Elizabeth Oldfield speaks to musician Nick Cave and journalist Seán O’Hagan. 18/01/2023
Elizabeth
Hello, and welcome to The Sacred. My name is Elizabeth Oldfield, and this is a podcast about our deepest values, and how we can build empathy and connection in a time of increasing polarisation. Every episode I talk to someone who has some kind of public voice or platform, and I try and give them space to reflect on their deepest values, what they think a good life is all about, and what they’ve learned about navigating our deep differences. Guests come from all quadrants of the political compass. They hold a vast range of different metaphysical beliefs and work in all manner of different professions. The hope is that we can get to the person behind the two–dimensional public profile, and in so doing, contribute in a very tiny way to a more humane and curious and open public conversation.
In this episode, you will hear a conversation I had with two guests, unusually. They are journalists Seán O’Hagan and musician Nick Cave. Seán is a music critic and music journalist and an author. And Nick Cave is a multi–award winning musician who I think it’s fair to say has achieved cult status. I know this because when I told several friends that I was interviewing him, they reacted as if they were, in fact in a Nick Cave cult. Although, as you will hear, it sounds so much less disturbing than many cults do, if it does, in fact, exist. Nick and Seán are also two old friends. And it’s the first time we’ve interviewed two friends. They’ve recently written a book together called ‘Faith Hope and Carnage’. It’s based on conversations they had over several years, it actually grew out of an awareness of all the things they disagreed about and their desire to have a good faith conversation across their differences. So well, as well as being a fan generally, it just seemed too ‘Sacredy’ an opportunity to pass up. If you don’t know the context, Nick’s son, Arthur died in a really terrible accident in 2016, when he was a teenager, and both the book and the conversation address these very tender themes of grief and loss. So, I just wanted to raise that because if your heart isn’t strong enough to be thinking about bereavement today, then you might want to come back to this episode, at a later date. There are some reflections from me at the end. I hugely enjoyed recording this, and I very much hope you enjoy listening.
What do you hold sacred? Seán O’Hagan’s response.
Nick and Seán, thank you so much for joining me. I’m going to kick off with a question that is the opposite of easing you in, which is asking about what you hold sacred. And that’s deliberate. It’s to try and accelerate through small talk, help us get into a different part of our heart, mind, soul, brain. And I always find it really helpful to hear what is sacred to people as a way of moving away from the issues that we disagree on, and the tribes that we ascribe to each other on. And frankly, the ways that we dehumanise each other. So, something a bit deeper and more tender, but it’s actually really hard to get out. So please don’t worry: where does your mind go? And I’m actually going to start with you, Seán. Because I have a sense that you might have a slightly more complicated relationship with the word; you can even reject the premise of my question, if you like, but it’s deep principles, deep values, things on which you have tried to centre your life.
Seán O’Hagan
Okay, talk about easing me in. I don’t actually have a problem with the word sacred, I just think it has at least two meanings. One is to do with holiness and God, and the other one is the values that you hold. I suppose the values that I hold to some degree, were rooted in my Catholic upbringing as a kid, so kindness, charity, all those things that you read in the Gospels. We were very much New Testament in the Catholic Church. It wasn’t an Old Testament faith. And I think those carried over later, into my later years when I got a bit more radical, as Nick would put it. So old fashioned, what you would call old school socialist values, which, I think, you know, coalesce with a lot of Christian values. At the minute, I’m very interested in the idea of community, that’s something I would like elevated a lot more, whether it’s a Christian community, or our community. I think it’s under siege, the idea of community. And I think that’s something that’s become quite sacred to me in the last ten years or so, all this fractious division that we’re seeing. And then it’s further complicated. Because I’m, as Nick knows, I’m kind of weirdly drawn to the sacred — meaning God and holiness, even though I described myself probably, as an agnostic. I find myself have drawn to the sort of elevated ideas in you know, in poetry and art, and literature, and music. And I’m having to contend with that having done this book and give it a bit more serious thought. And I’m drawn to the sort of private nature of, I guess, contemplation, that sheds into religious contemplation. I mean, in the book, I go into church and light a candle often. While trying to undercut this, Nick pointed out that that was actually a very meaningful thing to do. Otherwise, why would you do it in the first place? And I’ve been thinking about all those things, but I suppose if I have an engagement with the sacred, it’s private, and it’s slightly sceptical if I’m being honest.
Disagreements about faith and religion
Elizabeth
So, there’s so much I want to unpack there, because the story that I was telling myself as I read, the book was slightly different of a Catholic childhood, brought up during The Troubles, seeing the worst that religion can bring out in us. And there’s certainly a sense of a dichotomy between you guys in the book. When you’re talking about God and religion and a sense of… I think, well, maybe you didn’t describe yourself as an atheist, but I sort of assumed that you were an atheist, and you certainly feel like you want to defend atheism, around some of the things that Nick is saying. Does that feel like there was a dynamic that was there, at least when you started talking?
Seán O’Hagan
Well, I want to defend rationality and reason, I guess more than atheism. It’s a strange word, it’s such a loaded word. It’s almost as loaded as Christianity. And I mean, I think that with the Catholic upbringing, particularly in such a heightened and riven place as Northern Ireland, it becomes very tricky. And when you get out from under that, which I did, in my teenage years, you spend a lot of time reacting against it. And it’s a long process before you realise that that’s kind of pointless, and that you have to move have somewhere else and take the best of it with you. Because whatever else it is, it was incredibly character–forming. And it leaves me with a deep problem with organised religion because of the sectarian nature of the place where I was raised. And because you’re also to this day, I mean, when I go back home, I would be immediately classed as a Catholic again, just by name.
