NICK CAVE
I have always felt there was a some-what mystical and almost religious quality in the nature of a number Nick Caves lyrics. Almost as if the singer were coming to terms with something.
Nick Cave: : "Happy songs, which simplify love, make me furious. They are all false. They deny peoples right to be sad and dreary. That is not what life really is."
However, when I mentioned my thoughts in conjunction with "The Weeping Song" I was met with very strange looks and generally dismissed.
Knowing next to nothing about Nick Cave (other than the songs I have listened to) I set out to see for myself.
I soon found a page with a cheesy headline: NICK CAVES IN TO RELIGION
Cave says, "One of the things that I guess excites me about belief in God is the notion that it is unbelievable, irrational and sometimes absurd."
Thinking about it it should not be seen as strange that an artist of any calibre explore life and existence through imagination and "mystical" rather than logical thought.
I searched on and found another article that can be read in full here.
Nick Cave: Songs & Visions 2: "In the teens I embraced all the great Russians, Dostjevskij, Tolstoy and those boys. It was heavy. Compared to them everything else was down hill. But then I stumbled over Faulkner. To me his books deal mainly about language. About how wonderful language can be. My favorite is 'As I Lay Dying'. What a story! I got a new literary wind in my back with the southern poets. Flannery O'Connor is also a major favorite. And the Bible too. I read it all the time."
In the interview he talks about his influence on his song writing and his feelings about music art and "The Gates of Heaven".
INTERVIEW: How about your attempts to enter the gate of Heaven?
CAVE: I have always been interested in religious questions. Religion has influenced me my whole life. It's clearer to me now what I believe in. The pieces are falling into places. Though, not organized religion. I don't care to place my ideas into a system. I change all the time and have no interest to be locked into some particular way of believing.
Now before his one time goth fans go bin their Nick Cave CDs go read the interview yourself. While he says a lot that would make the happy-clappy-born-agains very happy he says much that'd have him marked as a heretic. It's an interesting dichotomy.
INTERVIEW: You have written a very enthusiastic preface to The Gospel of Mark...
CAVE: If you read the gospel you would understand. It has inspired me more than anything else. It has everything."
So what of this influence on his art and on his music (and his novel)?
Nick Cave: : "INTERVIEW: Where do you believe the creative powers are coming from?
CAVE: I know where. They come from God."
This shock "revelation" has been brought to you by the [No More Pretensions] campaign.
# posted by Matt the Hat at Friday, March 18, 2005 | |
Get a life or die trying!
