25. I Need You - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Mercifully, I’ve had very little experience with grief.
We’ve had loss, of course, but our parents are still alive, my family’s healthy and while some of my friends have had serious illnesses, they’ve all recovered and are racing towards full health.
Yet, at the same time, my work with insurance has made it abundantly clear that experiencing true loss is simply a matter of time.
And I feel unequipped to deal with such inevitable truths.
Which leaves me in the odd position of being very aware that loss is coming, whilst also knowing that I lack the language needed to effectively deal with such an emotional onslaught.
It means that, if I’m to prepare for the idea of such loss, I’m fortunate in that I must imagine what it’s like.
Of course, I know that nobody’s ever truly ready for such things – but I’ve always disliked being surprised and have found compulsively preparing for things helps in the moment; helps me deal in moments of crisis.
So, being an over-analysing, compulsive over-thinker, this has set me a-thinking about the deeper reactions to real grief.
* * *
But another problem – most of my exposure to discussions about grief have resulted in clichés, in the repetition of homilies.
And if there’s one thing I hate more than small talk, it’s the repetition of clichés for no reason other than ‘that’s what you’re meant to say’.
Honestly, I’d prefer silence over clichés.
This has the unfortunate side effect, though, of forcing me to dig for things to say to the recently aggrieved that go deeper than “well, they went doing what they love” or “she’d have liked those flowers” or “you can always try again”.
I believe that effort, of looking beyond the cliché’s, is something we owe our loved ones when they’ve lost something.
Or maybe I’m wrong, maybe those clichés help us ford the torrent of emotions to let them know we’re still here.
Either way, given that I feel like my ‘emotional library’ is incomplete, I’m exceedingly keen to learn from people that have navigated these waters with respect, depth and wisdom.
Which brings me to Nick Cave.
* * *
I’m relatively new to the music of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. I’d always heard the frothing reviews and rants of their enthusiastic fan base but hadn’t ever really gotten into them.
I can’t remember what started it, but I started listening to No More Shall We Part a few years back – I think Fifteen Feet of Pure White Snow might have been my gateway track actually.
And the songs were forbidding, lyrical, poetic, gifted, insightful and, above all else really, really cool.
I’ve since come to grips with the simple fact that I’ll never be as cool as Messrs Cave, Ellis, et al.
There are some things we have accept as we age, like not being able to play guitar, ride a skateboard or give a short answer, and accepting that I’m simply not going to be that damned cool is just another part of growing up.
What’s impossible to argue about Nick Cave, though, is his wonderfully poetic way of speaking.
His ability to take this Wildean gutter we all find ourselves in and translate it into a sentence, paragraph, verse of song of new beauty.
Take the final scene of his fantastic memoir 20,000 Days on Earth – he’s not saying anything particularly new, but the way he’s saying it just tickles my cliché-avoiding fancy.
(Incidentally, the build towards the crescendo around the 4 minute mark is…it’s bloody fantastic. If art is a way to connect people, than that moment is clearly, purely, forever, art.)
Not for him, clichés.
It’s not necessarily unique – but it is incredible, and yet another thing I’ll have to accept is that I’ll never, as long as I live, write with the clarity or vision of Nick Cave.
Which, if nothing else, leaves me tremendously interested in hearing how he sees things, or learning about his views on any range of topics.
He has, I imagine, a new take on the kind of emotional queries and dilemmas I have no experience of.
And this was always theoretical before – I just figured I’d listen to his music and learn from that, learn from his language, his lyrics and his art. It wasn’t meant to be a literal education.
Then I learned about his own tragedy.
* * *
It’d be ghoulish to talk about what happened in specifics – particularly in a column as selfish and indulgent as this one – but most people who know of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds would know what happened.
To experience a loss like that, so suddenly, sadly and tragically, is quite beyond the scope of my processing capacity.
The mere idea of experiencing that pushes me to the edge of tears and starts me asking unanswerable questions about how to move on, how to deal, how to go on living, how, how, how.
I simply don’t know what I would do.
* * *
Where was I?
Oh yes, floundering around looking to learn the words and perspective necessary to deal with the inevitability of true loss.
And with one of the artists I’ve previously used to short-circuit my own emotional education suffering the truest of losses.
It was at this morbid intersection that I learned of the pending release of One More Time With Feeling, the 2016 documentary they’d made of the recording of Skeleton Tree.
