Nick Cave and longtime collaborator Warren Ellis have dropped a new seven-inch release called ‘Grief’, based on a fan question Cave received back in 2018.
The release contains two tracks, ‘Letter To Cynthia’ and ‘Song For Cynthia’. The former was written by Cave with music by Ellis, while the latter was composed and recorded as a duo.
The record, available for purchase here, was inspired by a question a fan named Cynthia sent to Cave’s website The Red Hand Files.
“I have experienced the death of my father, my sister, and my first love in the past few years and feel that I have some communication with them, mostly through dreams. They are helping me,” she wrote.
Referencing the 2015 death of Cave’s son Arthur, she said: “Are you and Susie feeling that your son Arthur is with you and communicating in some way?”
In response, Cave said: “This is a very beautiful question and I am grateful that you have asked it. It seems to me, that if we love, we grieve. That’s the deal. That’s the pact. Grief and love are forever intertwined. Grief is the terrible reminder of the depths of our love and, like love, grief is non-negotiable.”
He continued: “There is a vastness to grief that overwhelms our minuscule selves. We are tiny, trembling clusters of atoms subsumed within grief’s awesome presence. It occupies the core of our being and extends through our fingers to the limits of the universe. Within that whirling gyre all manner of madnesses exist; ghosts and spirits and dream visitations, and everything else that we, in our anguish, will into existence. These are precious gifts that are as valid and as real as we need them to be. They are the spirit guides that lead us out of the darkness.”
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“I feel the presence of my son, all around, but he may not be there. I hear him talk to me, parent me, guide me, though he may not be there. He visits Susie in her sleep regularly, speaks to her, comforts her, but he may not be there. Dread grief trails bright phantoms in its wake. These spirits are ideas, essentially. They are our stunned imaginations reawakening after the calamity. Like ideas, these spirits speak of possibility. Follow your ideas, because on the other side of the idea is change and growth and redemption. Create your spirits. Call to them. Will them alive. Speak to them. It is their impossible and ghostly hands that draw us back to the world from which we were jettisoned; better now and unimaginably changed,” he concluded.
In a new statement, Cave added: “My reply was the first time I was able to articulate my own contradictory feelings of grief. Letters like Cynthia’s have helped bring me and many others back to the world.”
‘Grief’ comes in what has been a busy time for Cave and Ellis, who released their first studio album as a duo, Carnage, earlier this year.
On top of that, Cave also recently revealed that he and Ellis have recorded a live film featuring songs from the album alongside the 2019 Bad Seeds record Ghosteen.
For more on this topic, check out the Classic Rock Observer.
Check out a preview of ‘Grief’ by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis:
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