Elizabeth
I want to ask you Nick, have you seen a change in Seán? Have you seen something happening over these conversations? He said you guys were quite argumentative in early chats.
Nick Cave
We started the conversations after…I guess it was like we were backstage at a gig that I was performing at. And we got talking about Israel, which I knew Seán had completely opposing views about, mostly about the boycott. And I played in Israel and Bobby Gillespie was there who’s also very anti–Israel.
Seán O’Hagan
Pro–Palestinian, is the word I think you’re looking for.
Nick Cave
Well, no, it’s more the other way with him. But I’d been under a lot of duress, and had no one to talk to about it, essentially, because everyone writes letters into The Guardian, and all this sort of stuff about it. But no one actually talks to you about these sorts of things. And Seán did. And it was, to me, even though it was three hours of us like a pub brawl, it was exciting for me, because I recognised something in Seán that was genuine and that he really genuinely wanted to put his point across and that it wasn’t point scoring. And I found myself personally, I could hear myself become more shrill. And kind of, as I wrote in ‘The Red Hand File’, this morning, I felt I had the wind in the sails for something I actually didn’t know that much about. And so, there was something that really was interesting to me. And even though it was a fractious argument, it was in a sense a good faith conversation. And so, I kept ringing Seán back, you know, lockdown happened, and I would ring him up again, and we would argue about things. And, to our horror, I think we realised that there was a whole raft of things that we disagreed on, politically, I guess. But we also had common interests, which were music, and we love the same bands and all of that sort of stuff. And eventually, I think the book became a way to converse beyond and on the other side of our disagreements, shall we say. So that we were able to challenge and let’s say correct each other if we thought that needed to be done, but it was done in a in a genuinely curious way, where we allowed each other, I think, at least, the privilege to be wrong. And that’s something to be said in a conversation that we simply don’t get these days. So, there was a sacred value, not to push this too much within conversation of that type.
Nick Cave’s sacred value
But do you want me to answer your question?
Elizabeth
Yes please.
Nick Cave
I mean, for me, I think there’s all sorts of places that you can find sacredness, and it’s often easier to find sacredness in the secular world, I would say than in the religious world. Recently I’ve been doing something that I’ve never done before, which his wild water swimming. So, it’s swimming in freezing cold water very, very early in the morning at six o’clock in the morning. And there’s something about this, that feels very much to me, to my surprise, sacred: that there is a sense of sacredness about this of have just been within nature. It’s something that I’ve never really felt connected to nature in that way, particularly. But this is something completely different. There’s also within music for me there that which is also a secular activity, but in my opinion, a religious activity where the sacred can be found. And, I would also say that I personally find a sacredness within my marriage, within the institution of marriage, there is something there that I hold sacred. And these are all secular, or at least activities that can be experienced by anybody, to some degree. But there’s also stepping into a church for me, and that’s also obviously a sacred act. And I’m personally finding that increasingly beautiful, elevating, inspiring. All those things that I had spent a lifetime being sceptical about, have dropped away to some extent, and I really feel there is a place for me, in the institution of religion. And that partly, I have to say, comes from having these conversations with you (gesturing to Seán), because there were certain ideas that I had that died off, through conversation, they just weren’t as good as I thought they were, or they weren’t as strong as I thought they were. And other things that firmed up, you know, and one of those things that firmed up was the idea that actually I had always been living a religious life, even though I felt like I was kind of a failure at it, because I could never embrace it fully. But that position of doubt that is adjacent to belief, is a sacred position too. So, I guess the question is what is sacred about these different sorts of things? And for me, when I thought about it, it has something to do with awe, and mystery, and beauty. And awe I guess, is to stand in front of something, and to be uplifted, and the self to be shrunk down. So, there’s this weird pull that happens to your very soul, I would say. And I just like to add on top of that, to me, is the precarious nature of what is sacred. And that worries me very much in all of these different areas. That there is that the sort of strident–ness of the conversation is making all of these areas. I mean, the sort of precarious nature of nature itself, of music that is under attack by various forces. The idea of the family, the idea of marriage, these institutions are also under attack. And of course, religion is almost off the table.
The transcendent nature of grief
Elizabeth
Thank you. Well, I have to say it is very strongly the combination of Seán’s amazingly tender and honest and curious questioning, and then your willingness to think out loud about these experiences that feels almost entirely devoid from the public perception of religion. As someone who became a Christian in my teens, I live in an intentional community now, a new monastic, intentional community where we have a kind of rhythms of hospitality and prayer, a Rule of Life, a commitment to live outside of a kind of isolated nuclear family or single person unit. And to have something that feels truer to my lived experience of what this problematic word Christianity, the treasure of it is such a beautiful thing. But what was interesting in the book is for one thing, the reviews completely not knowing what to do with that bit. And how, Seán, I think, saw the depth of the theme in your work and your music and in your writing. But there’s suddenly it feels like a point in your conversation where Seán’s going, ‘Well, I sort of knew you were it came up a lot in your lyrics. I sort of knew you were going to church sometimes. But I didn’t know…’ I was reading your 1998 Mark’s Gospel introduction. So, it’s been sort of visible in plain sight. But it seems like something changed, you’re very clear that something changed through bereavement, through the loss of Arthur. Would you say a little bit about how you think about that now, maybe a few years, even after the book?
