Grief in a musical tone

[serafaery]

I was looking for an old Nick Cave quote about grief, from many many years ago - he lost his teenaged son in an accidental fall from a cliff in 2015 - and instead stumbled upon this stunningly beautiful interview from last year, in the New Yorker, Nick Cave on the Fragility of Life

Turns out that eloquent quote I had remembered led to him creating a whole online community supporting a series of writings/responses to questions on grief called the Red Hand Files.

I love this interview sooooooooooooooooo much. So so so so so so much.

It gets so hard, walking around carrying so much death. So much loss. The way he speaks about it is somehow both acknowledging appropriately the level of devastation, so comforting in its level of understanding, but also offers this hopeful vein that I've not been able to express before, though I have felt it, in different ways, from time to time - the way grief can feel expansive and as if it is deepening the experience of being human in a way that feels necessary and true. The sadness can morph into something more complex and profound than sadness, maybe partly because it is tied up inextricably with love.

I subscribed to The Red Hand Files.

I wish I'd known about this when it started. But I am so glad to find it now.

Comments

[pantherinsnow]

Nick is a gift. I haven't spent a lot of time in the Red Hand Files, but I have with the music he made during this period, and the documentary "One More Time With Feeling" is worth seeking out and watching.

There is also the poet Rainer Maria Rilke's book "The Dark Interval" which deals with grief, it is essentially a collection of correspondence he exchanged with people who were suffering from a loss.