A Letter to Nick Cave

A plea, a petition, a kind of prayer

I promised

Writer Pilgrim by So Elite

I would write a letter to my favourite artist, as the final act for the song title poetry challenge. May is already past us and June, well, this particular June is not coming easy on me, but here is my belated letter.

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Dear Mr Cave,

I bet you have read hundreds (thousands?) of letters over the years, sent to you from loving fans and admires or weirdos and harassers. I would characterize myself as an admirer, a weird one albeit with no bad intentions. I will spare you all the declarations of love and devotion towards your persona / music / general artistic work, and go straight to the point. I have a story to share with you, a story that is patently absurd, and you’re part of it—not the lead actor I’m afraid, but I will grant you the best supporting role for this parody I call my life.

- - -

It is Sunday afternoon and I am reading the newspaper. I hate newspapers, their language is stiff and hard to swallow, but not this one. This is the Sunday special section dedicated to arts and culture, and I’ve been waiting a whole week to read it. You see, the story begins sometime in the late 90s. Newspapers and magazines are still the main sources of information and my only way to the outer world, my only getaway other than music, books, and movies, and well, you know what I mean. Printed pages are all we have. Printed pages matter. Endless scrolling is a term not yet coined, blogs, vlogs, and the rest are yet to come.

It is Sunday afternoon and I am reading one of your interviews. I devour your words in a first quick scan and then I take my time for a second more relaxed reading. I want to cut the pages and add them to my album—I keep an album of articles that I find interesting, it’s the 90s, remember? My hand is itchy but I must wait a few days until I can grab the scissors. I’ve been scolded more than once for my surgical precision of dissecting the paper before everyone had a chance to read the whole damn thing.

The album gets thicker with time. You’re not the only one I’m interested in, sorry to disappoint you. Luis Sepulveda is in it, Joseph Kudelka too. And many more, too many to name them all here. I keep reading all of you. I move to another country, I get back, I move to another city, and the album comes with me. Years pass. I get older, newspapers decline, and no more cut pages are added to the ones that gather dust in some forgotten closet. And one day taken by a furious fit to declutter the house (or so I say to myself), I decide to get rid of the album.

And just like that, you’re all trash. From the garbage bin to the rubbish dump.

What’s the point of reading your words again and again? I am not like you, I will never be like you. I better forget I ever wanted to be like you.

To hell with you all.

- - -

We’re in 2006 by now. I see you one last time, you’re performing at the Lycabetus Theatre. It’s September. It’s your birthday. The whole week it had been raining cats and dogs and the odds were against you, but as the sun goes down and you walk to the stage the sky obliges and remains clear. For the next two and half hours I’m in a trance—do you remember that night?

It’s not that I don’t listen to your music anymore. I love both Grinderman albums, I very much dig Lazarus, and I guess I will love your music no matter what, but something in me shifts, and it’s too complicated to explain it all in this letter.

(You could read this if you fancy an outpour of sorts, but to sum it up, it’s just a confession of how I throw away everything that matters.)

Around this time I start seeing these dreams, or better say ‘the dream’ because it is always the same dream—under various settings and circumstances but with a recurring theme that never alters and with a gradually accelerating frequency.

I dream of you, Mr Cave. I see you at concerts, follow you down the street, push and shove people away just to get near you. At times we’re having drinks in the same bar or sitting at the same table so close that if I reach out my hand I can touch you. But I can’t. And you keep coming, and I keep trying without success.

- - -

To be honest I never had a crush on you, Mr Cave. I loved your music, I sure did, but those dreams were not romantic fantasies. Those dreams haunted me and left me every time with a devastating feeling, a despair I could not explain.

You were a menace, how very fitting of you!

And I say were because there came a blessed night, sometime this past October when you finally succumbed to my pleas.

Well, I woke up this morning and he was gone
He kissed me and kissed me and said goodbye

I knew you’d find me, cause I longed you here. Why I longed you here, in my dreams, I did not know, not after that last dream. The aha moment came twenty days later and shook me to the core—it was so obvious I felt dumb. My mind, way smarter than me, kept sending signals over the years, in its crude, yet subtle way, but I needed time to decode the message. No doubt I am a slow learner.

Now, I am not going to spell it out for you. I have this urge to taunt you a little, I feel I deserve it after all this hide-and-seek.

Mr Cave, I wish, and please forgive me for saying this, to never see you again in my dreams. Your appearance would mean I’ve gone astray and I promised myself to stay on course. I am working hard and writing my ash off to keep you at bay.

Here’s a little something I conjured up from your lyrics. Every single word of it is yours, I added nothing, I changed nothing. I just mixed them up and assembled this poem for you.

	
I knew you’d find me, cause I longed you here

I was hiding, dear, hiding all away
Laying down a litany of excuses
Beneath the whited snow.
Seasons came, seasons went
Every shattered dream, every useless fear
Every little thing built from nothing
But high hopes and thin air
Under fifteen feet of pure white snow.

I’d almost disappeared.

And through the years
I heard the many voices
Of all this self-serving grieving
Speaking to me from the depths below
	It’s a wonderful life	if you can find it
	Or look away, look away, look away.
So I’ve sat and I’ve watched an ice-age thaw
All rhyme and reason gone.

And I made no impression.

But darling we can clearly see
These things are not good for me
And every time I dream of you, well I get sick.
Anyhow, let me say this to you
I know that I must above all things love myself
Still, I’m glad you’ve come along
I was looking for an end to this,
For some kind of closure—

I guess that I’ve loved you for too long.

I’m throwing my bags in the back of the car
I give to you one tiny little blessing
I want nothing in return, I just want to move
On the far side of the morning.

Shall we leave this place now, dear?
	

- - -

In that interview of yours I threw away, I remember you talking about how your father (I’m using my own words, correct if I’m wrong) used to read to you in his office and shove his papers in a drawer afterwards. I remember you saying (and correct me if I’m wrong again, but after all those years it makes little difference, your words are imprinted in me) that this act, this private reading and the hiding of his work made you decide to become someone who would create and share his work with the world.

We’re not so different after all.

So long, Mr Cave.

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