Nick Cave
Well, it’s difficult because nothing happened immediately, except the worst. And so, one of the things that in the book that happened with Seán was he said, ‘You always tend to talk about grief, or indeed Arthur, from the other side of the Abyss, shall we say? And you tend to put forward a kind of message of hope and grief being a potentially transcendent experience…’ these sorts of things. And that I found quite shocking, and true, because it’s difficult to actually say how bad it actually gets. It’s difficult to say how bad it gets to watch. I’m sorry, I’m actually finding this… It’s difficult to say how hard it gets to watch your wife, for example. So, when I talk about these matters, I’m more cautious about talking about them, because I think they anger people too: anger, anger! We were talking about this before, but they anger people fresh in their grief. ‘How dare you speak about the transcendent nature of grief?’
Elizabeth
It sounds like you’re tidying it up.
Nick Cave
It sounds like an indulgence, exactly. So, I’m cautious to talk about it in that way. However, I believe that there is something that comes through the idea of grief. The alternative to the transcendent journey through death is the other way, which is to calcify around the absence of the person that you love. And this is a kind of hell, and that anger, that pure rage at the world is a kind of hell in itself too, and I think we have to move beyond that in some kind of way. So that’s why I do talk about: that my life is actually…I say in the book, I think, beautiful and full of meaning, I think we talked about that. And there’s a happiness to it and a joy to it, but it’s different than anything that I’ve experienced before. It understands despair. And so, it’s a happiness that is defined in the face of grief. And I don’t mean to keep going on, but just to say that that I think most happiness is like that. You know, I think when you look underneath the hood, most happiness is harder to arrive at a genuine joyfulness towards the world. It doesn’t come easy.
Seán O’Hagan
There’s something else that you sort of left over there. Because there’s a piece in the book that really took me aback where Nick talks about the actual raw state of grief, being so visceral and, you know, well elevated in some weird way, that you’ve become open to glimpses of the other, what I would call the other, you would call the divine or whatever. But you do become in that state, very sort of open to receiving these messages, which we talked about in the book. And this is something I’m very interested in: these glimmers and sort of whispers of something else that come at you. I was just thinking, when you were talking about finding the sacred… for me, the times that I felt close to the sacred in the divine way is always in certain places. It’s not music or art, but certain places that you go to when you’re taken aback. This place is in the west of Ireland, for instance, where you can literally feel this energy coming off the land, you know, around sort of ancient sites and stuff. When I went to Ethiopia… Is it the Coptic church over there? I remember wandering into this sermon that was, I think it’s called mesco, which is the finding of the True Cross, it’s a feast day. And there was like, literally hundreds of people in this huge metal, all dressed up, just moving sideways, very slowly and singing. And they do it for 36 hours, without sleep. And it was just this overwhelming thing. I mean you could not feel that you’re not in the presence of the sacred, maybe not a literal sense, in the holy sense of the word. I think in some strange way that experience of raw grief and dislocation are things that leave you open. I saw constantly in Northern Ireland, during The Troubles where people would talk about the most awful things, and then say, ‘but’, and they would talk about some experience and I mean, obviously, neuroscientists would say that that’s the brain keeping you sane, but I think maybe not. I just wanted to bring that in. And also, the question about… the conversation shifted from the fractiousness very quickly. And I remember clearly, because it was a beautiful spring day, and I’d gone down to see you, you were on your balcony, and you said something about doubt also being divine. And that really was the seed for the book, that conversation. I played it in my head, and I was thinking, ‘God, this is really, too good for us just to have between the two of us.’
Faith, Grief, Art and Surrender
Elizabeth
Yeah, it feels like you’re circling round…in my notes I tried to break out the themes, but I kept having to go like, faith is related to art, and art is related to grief, and grief is related to art and art is related to things that divide us. It is like a layering of a song. And it’s hard to know how much I am, as someone who is a Christian and is fairly comfortable, even though the language all breaks down and becomes useful… very comfortable with the idea of God or the divine… it feels like this almost like third party or third presence in the conversation that you’re wanting to engage within question and slightly backing off from and there are moments where it feels like Nick’s willingness to talk about himself more as a religious person. It feels like you’re sort of longing and wanting to surrender completely. I’m not quite sure how, and you’re a friend who’s almost like, ‘Careful, careful’. What is it that you’re worried about, for Nick?
Seán O’Hagan
Well, the certitude that comes with certain faiths. Because I love the idea of surrender, by the way, and I think it’s integral to that journey that you would make that you know, love, devotion and surrender was some record by Santana. But the idea of surrender, I think is something that from early on in my life, when I was dealing with being taught by the Christian brothers, you know, the catechism and all that…that was always there, that notion that if you’ve got to surrender, and you’ve got to accept and that’s the problematic aspect as well: even though I love it, it’s a problem.
Elizabeth
So, what are you surrendering to?
Seán O’Hagan
And it’s a bit where the rationality just gets pushed aside and you make the step across, but again, I love grappling with that, you know, it’s there. And lots of things are sewn in the Four Quartets by Eliot, and all that wrestling with, you know, I have to do this in order to get the full experience. But I was worried just because I think for a songwriter, or an artist of any kind, doubt is very important in all things. And certitude is probably…
Nick Cave
Well, yeah, I would say, doubt, or not quite knowing is not just something that I have in regard to religious things, but to the world in general, I would say. It’s actually become more and more for me almost a political point of actually not really knowing.
Seán O’Hagan
Oh really? How does that work?
Nick Cave
It works in that you remain curious about things, and you become open to things. Curious to things and you don’t become dogmatic and strident about things, which, as far as I can see, around these sorts of topics we all become. And I don’t feel I have, at the end of the day, the authority to be that way. And there’s an arrogance and a kind of godlike notion around that, that I find uncomfortable. And so, there’s something about…
Elizabeth
The phrase epistemological humility is coming to mind.
