Nick Cave has shared words of advice to fans feeling “fearful and depressed” in the new year, telling them to hold onto hope.
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The Bad Seeds frontman spoke about his own battles with taking on a new year via a new entry on his Red Hand Files website, responding to two fans who wrote in to wish him a happy new year. One of the comments asked him where he thinks people can find hope when “the world seems to be in such a catastrophic state”.
Explaining his understanding of hope, he began by reassuring the fan that it is common to take a pessimistic view of the world around the new year, and that hope is the main thing that can make things easier going forward.
“It is understandable to feel alarmed by the current state of things, to feel fearful and depressed. We are presented with a constant communiqué of despair, that we exist in the worst of times, indeed, the end of times,” he began. “Many feel impotent in this dreadful imminence – words like ‘Happy New Year’ ring hollow, like a hangover from a bygone better time… here we are at the beginning of a new year, and like you, many feel hopeless.”
He continued: “Hope is essential to our survival and our flourishing. We achieve this vitality of spirit by rejecting the relentless promotion of despair and opening our eyes to the beauty of things, however imperilled, degraded, or difficult to love the world may appear to be.
“We try to view the world not as it is packaged, presented and sold to us but as we imagine it could be. We do not look away from the world, we look directly at it and allow the spirit of hope – the necessary driver of change – to inspire us to action,” he added, going on to recall how he discussed the topic in his book Faith, Hope And Carnage.
Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds perform live in 2024 (Photo by Samir Hussein/WireImage/Getty)
“In its active form, hope is a supreme gesture of love, a radical and audacious duty, whereas despair is a stagnant rejection of life itself. Hope becomes the energy of change.”
In a more personal section, Cave recalled how he had the same feeling of fear and sadness during the run-up to the new year, but embraced a feeling of hope when seeing his grandson on Christmas Day.
“Christmas has come and gone. Ours was a large, noisy family affair that revolved around my infant grandson, Roman,” he said. “Magisterial in his highchair, I watched him being fed by his doting parents – this bright, new child – and your question seemed to melt into the vision of that little boy, his face covered in avocado, a radiant affirmation of that small word – hope. On that Christmas day, I saw the vitality of hope in action.”
Concluding the post on the website, he also recommended a book by Byung-Chul Han titled The Spirit of Hope to fans, saying that it was reading that which helped him improve his outlook.
The response shared by Cave over the new year aligns with comments he made to NME back in 2023, when he explained how he thinks social media contributes towards the pessimistic outlook of younger generations.
“I think social media is a huge problem and is having a huge demoralising effect on society. Young people are losing faith in the world in general and what the world has to offer them. That’s a major problem,” he said.
Nick Cave – CREDIT: Getty Images
“I just see young people in such dire situations that there just doesn’t seem to be anything to live for,” he added. “There’s also a corrosive, pathological, relentless pessimism coming from the media and social media. It’s just eating away at ourselves and what we are as human beings. Personally, I don’t see the world like that. I think terrible things can happen but what we are missing is the beauty of the world – the systemic loveliness of things.”
It was last year that Nick Cave first shared that he was about to become a grandfather, saying that the news that his son Luke was going to be a father brought on “a wave of great elation”.
He also went on to share words of advice more recently too, both taking to the Red Hand Files just after Christmas to speak directly to a fan who left a Bad Seeds show early after feeling “too emotional”, and addressing the words of praise he received from Bob Dylan, who attended one of his shows with the Bad Seeds.
In other news about Nick Cave, the singer-songwriter was shortlisted for the 20th annual Australian Music Prize, and a first-look image of Matt Smith in the upcoming TV adaptation of Cave’s book The Death Of Bunny Munro was shared.
The six-part Sky series is based on the musician’s 2009 novel, which focuses on the relationship between the titular father and his son as they both deal with grief while embarking on a road trip. An exact release date has not yet been shared, although the series is expected to arrive at some point this year.
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