It’s an unusual film, snippets of interviews, studio footage, narration and discussions. All underscored by a gaping, raw wound.
The director has since described it as:
“It wasn’t conceived as a work of entertainment,” the director says. “It was a practical solution to a practical problem.”
Which captures it very well.
It’s unsettling, to be honest, to spend two hours in a room full of strangers, watching a group of people talk around their grief.
It’s macabre, but it’s also exposure to a time of pure humanity.
I saw it at Cameo Cinemas in Belgrave, the night before Skeleton Tree. Which is, fittingly, also an unusual album.
The tracks don’t have the characters of their other work, it’s a much more personal collection of songs.
The music itself is harsh, dissonant and atonal. It’s not explicit in dealing with what happened – much of it was recorded, or at least written, before it.
It’s an opaque examination of it all, of the consequences and ever-lingering pain of such deep, indescribable loss.
And indescribable it is, I suppose.
Because I’ve learnt that human language is sadly inadequate when it comes to mapping the depths of such canyons.
And I have also learnt – contrary to how it might seem in these posts – that the descriptions of real emotions I find the most poignant come from brevity.
Short descriptions, conversation snippets, the wisps of memories - these are where connection and humanity live.
Lengthy paragraphs of prose can explore the feelings, define what happened, describe the narrative, even siphon off part of the emotional waterfall to share it with others.
But one, simple, true line can swallow the entire waterfall and spit it down your spine.
And Nick Cave, unsurprisingly, knows this.
* * *
Take the heartbreakingly sad I Need You from Skeleton Tree.
This song is perhaps one of the simplest distillations of human loss I’ve ever heard.
Guitar. Drums. Synth. Vocals. There’s not a lot to it.
Ostensibly about the loss of a lover, it’s hard to hear these lines and not detect a different element:
Nothing really matters
Nothing really matters when the one you love is goneYou're still in me, baby
I need you
In my heart, I need you
The lyrics aren’t complicated, but it’s so difficult to distil raw emotion like this, into simple words with meaning and depth.
It’s in the simplicity of the lyrics like:
'Cause nothing really matters
We follow the line of the palms of our hands
You're standing in the supermarket
Nothing, holding hands
Simplicity that’s repeated, and simplicity that circles back to that memory of someone how they were, where they were, when they were part of you:
Nothing really matters anymore
Not even today
No matter how hard I try
When you're standing in the aisle
And baby, nothing
Nothing, nothing
But it’s in his vocal performance, especially in the version in that video I’ve linked to. There’s a slight vibrato in his delivery, perhaps an artistic flourish.
Or, more likely I think, maybe it’s just a direct link to a father’s anguish.
It’s also there in the performances of the Bad Seeds – Thomas Wydler drumming out utter sadness, Warren Ellis wailing through his synthesizer, George Vjestica on the guitar.
The percussion lines aren’t complicated, the synth lines are broad, but based on a short melody.
There’re backing vocals, but they’re more like tired voices softly moaning into the sky than harmonising with the angels.
Because these people – all the people in their lives – have lost as well.
They’ve seen it, felt it, been there through it.
But it all comes back to that soft close up of a bereft father’s face.
And those final lines, those final, pleading lines delivered by somebody that has wailed them too soon:
I need you,
Just breathe,
Just breathe,
I need you.
In ten syllables, they capture a huge part of what I imagine loss feels like.
And they’ve also created, out of loss, something for those of us lucky enough to not have been touched by such sorrow something to deeply, worryingly fear.
I know it’s foolish to try and anticipate loss like this, to ‘prepare’ for the inevitable. And how critical it is that it doesn’t detract from the experience of the moments now.
And I also know that when the inevitable happens, it’s even odds that I’ll be an inconsolable wreck or a stalwart rock through it all.
But I also know that having artists like Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds to help show the way; to articulate – simply, accurately, beautifully – that which is universally human will help.
I’m not prepared for it, but I hope not to be cast adrift by loss.
In the meantime, just breathe.
Just breathe.
Just breathe.
* * *
PS: This piece is a wonderful explanation of some of the magic of Cave.
And if you’re at all interested, his Red Right Hand newsletter is something you should read. As an example, here’s his description of grief:
“It seems to me, that if we love, we grieve. That’s the deal. Grief is the terrible reminder of the depths of our love and, like love, grief is non-negotiable. There is a vastness to grief that overwhelms our minuscule selves.”