Nick Cave
There you go. That’s what I was going to say, before you jumped in.
Elizabeth
Sorry.
Nick Cave’s faith and theology
Seán O’Hagan
Even though you express all this…I sense that your faith is essentially private.
Elizabeth
Do you?
Seán O’Hagan
Is it between you and God? Is it a private conversation?
Nick Cave
Well, I certainly have those conversations. But I’m looking for structure. When I talk to you and I hear what you’re talking about it, it’s a little bit the same thing. I would really like someone to sit down and talk to me about these sorts of matters in an open kind of way, because mostly when I meet a Christian, it’s a done deal. It’s something they believe, and why not? And, and all the rest of it… But it’s difficult to find people to talk to about these sorts of things. You know, the distance I need to travel isn’t that far. But when I go to church, for example, which I have been going to more lately, I still walk in essentially, as a sceptic. And you talked about surrender. I understand the concept of surrender, but that’s not something I feel you do, and that’s the end of the story. It’s just something that you have to repeat constantly in almost every moment of the day, on some level, for some of us. But I do feel that that scepticism, which I always took as a virtue to some degree, can just kind of get in the way a little bit and that I feel huge benefits, spiritual benefits from just going to church and hearing what they’re saying and accepting it on some level. I feel a genuine lifting of the spirits.
Seán O’Hagan
That wasn’t always the case.
Nick Cave
I used to try and run out. Back in the day, there were so many things I couldn’t handle about church. The sermon used to drive me crazy because I had these ideas about what the Scripture was and what it meant to me and then…maybe I was just getting the wrong person up there. But they would talk about this, or in my youthful arrogance, let’s say, I felt that they were diminishing or taking away some of the mystery of it and all of that stuff. And then there was the kind of turning to your neighbour and wishing them well; that was you know, to turn and look at someone in the eyes and wish them well, you know, 20 years ago that didn’t come naturally to me. I did, as a young person hold the world in some kind of contempt, you know, first principles, you know, I didn’t deserve anything else as far as I saw the world when I was younger. But I would say when I was younger, and that’s the way I saw the world, I was literally, as we’ve said, that I was literally not an actual person, I was just a part of a person. And it took, I think, my son dying, in particular, for me to become a more fully formed person and be able to turn around to see the world as a beautiful thing.
Elizabeth
You have this line about… in fact, I’m going to do an awfully annoying thing. I’ll try not to quote you too much, but I just want to show you what I drew, about the proximity of God and grief. Because I wanted to ask particular thing. This is what I drew. To me, it feels that in that dark place, the idea of a God feels more present and maybe more essential. It actually feels like grief and God are somehow intertwined. And I wondered whether you were thinking about the cross at that point, and the bizarre kind of shocking, painful, beautiful idea of a bereavement within the Trinity? And a God who’s, you know, a father, son, relationship sundered and the kind of tenderness and the presence and the suffering that is present in at least some, you know, Christians approach it differently. And some of them tidy it up and make it victorious and triumphant.
Nick Cave
It doesn’t feel like that to me.
Elizabeth
No, how much was that particular part of the story relevant and helpful or not?
Nick Cave
I mean, I think that’s just in my bones. You know, and that is something that I’ve always responded to, the Christian story. I mean, since I was very, very young, there was something about the Christ story that I responded to, on a very elemental kind of way. I also respond to I hope I’ve got this right, but the night in the garden, and God’s withdrawal from Christ at that point. I really responded to that too, that there was someone that was crying out, praying to a God that had…
Elizabeth
…felt abandoned
Nick Cave
Felt abandoned and withdrawn. And that unbelievably, has always been something that I’ve responded to very well and right through the passion God’s absence is horrifying, you know.
Seán O’Hagan
It’s essentially a human drama that point of the tale.
Nick Cave
Yeah, absolutely. And even as even when I was quite young, I used to hear that and think, ‘Oh, poor Jesus!’ You know, why then? And that is the condition of grief too.
Seán O’Hagan
Feeling forsaken.
Nick Cave
Well forsaken, and the withdrawal of all good from the world. And I respond to that aspect of the story very, very strongly.
Elizabeth
I am having an internal battle, because you use the word ‘pray’. And I wanted to name the thing, which is every thoughtful, intelligent, Christian, I know is reading this book and astonished by it, which I’m sure your publishers will be thrilled to hear because it’s an untapped market.
Nick Cave
Well, if we can get that happening in America…
Elizabeth
I would not be at all surprised, the two–dimensional portrayal of what faith looks like is so tiresome and humiliating for most people of faith, and this feels like something beautiful.
Nick Cave
I’ve never heard it put that way. I love that you said that because it’s the thing that is so difficult for anyone who is reaching towards something that it is so diminished. But every now and then you come across someone who speaks beautifully about these sorts of things, and it’s really, I don’t know… I mean, there are people that I listen to, and I’m staggered by some of the things that they say, but it’s a conversation I’ve really had to look for. It’s a weird fringe.
The true complexity of faith
Elizabeth
Yeah. And I want to ask both of you this question, which is, why is it so hard? Why am I so astonished to see tender, honest, beautiful reflection on these deep metaphysical longings with comfort with doubt, but also a real straightforwardly uncynical, yearning for the love of God? And it’s a question really about aesthetics because it may be the thing you said about certitude you know that Emily Dickinson thing of like, tell ‘the whole truth, but tell it slant’, that when we go straight on for things like goodness, or love, or even the thing you said about that lyric “peace will come” how that was an impossible lyric to write before. You know, Marilynne Robinson does it, Flannery O’Connor does it, Graham Greene does it, Rowan Williams’ poems do it, but it is incredibly rare to get art or just voices that seem to reflect the true complexity of the experience of faith and the religious experience and everything gets flattened into kitsch, two–dimensional Instagram cliché, simplicity of which that’s not almost anyone’s lived experience. Just as a kind of someone who thinks a lot about art and creativity, I’d love to hear what you both think about why is that hard? And how do we fix it?
