[Music] I am beside you look for me [Music] in your conversations with Shawna Hagan uh for the book you talk about the album ghosting as an imagined world where Arthur your son could be um was it your desire to create that album for him or actually for you as a family you never have any concrete reason why you make a record you go in and pull tiny threads together and hopefully come up with something you don't have a grand plan um ex because the whole thing is so difficult and so tenuous the process of making a record [Music] is going on with that particular record that was different than other records and they became a kind of a parallel mission to me within the state of mind that I was where I felt that it was a place that Arthur could inhabit on some level look for me [Music] look for me if I couldn't move the night I would and I would turn the world round if I could there's nothing wrong with loving something you can't hold in your head the music is so beautiful there is nowhere for you to hide it you really you know you're so front and center and it's very revealing and exposing in a way to be that person that's out there in front of the music when you're singing about things that are so painful yeah I think there's there's a lot of pain in ghosting but there's a lot of um it I think most of the songs just have this lovely upward lift uh the the trajectory of the songs is they all seem to just move upward like that and so there was a lot I got from that in in a very positive there's there's a a weird joyfulness about ghosting it's often overlooked well the moon won't get a wink of sleep if I stay all night and talk [Music] if I stay all night and talk in the conversations you talk about a very definite difference between being spiritual and being religious you know I I think religion asks something of us it asks something of us and spirituality is a little bit more amorphous and we can all be spiritual and we are all spiritual and like well of course we are all spiritual um but religion requires it's spiritual Spirit spirituality with rigor let's say it requires something of us and that action um I think is what it's probably all about so what does being religious require of you for me I'm more inclined to do religious things like go to church pray um read scripture I mean I've always done these things anyway um actually even in in my most chaotic times I've done those sorts of things but I feel that that when I walk when I read scripture or when I walk out of church or this is I feel less I feel my skepticism is a little less you know it's more distant it's a little more what did it be yeah and is there a but that struggle the struggle is very much where I am and and and in regard to religion and the ideas of God and and Christian ideas it's it's just it's a struggle I mean by no means arrived anywhere on that kind of thing do you think that Arthur's death strengthened your faith yeah I I think a lot of things happened I think the writing of the book weirdly enough did that um the book itself starts uh with a kind of nervousness around questions of faith and ends ends more firm about those sorts of things now that's when I talk about when we're talking about faith here I'm also talking about doubt you know these two things for me uh go hand in hand and you know a a deep ingrained skepticism I have towards these sorts of things and the faith that I feel is that occasional uh journeying away from that skepticism into something else um and I I find that really a powerful um place to be especially uh imaginatively and creatively in the book you say that religion can be a shepherding force that holds communities together there is an argument to say that religion is not always a Force for good that's very true and it's there's many arguments why religion is is not a Force for good but when I walk into a a Christian Church I walk into something that I feel I belong to it's my thing it's something that um I was raised in as a child there's a sense of nostalgia sense of safety about that I don't step into that and deny anyone else their religious beliefs or whatever it just feels like it's my place um and I don't say that in any divisive or like nationalistic way or anything like that I mean I just never connected to Eastern religion let's say you know that that was too too spiritual in a sense so I never found the language the aesthetic anything about it particularly compelling for me personally and I always found something in the figure of Christ that was deeply compelling to me um it always was even as a child I don't believe in an interventionist God foreign that you do in 1997 a song into my arms I don't believe in an interventionist God and you have also as you say changed your idea about faith and doubt I mean I mean that particular song If you know that particular song to me feels like a person on the point of conversion I think that's what that song's saying well not to touch a hair in your it leave you as you are we felt he had to direct you and direct you into mile but it's a it's a good serviceable song because it it you know well it Services The Atheist and the believer and and pretty much everyone can kind of play that at a wedding or a funeral or whatever it's it's done me very well there so because it's kind of a broad Church shall we say and a lot and everyone can collect within that song but for me it's essentially a religious song and and it's that I don't believe in God it's that I don't believe in an interventionist God into my [Music] eyes the red hand files and which seemed like a kind of Act of generosity and I wonder if they came directly out of your son Arthur's death no they they well they in the sense that I didn't know how to speak about Arthur I was getting a lot of uh people writing to me um in response to Arthur's death telling me their stories not so much in sympathy rather than like this is what happened to me this is what might happen to