven His throne is made of gold,
Where the ark of His testament is stowed,
A throne from which I'm told all history does unfold,
Down here it's made of wood and wire,
And my body is on fire,
And God is never far away.
A thousand Marys lured me,
To feathered beds and fields of glover,
Bird with crooked wing cast,
Its wicked shadow over,
A bauble moon did mock,
And trinket stars did smile,
Your funeral, my trial.
O ah hear her walkin',
Walkin' barefoot 'cross the floor-boards,
All thru this lonesome night,
And ah hear her crying too.
Hot-tears come splashin' down,
Leaking thru the cracks,
Down upon my face, ah catch'em in my mouth!
O You kings of halls and ends of halls,
You will die within these walls,
And I'll go, all down the row,
Knockin' on Joe.
O Warden, I surender to you,
Your fists cain't hurt me anymore,
You know, these hands will never wash,
These dirty Death Row floors.
The thing about being young is that you think you're the final product of evolution. You are invincible. And nothing can hurt you. And people don't count. Ah, the solipsism of youth.