Seán O’Hagan
I think without being accusatory here, but I think Christians do a pretty good job of diminishing it.
Elizabeth
Awful, awful ability to communicate it.
Seán O’Hagan
Yeah, and also the more extreme versions of Charismatic Christianity, in America and elsewhere. And it has a baggage for a lot of people, you know. The Catholic Church, of course, and their roles in imperialism and all those things. I mean, organised religion has a part to play and all that, but I think I’m not sure you should concern yourself too much with that stuff, really, It’s honestly, to me, a distraction. If you have a faith, you should make it sort of the best faith that you can and not worry about all this other. I mean, there are always going to be people who reduce it and just, you know, are go at it like, like Dawkins. They’re just not having it, you know? But I just think maybe we’ve culturally gone beyond that moment; I think a bit. I think COVID has had a huge resonance that I wasn’t aware of until we did those signings… that, (a) the people that had been so deeply affected, and (b) that there was a shift in the conversation. I mean, if you’re standing in the middle of Waterstones in Manchester, Edinburgh, I’ve said this before, and there’s 300 people, and someone just starts telling Nick about, you know, ‘I’ve just lost my mother and father’ and, and the stillness falls. And there’s nobody’s going to hurry up in the queue or anything. But there was this incredibly respectful kind of thing going on, between you and your audience as well. So, I think there’s been a cultural shift, even though maybe the big lessons of COVID have not been learned and we’ve gone back to normal pretty quickly. I think a lot of people haven’t and I think a lot of people are seeking answers that are at least quasi–spiritual. Even if they don’t know it. They’re seeking for some deeper meanings in their lives.
Elizabeth
You put it so beautifully about so many of ‘The Red Hand Files’ are people with a complete crisis of meaning and belonging, which I think has probably always been true. I have a lot of friends in mid–life, mainly men, actually, philosophers, academics, journalists, novelist, artists who have been very, very sceptical and are suddenly like, very quietly kind of sideling up and go ‘Can we have a little chat about Jesus, because I’m suddenly finding it more interesting?’ But that, which maybe is just a life stage thing combined with COVID and the climate crisis feeling of impending doom means I think there is a like, okay, just accumulating more stuff. One, it may not be possible and two, I can see it doesn’t make people happy. Is it possible we’ve thrown this stuff out too early? Are you seeing that coming through in your audiences?
The universal experience of grief
Nick Cave
I’ve always had a close relationship with the audiences, or I mean, not back to begin with, it was very adversarial. But something happened when my son died with my audience, you know, my audience rallied, you know. It’s difficult to even talk about this too. But they rallied, it wasn’t just that they were sorry. They had the same things happen to them, you know. That was the thing, you know, that they were the momentary sparks. As soon as we toured, we started to grab hold of, because there were people saying, ‘Look, this is what happened to me, it’s similar to what happened to you. And this is what can happen.’ And people were both deep in their grief, and people had worked a way out of it. But it was so shocking, to find myself a part of humanity, that I was actually a person, and that I was part of what presented itself as a great river of suffering, coming from people, but beauty at the same time. Do you know what I mean? It just had a profound impact on me. And I have to reiterate this, you know, that grief is not a theme in this book, but it is the condition of one of the people within the book. That’s why it just always circles back to loss and to grief, everything is because I feel an embodiment of that in some degree and I think that we all are, that we’re just walking embodiments of our losses. And it’s difficult to be contemptuous of the world when you when you look at it in that way.
Seán O’Hagan
I think the experience of loss is an interesting one. Because you say it everyone, some people haven’t. I mean, I feel that there’s a sort of club that you enter when you lose someone very dear to you, and people will inevitably experience it at some point. But a lot of people haven’t. And it’s a hard thing to talk about meaningfully. It’s like taking LSD, you know, you just bore the ass off everyone, unless they’ve taken it and understand what you’re banging on. When I lost my younger brother, I remember being so envious of my mother, who had an incredibly devotional faith, and it was just quite literal. You know, it was like, everything they said…she had no doubt she was going to see him again in the next world, and it got her. I mean, she was like this sort of person that was just…she was grieving, but she had this thing that I didn’t have. I was just wandering around, banging into things, just like ‘How can this be happening?’ I mean, that was a pivotal moment for me that I saw what you talk about the utility of religion: the deep utility of religion, because I find that term a bit tricky myself, intellectually and philosophically, but it does…
Nick Cave
Well so do, I even though I use it.
Seán O’Hagan
Yeah, you use it. We might need to reframe that a bit.
