Nick Cave
Australian musician, songwriter, poet, author and actor.
Numbin' the runt of reputation they call rat frame,
Top-E as a tourniquet,
A low tune whistles across his grave,
Forever the slave of his Six Strings.
The woods eats the woman and dumps her honey-body in the mud,
Her dress floats down the well and it assumes the shape of the body of a little girl,
Yeah, I recognize that girl,
She stumbled in some time last loneliness,
But I could not stand to touch her now,
My one and only onlyness.
Here is the hammer, that build the scaffold, and built the box...
All of the great works of art, it seems to me, are the ones that have a total disregard for anything else; just a total egotistical self-indulgence.
O poor heart, I was doomed from the start,
Doomed to play the villian's part,
I was the baddest Johnny in the apple cart,
My blood was blacker than the chambers of a dead nun's heart.
Nick Cave and myself got up and did karaoke in Brisbane one night at this Mongolian BBQ karaoke restaurant. It was just a bunch of normal, Brisbane folk. Me and Nick got up to do "Fernado", "Sometimes When We Touch" and "He's Not Heavy, He's My Brother". I was just playing the straight man, but Nick was doing the whole Birthday Party bit, with the kneedrops and the 'Raarrggh!', running up to tables doing the cabaret terrorist act, kissing old ladies. They took it for two numbers, and by the third they'd had enough and wanted to go back to, well, enjoying their evening.
My social conscience is fairly limited in a lot of ways; there's not much I'm angry about that doesn't affect me quite directly. But the prison system- not particularly capital punishment- but the penal system as it is, and the whole apparatus of judgement, people deciding on other people's fates... that does irritate, and upset me quite a lot. What angers me about the system goes beyond the unreliability of "proof"... it's that the way criminals are dealt with has nothing to do with rehabilitation and readjusting people who've stepped outside society's norms. The same goes for mental institutions and so forth. But it's also the very idea of someone being judged "criminal" or "insane" because they're unable to fit into what a corrupt society considers "social" or "sociable".
O you recall the song ya used to sing-a-long,
Shifting the river-trade on that ol' steamer,
Life is but a dream!
The sound is beautiful, it's perfect!
The sound of her young legs in stockings,
The rhythm of her walk, it's beautiful!
Just let it twist, let it break,
Let it buckle, let it bend,
I want to hear the noise of my Zoo-Music Girl.
Tallys up his loneliness, notch by notch,
For the sea offers nuthin' to hold or touch.
King Ink strolls into town...
He sniffs around.
Express thyself! Say something loudly! Aaaaaaah!
What's in that room, Sonny?
Fingers down the throat of love! Love! Love!
Outside the world of politics, one person in the world of the arts I would mention as an influence is Nick Cave, another person who has been around since the late 1970s. He has developed and changed remarkably, whilst remaining true to his vision. He has been a great help to me as well, without his knowing it.
When ya done ransackin' his room,
Grabbin' any-damn-thing that shines,
Throw the scraps down on the street,
Like all his books and his notes.
All his books and his notes and all the junk that he wrote,
The whole fucken lot goes right up in smoke.
Well, ah tied on, percht on mah bed ah was,
Sticken' a needle in mah arm, Ah tied off,
Fucken wings burst out mah back!
Thrown into a dungeon,
Bread and water was my portion,
Faith - my only weapon,
To rest the devil's legion.
The speak-hole would slide open,
A viper's voice would pleade,
A voice think with innuendo,
Syphillis and greed.
My baby is alright,
She doesn't mind a bit of dirt,
She says 'Horror vampire bat bite, sex vampire, how I wish those bats would bite',
Woooooah! Bite! Bite! Release the bats!
Who's that yonder all in flames?
Draggin' behind him a sack of chains
Who's that yonder all in flames?
Up jumped the Devil and staked his claim
Although I've never been an atheist, there are periods when I struggled with the whole thing. As someone who uses words, you need to able to justify your belief with language, I'd have arguments and the atheist always won because he'd go back to logic. Belief in God is illogical, it's absurd. There's no debate. I feel it intuitively, it comes from the heart, a magical place. But I still I fluctuate from day to day. Sometimes I feel very close to the notion of God, other times I don't. I used to see that as a failure. Now I see it as a strength, especially compared to the more fanatical notions of what God is. I think doubt is an essential part of belief.