you and that was um the the I saw those as these kind of momentary flashes of light that I grabbed hold of her and felt um I felt helped by those responses and so some I think a couple of years later I just started up the red hand files in a more General kind of way ask me anything I'm a musician ask me anything but the the questions very quickly became about other things um and the the it wasn't it was a it was both me and the audience pushing um pushing the conversation outwards it seemed like it was it was a Sal for you and a salve for the people that were writing the letters yeah when you say it was an act of generosity I think that works the other way too I feel that when people write in to the red hand files and spend a lot of care and attention around what they write to me they are acts of generosity as well and I mean you get thousands of you know requests it's a difficult decision isn't it because you can't answer them all you can't answer yeah no I have to balance them and um look at you know I mean there's sometimes there's several in a row that are a kind of grim and I try and lighten the mood with another one and so forth so I try it it is a little bit of a balancing act and I wonder in that sense if there's anything that's off limits that you would have to answer yeah there's a lot of things I won't answer mostly because I don't think those questions have necessarily come in good faith I would say um and so I I don't there's there's too much in there of of value to to write about I wonder if the red hand files were a form of ministry well I wouldn't that seems a little highfalutin you know I never saw it in that way um I I think the red hand files for me was a way to learn how to articulate certain things that were going on me with the help of the people who rode in so it felt like something we were doing together and that um that's been enormously helpful and I think it's been helpful to other people too and that's how to write about something it's actually quite difficult quite different than how to speak about something and I think with with Sean's book that we wrote together I learned how to through these conversations how to speak about these matters as well issue number 210. I'm 62 years old and decided to learn how to play guitar rock guitar is such an Endeavor a Fool's errand for someone of my age Dear Chris yes it is almost certainly a Fool's errand to learn the guitar at 62. however personally I have a lot of time for fool's errands about two years ago at the age of 63 I decided I would become a ceramicist it was by any measure of Fool's errand I had made some ceramic pieces when I was a teenager and they were not bad but there was nothing to suggest that I had any particular Talent with clay still my mother liked them so I thought it might be fun to make some more get your act together and if you do and Warren Mighty Jim and I ever get around to making a new grinderman record you can come and play on it grind a man as a matter of policy only work with the very old the out of shape and the extremely foolish we are the obscene and joyous embodiment of a Fool's errand and we are waiting there is no time to waste love Nick the that particular Act of General well he can come and play with us I mean anyone can come and play with Grinder Man this my other group but you have to be old and and you have to be um irrelevant another question though which again man wrote to you and talked about a musician that had passed away and the fact that Supreme Court Justice in America who he really despised loved this musician and and he was very annoyed about that and he and he was appalled that um that this musician was liked by this judge because it kind of negated he thought I think what he thought of the musician um do you believe that your music is for everyone I mean would you ever say no I I really I don't want that audience I mean look I I get a lot of pushback from what I write and I got an enormous amount of pushback with that particular question because it opens with I've you know I've cast my mind around and I can't come up with a single person that I wouldn't want to listen to my music and that got or or that didn't deserve on some level to listen to to my music um and I got a lot of rage back about that and people saying what about this person what about that person but the point I was really trying to make in that particular letter is that music is fundamentally a good thing and it makes people better in my view so um so even even if there is someone that you might consider deplorable or despicable I think that they that that they might be listening to my music feels that they may be a little bit better by the end of the record I don't know that's that's what I was trying to put forward I guess it's more that I that I don't want my music ever to be used as a form of punishment or that I deny my music to to certain people um because of where they stand politically I mean where do you even begin with something like that you know where where's the where do you draw the line anyway well I mean I suppose the whole thing about separating art from the artists as well as another the flip side of looking at that and so you know I suppose the most recent one of that would be new Kanye you know accused of anti-Semitism so therefore you know should you be listening to his music or should he actually be be shunned I mean are you completely open on that well on some level I I don't care what Kanye has to say on things but I I but I do love Kanye's music um I I find anti-Semitism in particular particularly distasteful and so it's very disappointing to to hear these remarks and and and such sort of obvious um boring kind of reductive tropes that he's actually peddling to be incredibly disappointing however it just it's a personal choice as to whether you can go on and listen to that person's music I personally can I love Kanye's music I I feel that he's done the