Nick Cave
Well, I mean, I use it. I feel the weakest argument in that book is the utility of religion and that it’s actually a lot more than that. Maybe this is going off somewhere else, but one of the things I like about the book is the reticence around spiritual matters that it starts with, and the much more firmer feeling towards these things, by the end; through talking about things through having somebody to talk to about these things and, like grief, I think spirituality and religion is another thing, that we don’t really have the space to talk about these things anymore. I mean, I’ve tried to kick off conversations at dinner tables about religion, all the time, even just to see how badly it goes down. You know, it’s just like, ‘Please, don’t even start.’ And grief is similar too, for other reasons. I understand people’s reticence around speaking about grief and listening, and talking to people about it, because who wants to? Not just that, but we all have our own troubles. And if we have to see this person regularly, eventually, you have to sort of retract to some degree and let them get on with things. And that’s the beautiful thing about ‘The Red Hand Files’, because the people that are writing in, are writing in as if they haven’t spoken about these matters for a long time. Sorry, it’s quite an emotional conversation, I’m sorry. They haven’t spoken about these things for a long time, even though this matters…you know, my son died eight years ago, or my father died, you know, when I was 12, or, or whatever and you kind of think, ‘Alright, well, that’s quite a lot of time, let’s move on.’ But it’s the way that they’re speaking about these things, that they haven’t had the opportunity to speak about these things for years, and they want to. And it’s incredibly moving and sometimes it’s just one after another on ‘The Red Hand Files’. And I try and write them so that, you know, they are speaking to more than one person, but it’s relentless, and deeply moving.
Elizabeth
The bit in the book where you quote the letter from Tiffany and the poem that she sent in from her son, I had to take a break, because I was just like, ‘It’s too raw’.
Seán O’Hagan
I had to take a break when we first… yeah.
‘I/Thou’ moments and pursuing better dialogue
Elizabeth
I’m trying to form what is a very incoherent thought, but it is something about the way this is all related, that we spend so much time in the world, very defended, very guarded, presenting our best selves or just being practical, getting through what needs to happen in the day. And I’m very influenced by this philosopher, Jewish philosopher and theologian called Martin Buber who talks about ‘I/Thou’ moments where you are ‘You’, Seán and I am a ‘You’ not an ‘It’. We are not making people objects in our world of convenience, or just, you know, the stage setting of our life, but they are full people. And that’s my obsession. How do we create a society where it’s easier to have these moments of real human encounter? And I am absolutely fascinated by how the book models that, where you stayed in a conversation that got this uncomfortable and painful. And your friendship was a strong enough container to hold it. But then ‘The Red Hand Files’ which don’t have that are also somehow… people are coming unguarded and undefended, and it does seem to relate to me something about God and religion and those deep things, because of the fundamental loneliness, like the pain of being a person, the fundamental longing for the world to be better than it looks like it is, and for there to be more love and more justice than we can now see, and more ability to connect with people. It seems like this like bundle of raw and vulnerable human longings are at the heart of all of us related to art and grief and religion, and just how rare it is, for us to be kind enough with each other, to hold those things. What do you think are the conditions that made that possible for you two and perhaps in ‘The Red Hand Files’ also?
Seán O’Hagan
I don’t think that what you’re talking about is exclusively religious, or spiritual…
Elizabeth
Oh no! I think it’s human.
Seán O’Hagan
I know a lot of people who are non–believers who lead what I would call in a very clumsy way, a Christian life, or try to live a good, examined life. And I think maybe that’s what made the book work; because I would like to think of myself as one of those people. But I don’t think it’s as determined by…
Elizabeth
I didn’t mean to imply that.
Seán O’Hagan
…your belief as, for instance, Nick’ s way of living. But I think there was a mutual respect, despite the early differences. And there was a sense that we were both trying to work out something for ourselves. That’s something that struck me retrospectively, that we were both trying to work out positions for ourselves. Because it was good timing. I mean, even 10 years ago, I would have gone at you much harder and been that fractious guy. But something softens as you get older, as you lose people. I just think life knocks the edges off, you.
Nick Cave
I have to say, the way you talked to me changed as we went on.
Seán O’Hagan
Oh, yes, you said that. Nick Cave
I’m sure I’m the same, you know, hopefully.
Elizabeth
Just the trust begins to settle in, and you can hear it.
Nick Cave
Sorry, this is derailing the beautiful thing you just said. But it’s interesting to step back from when someone becomes strident, all knowing, shall we say, in a conversation, it’s quite interesting. I noticed you started doing it once I started getting on onto something, right? You just step back, and, and retract, right? And like that, and not argue back. And it’s actually fascinating to hear yourself, suddenly, when you’re just listening to yourself and you’re not arguing with yourself, and how often flimsy what you’re talking about actually is. And it’s a wonderful technique, which I’ve now learnt from you.
Seán O’Hagan
But then you would come back, invariably the next day or the following week and go, ‘You know, that was just such a load of… can we start again?’ Because we haven’t talked about listening, which is a big part of all this. And I think that’s really what’s been sacrificed in all this social media fractiousness and stuff. There is no common ground for, you know, let someone had to say and then reply and, and that was what you know, the great ancient civilizations and rhetoric was based on. And I what you were saying earlier on about, you know, people calcifying, and people getting in touch with you that have not talked, it’s the very reason they haven’t moved on. It’s because they haven’t expressed or been allowed to express, because that’s how you make sense of it, well, as much as you can. But all these things really come out of I mean, they weren’t really thought through in advance, they come out of doing the book.
Elizabeth
I guess, you’ve alluded to the wider context where it’s really hard to listen across disagreement. There’s fear that we’ll be misunderstood, that we’ll be mischaracterized, as on the wrong team, on the wrong side, holding views that are problematic or annoying, that we do seem to be in an information environment, which is making it harder and harder to you know, you talked about listening as a form of prayer, that kind of wonderful stream of thought about attention, and the Simone Weil thing about listening as generosity, which I think is so evident that Seán is what you’re doing. You’re listening so attentively to what Nick is saying, which means that you’re just able to, dig out the treasure underneath it. We all worry about this environment, right? What makes you hopeful about our divided times? And what does help? How can we be better?
