Nick Cave has announced a memoir covering the years after the sudden death of his son, Arthur, then aged 15.
In a new memoir, Nick Cave will open up about coping with the sudden demise of his 15-year-old son Arthur five years ago.
The book, titled Faith, Hope And Carnage has been put together after 40 hours worth of interviews with Cave, conducted by journalist and Cave’s friend, Sean O’Hagan.
Being termed as a “meditation on big ideas including, faith, art, music, grief and much more,” the book will over the past six years of Cave’s “inner life”, as he came to terms with his son’s death and learned to carry on.
“This is the first interview I’ve given in years,” Cave said. “It’s over 40 hours long. That should do me for the duration, I think.”
The book, O’Hagan said, details “intimate and often surprising conversations in which Nick Cave talks honestly about his life, his music and the dramatic transformation of both, wrought by personal tragedy.”
“Arranged around a series of themes — including songwriting, grief, creativity, collaboration, catastrophe, defiance and mortality — it provides deep insight into the singular mind of one of the most original and challenging artists of our time, as well as exploring the complex dynamic between faith and doubt that underpins his work.” he said.
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Since 2018, Cave has sometimes alluded to his son’s passing on his Q&A site, The Red Hand Files, where he answers fan questions.
“Language falls short before the immensity of the experience of grief.” he told a fan seeking consolation after having lost loved ones to the pandemic in November 2020. “My well-meaning and desperately worried friends would speak into my grief, using words that made no sense. They would tell me that my son lived in my heart, for example, but I genuinely did not understand these words because when I searched my heart I found nothing but chaos and despair.”
“One desperate morning, however, I did the most simple of things and perhaps this can help you with the loss of your wife, and your brother, more than my words.” he said.
“I sat by myself, in a quiet space, and called upon my son by name. I closed my eyes and imagined lifting him from my heart — this tormented place in which I was told he lived — and I positioned him outside of my body, next to me, beside me. I said, “You are my son and now you are beside me.”” he continued.
“These few words had a powerful, vibrational effect, and this simple act of imagination was the first step in a process that would eventually lead me back to the world. By performing this act I was temporarily released from the rational world, a merciless place that gave me no peace, and given access to an impossible realm where I could form an increasingly resolute relationship with the spiritual idea of my lost child.” he said at the time.
You can read more about this topic over at the Classic Rock Observer.
