The question of how to meditate effectively comes up often in Cave\u2019s online forum, the Red Hand Files, which he launched in 2020. Named after one of his most famous songs, Red Right Hand (inspired by John Milton\u2019s Paradise Lost, where the hand represents divine vengeance), it\u2019s a place where a wide range of people, not only fans, write in to share their troubles and questions, and Cave writes back. The site has become almost a form of spiritual direction between Cave and his public. \u201cOne concern that comes through all the time,\u201d he says, \u201cis, \u2018I want to be a creative person, but I don\u2019t feel inspired.\u2019 They\u2019re just thinking that something\u2019s going to drop out of the sky and sort of ignite their imagination. Creativity for me is a practice, a rite, an application.\u201d<\/p>\n
Its purpose is not self-expression, he says, but a way of \u201cmaking space\u201d. Cave talks in the book about how his 2019 album Ghosteen was an attempt to \u201cmake a space\u201d for his son Arthur in the terrible period after his death.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, that is what I was doing,\u201d he says. \u201cTrying to find a place Arthur could inhabit. A place where his spirit could reside. Things, of course, are different now \u2026 I think I\u2019ve learnt to both incorporate his absence and indeed his presence into my work, slowly finding other things to write about.\u201d It\u2019s become a question, he says, of finding a space \u201caround\u201d Arthur, not just \u201cfor\u201d him.<\/p>\n
This has led to him rediscovering what can only be described as joy, through \u201can altered connection to the world\u201d: \u201cspasms of delight\u201d, a brightness uncovered in things, coexisting with the \u201cdark, vacuous space\u201d of loss. This is a joy that has nothing much to do with \u201cfeeling happy\u201d or with satisfaction. \u201cIt\u2019s there, despite ourselves \u2026 not attached to anything.\u201d This double vision, Cave says, is fundamental to the religious impulse. It explains why in church he feels able to hold together both the doubt and pain and the sense of anchorage.<\/p>\n
Read it all<\/a> (registration or subscription).<\/p>\n \u2018The book reveals the way in which faith, without ever giving a plain, comforting answer, offers resources to look at what is terrible without despair or evasion. Cave\u2019s faith is not that of a man looking for shortcuts or consolations.\u2019 Wonderful interview https:\/\/t.co\/QHcLj2hr8l<\/a><\/p>\n — Madeleine Davies (@MadsDavies) March 4, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n \n