Nick in the Open

Pretty much everyone has comments on the genocide in Palestine currently being undertaken by Israel; I’m not going to rehash it all or try to say something profound. There’s nothing profound to find in a genocide; it’s just suffering. What I will mention is how this entire conflict has shown exactly who people are and brought some things you wanted to ignore into the light. We can probably all relate at this point to the disappointment that can be felt when someone you admired and enjoyed comes out as a denier of genocide. I don’t want to take this to a place where we commiserate over our loss of a relationship with art we loved when the reality is so much darker. We aren’t the ones who are truly suffering, but we are the ones who can make even a slight difference day to day with our choices of whom to support. I’ll start with my glass breaker, Nick Cave.

I loved Nick Cave, still do. I loved “The Ship Song,” “Red Right Hand,” “Jubilee Street”; the list goes on. He came across as a man who had seen suffering and felt the deep thorn of grief; I thought that I saw parts of myself in him and his life. I saw myself in the story he tells of finding out his dad died while he was sitting in a cop car; I saw myself in his problems with drug addiction; I saw myself in his melancholy and in overcoming the death of his son, as I’ve had to do with my brother. He proved something to me in the last couple of years: I’m nothing like Nick Cave.

It was only two years ago that Cave released Wild God, his album that he claimed tackled his feelings about faith and doubt. This Wild God he describes is a “decrepit and used up god looking for his people or for someone to believe in him.” If we believe Cave’s creation, at its core, is about the human need to be seen, then do those under the Israeli boot deserve more than a passing hello or a hundred and fifty thousand pounds? Why does he refuse to boycott Israel over a genocide, oppose a ban on Israel in Eurovision, and tell people to “find a new friend”? Is it because, “Regardless of all the horrific complications going on in Israel at the moment, deep down, I have a sort of abiding love for that place”? Or is it, “I just have a relationship with the Jewish people”? The Jerusalem Post and Ynet have repeatedly been favorable toward Cave and his statements and actions; does Cave know he’s laundering Israel’s image, or is he just ignorant? Does Cave have enough doubt to see the ramifications of his actions and inactions? His own statements on understanding doubt would seem to answer the question.

I want to give Cave his moment to speak. I don’t buy his reservations about playing in Israel; he played, and that’s the end of it. I also disagree with his argument when polling shows that 82% of Jewish Israelis support the expulsion of Palestinians from their land. You can be a fascist and not support Bibi.

I wonder if any reader has ever listened to Ghosteen. Ghosteen is a Nick Cave album written in the aftermath of losing his son Arthur—may Arthur rest in peace. It was the highest-rated album of the year on Metacritic in 2019 and of the 2010s decade, tying with Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly.

This world is beautiful Held within its stars I keep it in my heart The stars are your eyes I loved them right from the start

That’s from the title track on Ghosteen. You can feel what Cave is writing about without him ever explicitly stating that it’s the eyes of his loved ones that have become his world. They’re the stars in the sky and what lights up the dark; when everything else seems pitch black, he can look to them and they light his way. That’s a beautiful sentiment and an eloquent way of expressing love and the way it has helped him through his own nights. I think that Arthur, in a way, will always live on through the monument his father built in his place. Are the children of Gaza also the stars of somebody else’s eyes? Is there a song or a poem or lyric they can sing?

Writing this is the first time I’ve listened to Ghosteen in four years; I used to listen to his albums the whole way through once every two years. These moments when your respect for someone is lost in an instant aren’t unknown. People commit one deed, and your opinion can be forever changed. It’s worse when their art turns out to be only a one-way mirror, devoid of any true self-reflection. I won’t state outright that Cave doesn’t care for the downtrodden of the world; he might. But I will state that claiming, “I have a sort of abiding love for that place,” is not an excuse to let another father’s Arthur rest without a stone to his name.

This is the last time I’ll listen to Ghosteen.

I wonder what my readers won’t taste again.