Nick Cave on Creativity

[HeyAll]

Nick Cave is a fantastic song writer, vocalist, and he's also a talented writer. He's got a strong literary style that makes me envious.

Anyway, he wrote this piece on his newsletter where people ask him questions and he writes beautiful words back:

https://www.theredhandfiles.com/


How or when or do you shut the voices of all your influences (your heroes, your parents, your Jesus, your music) to listen to yourself, to become you or to believe that what you create is your own?
JOHN, BROOKLYN, USA

Dear John,

Nothing you create is ultimately your own, yet all of it is you. Your imagination, it seems to me, is mostly an accidental dance between collected memory and influence, and is not intrinsic to you, rather it is a construction that awaits spiritual ignition.

Your spirit is the part of you that is essential. It is separate from the imagination, and belongs only to you. This formless pneuma is the invisible and vital force over which we toss the blanket of our imagination — that habitual mix of received information, of memory, of experience — to give it form and language. In some this vital spirit burns fiercely and in others it is a dim flicker, but it lives in all of us, and can be made stronger through daily devotion to the work at hand.

In my view, John, worry less about what you make — that will mostly look after itself, and is to some extent beyond your control, and perhaps even none of your business — and devote yourself to nourishing this animating spirit. Bring all your enthusiasm to bear on the development of that good and essential force. This is done by a commitment to the creative act itself. Each time you tend to that ingenious spark it grows stronger, and sets afire the ordinary gifts of the imagination. The more dedication you show to the process, the better the work, and the greater your gift to the world. Apply yourself fully to the task, let go of the outcome, and your true voice will appear. You’ll see. It can be no other way.

Love, Nick

 

[JGittes]

Thanks, HeyAll, for posting something I didn't even know I needed.

I believe Nick still lives just down the road in Brighton. He talked about moving to California after the death of his son, but as of last December I've read he still lives here.

I'm reaching that age where my joy and amazement at waking up every morning is drastically tempered by the pain of the increasingly frequent loss of lifelong friends and family. It seems ridiculous to take so much pleasure in writing what I do here when that spirit has been extinguished in so many others. But Nick puts it all into a clear perspective.

Thanks for posting.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Thanks, HeyAll, for posting something I didn't even know I needed.

I believe Nick still lives just down the road in Brighton. He talked about moving to California after the death of his son, but as of last December I've read he still lives here.

He's still working out of the UK, yes. He's worked on a recent Marianne Faithfull album, and recorded Carnage with Warren Ellis during a lockdown.

 

[HeyAll]

Thanks, HeyAll, for posting something I didn't even know I needed.

I believe Nick still lives just down the road in Brighton. He talked about moving to California after the death of his son, but as of last December I've read he still lives here.

I'm reaching that age where my joy and amazement at waking up every morning is drastically tempered by the pain of the increasingly frequent loss of lifelong friends and family. It seems ridiculous to take so much pleasure in writing what I do here when that spirit has been extinguished in so many others. But Nick puts it all into a clear perspective.

Thanks for posting.

You know, he recently posted this on his Red Hand File, which is a beautiful piece of writing. I'm sure you'll like it:




The surest way to avoid a broken heart is to love nothing and no-one — not your partner, your child, your mother or father, your brothers or sisters; not your friends; not your neighbour; not your dog or your cat; not your football team, your garden, your granny or your job. In short, love not the world and love nothing in it. Beware of the things that draw you to love — music, art, literature, cinema, philosophy, nature and religion. Keep your heart narrow, hard, cynical, invulnerable, impenetrable, and shun small acts of kindness; be not merciful, forgiving, generous or charitable — these acts expand the heart and make you susceptible to love — because as Neil Young so plainly and painfully sings, 'Only love can break your heart.' In short, resist love, because real love, big love, true love, fierce love, is a perilous thing, and travels surely towards its devastation. A broken heart — that grief of love — is always love’s true destination. This is the covenant of love.
However, Mauro, to resist love and inoculate yourself against heartbreak is to reject life itself, for to love is your primary human function. It is your duty to love in whatever way you can, and to move boldly into that love — deeply, dangerously and recklessly — and restore the world with your awe and wonder. This world is in urgent need — desperate, crucial need — and is crying out for love, your love. It cannot survive without it.
To love the world is a participatory and reciprocal action — for what you give to the world, the world returns to you, many fold, and you will live days of love that will make your head spin, that you will treasure for all time. You will discover that love, radical love, is a kind of supercharged aliveness, and all that is of true value in the world is animated by it. And, yes, heartache awaits love’s end, but you find in time that this too is a gift — this little death — from which you are reborn, time and again. I have only one piece of advice for you both, and it is the very best that I can give. Love. The world is waiting.

 

[yukonnights]

HeyAll, Thanks for sharing these small nuggets of golden wisdom. It seems so odd to me that there are people for whom these thoughts and words have little practical meaning.