best music of anybody in in some time the most interesting challenging bold music and and maybe I mean this is a complex argument but maybe there's something to do with a transgressive personality that that makes a person willing to take certain kind of risks with their music because Kanye does that and it's it's exciting that that aspect of what he does is exciting but I no way you know what he was saying is obviously uh disappointing is [Music] damn something sour as you get older you're more self-reflective do you think yeah well of course you wouldn't want to be the other way some people are but do you think you as a kind of do you think you're more open to people more I I just think I don't know if I say this in the book but I think after my son died I personally think I became an actual person and that before that happened I was incomplete or unformed human being I I had a very narrow view of the world a much more strident view of the world [Music] foreign [Music] there seem to be some correlation between my strident scene about things and my lack of understanding about things in fact the less I knew the more opinionated and certain I would become and there's something that happened when my son died that smashed all that to bits and I could see the world in a much more uh nuanced way I think um and a much more empathetic way because in a way grief just becomes part of who we are yeah I I think so I think that that's our common bond is uh that we all uh uh have a a particularly as we grow older uh we are all kind of creatures of loss or grief you said in faith hope and Carnage we are each of us imperiled insofar as anything can turn catastrophic at any time do you think that's true that we're never really equipped to deal with that Dreadful loss and shock um you know it seems to me that grief is not just one thing it's not just how you feel about the loss of one thing it's a kind of I find all the griefs tend to kind of collect around the new thing I mean that sounds terrible the way that that came out but I think we get better at it or we get more used to the state of that state of being you know I remember my mother who who died um she was 93 and people were just dying all the time around to her friends it was you know she would say such and such died today and two months later such and such died today you know and and she's just grieving everybody and which is what the very old do and it's it's you I don't think she's plunged back into that same thing again and again I think you just become these kind of I don't even say that this sounding depressing but it's it's not meant to be but I I think we just become um you used to it as a part of living you know um your wife Susie says it takes great courage to be happy I read said that it's true did she say that yeah she's she's clever she also said time to be amused by the way that point about you know it it takes courage to be happier and I think that's a really interesting thing to say yeah well it's um it's a defiant position you know it's a defiant position happiness very often and it's it's hard earned and it's not um it's a deep thing happiness is a deep thing because because I don't think there is such a thing as simple happiness I think you lift the lid and there's all sorts of stuff going on underneath a person's ability to be optimistic about the world and you know so so to me happiness is a is a I agree with her I agree with everything she says um but uh but I but it is a form of defiance I would say and and you practice that Define I I would say to you know I'm basically a um a happy person you know [Music] take a little walk to the edge of town and go across the tracks [Music] you're also having a a moment under and a connection with new fans through uh the theme for peaky blinders you know in a way much that Kate Bouche has it was stranger things yeah I mean that that's not recent that's been going for for years and that that song which is to be perfectly honest not my favorite song I gotta say there's a lot of songs that I prefer playing live let's say but that the response to the to that song is sort of massive so we we continue to play it and I find different ways to do it and you know but yeah that's been following us around like a you know nasty old dog but doing but you know it it does um it's it's good for us [Music] but my name was [Music] and I don't know I don't know [Music] for my name was a nice day just before Adventure your person also with great friendships that last many years and I was just thinking back to um your work with Kylie Minogue which was in the 90s yeah I mean would you do work again with Kylie would you sure you know I mean I've worked with a lot of people I've sung with Johnny Cash and and you know but I really think it was that record I did with Kylie Minogue which I really hold in a very special place in my heart because we both took an enormous risk uh to do that she was instructed I think I Believe by the people around her Don't Go Near this guy you just don't want to be associated with Nick Cave especially back then you know I wasn't in showroom conditions shall we say and um but but it was also people saying you're going to do a record with Kylie Minogue you must be crazy so there was there was a Jeopardy for both yeah there was a potential for um disaster for both of us but she just entered into that in we're in a you know with just a whole lot of love and it was really an amazing uh thing and and it worked really well you know so we've remained even though we don't see each other very often we've we love each other I think genuinely and and um you know and it's always a joy to see her and if she wants to make another record then maybe there's a Where the Wild Roses Grow part two or something like that maybe she could write to you in the red hand files yes put her application in Nicky thank you very much all right thank you very much it's a pleasure thank you thank you