Nick Cave
Well, personally, I feel things are shifting in that way. I mean, the idea that they are divided times is becoming a little bit I don’t know what the word is, not a cliche, but I think just people are tired of it. And that the people who live in the middle and aren’t really engaged or might watch what goes on, on the extremes, but I don’t know what you call those people in the middle, that are just kind of flexible and pragmatic and trying to live their lives, and I think they’re standing up to some of this stuff, personally. I’ve just noticed people just coming out and saying stuff now and it doesn’t seem as dangerous: at times that acute danger of opening up, that acute danger of holding an opinion… I think it’s much less so than it was a year ago.
Seán O’Hagan
It seems to me even more dangerous and ominous in other ways what’s happening and the idea that Trump may come back, or the fact that he can’t lose whatever happens. And America is a macro example: there aren’t conversations across the divide, that it is no, so riven that the entire center has gone, that’s a recipe for disaster. I think it’s very, particularly when you’re going into schools, particularly, if you’re on the left. I mean, I just feel beleaguered. I think most of the progressive left do. And you know, you can’t have the conversations that you used to have. It’s just become so toxic. I hope it’s passing. I hope you’re right.
Forgiveness and the Christian liturgical calendar
Elizabeth
Yeah. I find that Yeates poem reassuring, because it makes me think we’ve been here before. But it might get worse before it gets better. Yeah, I think it really depends which conversations you’re listening into. And actually, what ‘The Red Hand Files’ and the appetite for it has done, is that it has shown you how many people are done with a merciless approach to public life, right? Do you want an injection of the ability to forgive and be forgiven? And that’s kind of the last thing I wanted to draw out. Because it seems like such a central question for you, kind of…I just want to get you to talk about forgiveness. And I can’t find a smart way to question…
Nick Cave
It’s a difficult one too. I don’t know, I can’t help you with that.
Seán O’Hagan
Forgiveness?
Nick Cave
Well, a smart way of asking the question… because it’s certainly fundamental in my life, not to sound twee. But, you know, it occurred to me as we were writing the book, or having the conversations that that was the primary impulse behind pretty much everything I do. It’s an attempt to reconcile myself with the world and to ask forgiveness in some way, not just from those that have died, but in general, to look for some way of making amends and redressing the balance. And you do that not just on a personal level, by asking for that, but by putting something back into the world that redresses the balance of not to use another terrible word, your ‘sins’. And I think that music for me is one of those ways. So, I get a lot of flak on ‘The Red Hand Files’ for saying these sorts of things. But I do see music as essentially a good thing and is putting good into the world and from my point of view, it is redressing the balance to some degree, and ‘The Red Hand Files’ and the book, too. It’s called ‘living amends’, I would say. And that’s why I value music so much, and that’s why it really frightens me to see music so casually discarded, that someone has an opinion on something, let’s get rid of the catalogue. Now that might seem a small thing, but to me, it’s, it’s a massive problem. In that, music is the good in us. It’s that journey away from our flawed selves, or it’s the best we can do for some of us. And we discard this stuff at our peril.
Elizabeth
Seán, I guess your Catholic childhood means forgiveness has some complexity to it. How does that word and that concept land with you today?
Seán O’Hagan
Well, it was central, I suppose, and I like when Nick used the word absolution and living amends, it sort of fired me back there to you know, the language of Catholicism. I liked the fact that you had that safe place in Catholicism, that you could be absolved, that it took you to do something active, like confess your sins, even though people did it by rote, most of the time as far as I could see. And I liked all that ritual: this is the weird thing I’m drawn between us. I like all those things, while still not being totally a believer, I like all the sort of trappings, the ritual, I can see the importance of the ritual, I can see the importance of the community. Forgiveness, to me seems something that’s not very fashionable. It’s just not in the public debate at all, as far as I can see. It’s disappeared… you see people, as you say, when they make mistakes, some of them more unforgivable than others, but even politicians who just get hounded out… I’m not a big fan of the Tories, but even I had a moment of our last Prime Minister when she was leaving office thinking, ‘Oh, my God, give her a break!’ You know, because it’s, I think, it’s a human instinct, however much you disagree with people. And, again, I’m not entirely sure that it’s purely the terrain of Christians or religious people. I think it’s elemental to all to all life that you have to do that. And it’s kind of like, the grieving thing, if you don’t do that something calcifies.
Nick Cave
I also think that a good friendship tends to be on some level to do with small forgivenesses as well. Not just small acts, but of having the capacity to be fluid enough within the relationship to forgive each other about things, whatever those things are small or big. It’s the cement within a relationship, I think, or a marriage or you know, it’s an important thing to do. I have to say it’s not just in the Catholic Church that the concept of forgiveness is done by…you know, a lot more about this than I do, really.
Elizabeth
I might not.
Nick Cave
But I’m starting to understand what the structure of a Christian service is, and it begins with repentance, and it ends with a kind of absolution and maybe you know, this is obvious to any Christian I guess, but maybe the years echo that too, but I went to the commemoration of All Souls. When I said that you were looking with such joy on your face.
Elizabeth
I just think it’s also like a very Nick Cave moment in the Christian calendar.
