Nick Cave offers some advice to his fans feeling “anxious and depressed” during the New Year: to hold on to hope.
Red Hand Files as a suggestion box for cave fans
In 2018, the Bad Seeds frontman launched the website “The Red Hand Files”originally a way for him to communicate with his fans, exchange ideas and answer questions. Now, as Cave himself says, the website has become much more of a general forum that doesn’t shy away from vulnerability, transparency and deep personal questions.
His latest entry on the site is an emotional response to two fans who sent the musician New Year’s messages. A fan named Anon wrote a simple “Happy New Year!” 😬,” while a fan named Bailey said, “The year 2025 is upon us. The world seems to be in such a catastrophic state. Where is the hope? “What is hope?” wrote.
Hopelessness at New Year’s
“Dear Bailey and Anon,” Cave begins, beginning his response to the fan mail with a paragraph in which he tries to convey that the two are not alone in their hopeless feelings about the New Year. According to the 67-year-old, it’s completely normal to be more pessimistic about the world around the turn of the year. He blames the uncertain feeling on those who always tell people what a terrible time they are in. “Many feel powerless in the face of this terrible immediacy,” Cave writes on his website, “words like “Happy New Year” ring hollow, like a remnant of a bygone, better time. We become what we consume, living embodiments of a predicted catastrophe.”
While Cave’s opening text sounds rather hopeless up to this point, he then goes on to explain what hope actually means. According to the Australian, hope is an emotional state that not only encourages the heart to become active again, but also empowers people to take innovative ideas and actions. According to Cave, hope is the prerequisite for human life.
“We achieve this vitality of spirit by rejecting the relentless promotion of despair and opening our eyes to the beauty of things, however endangered, degraded or difficult to love the world may be,” read Cave’s words to his fans, “We trying to see the world not as it is packaged, presented and sold to us, but as we imagine it could be. We don’t look away from the world, we look directly at it and allow the spirit of hope – the necessary force of change – to inspire us to act.”
Hope in his grandson
In the lower part of his text, Cave makes it clear that he too struggled with the frightening feelings before the New Year, but these were transformed into hope by the sight of his little grandson: “I watched him being fed in his high chair by his loving parents became – this bright, new child – and your question seemed to merge with the vision of that little boy, his face covered in avocado, a radiant confirmation of that little word – hope. That Christmas Day I saw the life force of hope in action.”