Nick Cave
Australian musician, songwriter, poet, author and actor.
The brutality of the Old Testament inspired me, the stories and grand gestures. I wrote that stuff up and it influenced the way I saw the world. What I'm trying to say is I didn't walk around in a rage thinking God is a hateful god. I was influenced by looking at the Bible, and it suited me in my life vision at the time to see things in that way. .... After a while I started to feel a little kinder and warmer to the world, and at the same time started to read the New Testament.
Do I personally believe in a personal God? No.
Hit it! With words like Blood, Soldier and Mother...
Put ya shoulder to the handle, if ya dare, and hoist that bucket hither,
Crank'n'hoist'n'hoist'n'crank, till ya muscles waste'n'wither.
Death favours those that favour death.
God has matured. He is not the impulsive, bowelless being of the Testaments - the vehement glorymonger, with His bag of cheap carny tricks and his booming voice - the fiery huckster with his burning bushes and his wonder wands. Nowadays God knows what He wants and He knows who He wants.
The moon was turned toward me,
Like a platter made of gold,
My death, it almost bored me,
So often was it told.
He is an Australian artist like Sidney Nolan is an Australian artist - beyond comparison, beyond genre, beyond dispute.
From the words and the thickets,
Come the ghosts of his victims,
'We love you!'
'Ah love you!'
This will not hurt a bit.
Of course I doubt [the existence of God], I would distrust anybody who didn't doubt. But I'm a believer. I have an understanding and belief in the divinity of things. It seems to me that people look at God in the wrong way. They think that God is there to serve them, but it's the other way around. God isn't some kind of cosmic bell-boy to be called upon to sort things out for us. It's important for us to realise that God has given us the potential to sort things out on our own.
O the same God that abandon'd her,
Has in turn abandon'd me,
Deep in the Desert of Despair,
I wait at the Well of Misery.
I'm looking forward to working with Nick on something special one day. .... He has an amazing gift, a level of spirituality and self-realisation in his writing you don't often find. A Hemingway or Xavier Herbert of our time.
I tried to kill it in my bed,
I gagged it with a pillow,
But awoke the nuns inside my head.
I am the king! I am the king! I am the king!
One dead marine through the hatch,
Scratch and scrape this heavenly body,
Every inch of winning skin,
Honey Honey Honey Honey Honey, come and kiss me-e-e-e-e-e!
Love is a state that I would like to exist in continuously.
'O come to me!, O come to me!' is what the dirty city say to Huck.
And the mercy seat is melting,
And I think my blood is boiling,
And in a way I'm spoiling,
All the fun with all this truth and consequence.
An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,
And anyway I told the truth,
And I'm not afraid to die.
My oh My,what a wretched Life.
I was born on the day that my poor mama died.
I was cut from Her belly with a stanley knife.
My daddy did a jig with the drunk midwife
Let there be no sadness, no sorrow,
Let there be no road too narrow,
There'll be a new day, and it's today,
For all of us.
Nick Cave's making a lot of money, which is braindeath. I mean, going on tour with the same band for 20 years and playing the same songs–I don't care how you twist them, or torture the songs, you know? If it takes to be a posturing grandpa Wayne Newton-sounding bad Vegas-balladeer to get rich, I don't give a shit. I think this is lame. You know, he was one of the great poets and rocked like no other, but he's pathetic. How do these goth kids buy this crap? That's his genius; he's convinced goth kids to listen to their grandfathers' music.