Weekly Share: Nick Cave, “The Red Hand Files”

I had different plans for this post until I read Nick Cave's latest newsletter.

Nick Cave is an Australian singer-songwriter (among other things), and the lead vocalist of the rock band "Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds". For the last four years he's been writing a newsletter called "The Red Hand Files", where he answers letters from fans and gives a glimpse into the soul of an artist and a fascinating human.

Cave tragically lost his 15-year-old son Arthur in 2015, after which he stopped giving interviews. In his latest newsletter, a reader asked him why he started giving interviews again, to which he replied: "A little while after Arthur died, I did an interview for a mainstream newspaper, but I felt so bad about it, so unsettled by what I said, that I vowed never to do one again. I felt completely unequipped to talk about anything, least of all the death of my son. I just didn’t have the words. The process of answering your questions taught me how to write about certain things. Your questions became exercises in how to be and what to believe. I was able to construct a world view based on intimacy, vulnerability, uncertainty and commonality."

He didn’t start the newsletter knowing what the outcome would be, but it lead to immense personal growth and healing - even for someone who was already pouring his heart and soul into other creative endeavors. The creative process, regardless of what we create, facilitates a dialog with parts of ourselves we don't understand or acknowledge, as well as with the world at large. Any other outcome is gravy.

If you'd like to check out the newsletter, some interesting recent installments are #204, #200 and #192. Speaking of outcomes, one of my all time favorites is #119: A letter from a fan, showing that as creators, our impact on a single person we don’t even know can be more meaningful and touching than any of the measurable achievements we tend to fixate on.

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