2015 was a tragic year for Aussie music icon Nick Cave, who lost his teenage son in a tragic accident.
15-year-old Arthur Cave died from “multiple traumatic injuries” after falling off a cliff in Brighton, UK, and now, three years on from his heartbreaking passing, Cave has written an emotional post about how the grief of his son’s loss has impacted him.
In the sixth entry of his website’s interactive new series, The Red Hand Files, which invites fans to ask questions about his life, career and more, Cave responded to a query from Vermont-based fan, Cynthia.
She asked: “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. Are you and Susie feeling that your son Arthur is with you and communicating in some way?”
Thanking Cynthia for her “beautiful question”, the musician poetically discussed his experiences dealing with his son’s loss in a heartfelt post.
It reads:
“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. 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.
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.”
You’ll be able to hear more of Nick Cave’s wise insights during his 2019 Conversations speaking tour across Australia. Catch all the dates here.
Meanwhile, in August this year, a crowdfunding campaign was launched to raise $250,000 for a long-awaited statue of Nick Cave in his hometown of Warracknabeal in rural Victoria.