Nick Cave
Well, maybe, but I didn’t understand what it was until I went. And the gratitude I felt to be, you know, I mean, essentially for those who don’t know what that is, it’s essentially reading out the names of the dead, or the people that we want to remember. And this takes half an hour to get through a list of names. And the accumulative effect of that list of people, it’s incredible because it just goes on and on and on. But it really struck me what it’s all about, which is death, and the proximity we are allowed to the idea of death in that service. The safety you could feel, the collective nature of being with other people, the reading out of the names. This was about death. And it was incredibly moving. I mean, I literally walked out, and you begin by repenting your sins, the list is read, and you leave, and the music is beautiful, and it lifts as you leave. And it’s extraordinarily powerful and it makes you believe. It helps you believe the structure of the Christian service, in that respect, helps you to believe. I can’t say that my scepticism doesn’t come roaring back in the next day, let’s say, but you are swept away in the same way as standing in nature can be for some people who literally feel a part of a much bigger thing. I don’t know, I was incredibly moved by that service, but not just moved: changed by that service, I think.
Seán O’Hagan
That was part of my life growing up that service. It was like something that came around and as a kid, it was very…
Nick Cave
I remember going to it and ringing you up and going, ‘Oh my God, I’ve just been to church!’
Seán O’Hagan
It brings it back, it’s great.
Elizabeth
I could talk to you guys for the rest of the day, but I want to honour your time. Maybe it can be the first of others, but Seán O’Hagan and Nick Cave, I can’t tell you how grateful I am, for you speaking to me on The Sacred.
Nick Cave
Yeah, we really enjoy it.
Seán O’Hagan
Thank you, a lot.
Nick Cave
Thank you very much.
Elizabeth Oldfield’s reflection on her conversation with Nick Cave and Seán O’Hagan
Elizabeth
Well, as you can imagine, that was a wonderful conversation to be part of, and really a huge privilege. Regular listeners will already know how much I loved Nick and Seán book, and how unusual it felt to me to have a conversation of that depth and openness and vulnerability between two friends who are quite different, recorded. They really struck me when they were talking about the kind of origin story of the book and Seán said, or maybe Nick said, I can’t remember… that they were basically horrified to discover how much they disagreed on… that they’d been friends for a long time. But it was only when they took the lid off that they saw some of the ways they were different that they saw the chasm between them.
Because I think we do tend to do that, we sort of scoot around areas of difference with the people that we love, because they feel really scary, and they feel like they might divide us. But actually, what these two friends did is they lent into that disagreement. And they kind of fought it out in some ways.
They treated each other with trust and respect, even at moments. And actually, I think a lot of the adversarial stuff probably happened before the book. So, it’s not as if it’s a very spiky conversation all the way through. But there is sort of mutual incomprehension at points. And that, I think, really helps legitimise and normalise that as part of a friendship and as part of a relationship, that we can completely, completely fail to be able to understand each other and still love each other, and still be for each other and still seek each other’s good. And it is sort of shockingly unusual to see that modelled in public. It was so lovely seeing them kind of slightly interrupt each other or, you know, explain things to each other, despite the fact that you know, they wrote this book together. And then they’ve been doing a few other, although not that many kind of events and tours, talking together. There’s still sense of
it’s very live, it’s very real, it’s not Pat Soundbytes for book promotion. I really could feel Seán ‘s fear about what creativity requires that actually uncertainty and doubt are the grit in the oyster may be or the grist to the mill of creativity. But also, Nick’s sense that maybe staying in that place forever isn’t very comfortable. There’s a great line where Seán is basically saying ‘Don’t do it Nick, don’t convert because it will kill your creativity, it will kill your songwriting!’ And Nick says something like and it’s a paraphrase because I haven’t got it in front of me. ‘Maybe creativity isn’t everything?’ which I think is an enormous thing for an artist of Nick’s calibre to say, and actually it’s clear to me from listening to ‘Go Steen’ and ‘Seven Psalms’ and ‘Carnage’ and the work that’s coming out now that, but he probably doesn’t need to worry about that. But it is really interesting me the little bit of openness to complexity and mystery is vital for creativity and maybe just humility and being a pleasant human to be around. Obviously, a key theme is grief and the line that has really stuck with me is about him feeling like there’s something about becoming a full human person that happened when Nick lost his son, and how it makes him more connected to the to the rest of the world. And that in some ways grief has been a gift and taken him through to a sense of feeling more fully alive. But that that’s hard to talk about in public. And it’s hard to talk about with people who are currently grieving because it sounds like you’re downplaying the darkness of their situation and you’re trying to tidy it up and you’re kind of illegitimately maybe, wanting them to find consolation when they’re in a place of desolation, essentially. And so that attentiveness really stuck with me. And I kind of don’t want to unpack much more because I think, Nick and Seán’s voices speak for themselves. But as I as I’ve listened back, and as I’ve continued to talk and read around this area, it really does feel more and more to me like what’s happening? In conversations like these, I had a not dissimilar one with Clover Stroud, who you’ll hear elsewhere in this series, who’s also writing, funnily enough about very similar themes about grief, and the possibility of God and creativity and what does it mean to live fully? I keep using this phrase, because I’m writing about that at the moment, keep living in ways that feel fully alive. But the people doing that or doing a form of ministry, the people who are modelling, speaking about that, and normalising that full spectrum of human experience in public are doing a form of ministry. And I particularly want to give credit actually to Seán, because the tendency I think, when you have two people who write a book together or do any kind of product come, and one is more famous than the other, is everyone kind of focuses on the famous person and Nick’s been asked to do a lot of interviews himself, and Seán you know, not unfamous himself, but I think what became clear to me in this conversation is how much Sean’s courage and questions have been vital for drawing out a lot of this stuff in Nick, and how much work actually has gone in to bringing this beautiful thing into the public. So, I want to big up Seán O’Hagan who was a joy to meet and receive the jewel actually that these two friends together have created in the world.
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