Nick Cave has compared his experience at one of Radiohead’s recent shows at the O2 in London to “spiritual activity.” In the latest post on his website, The Red Hand Files, Cave responded to reader’s question about how to deal with their stage fright, revealing that he tends to stay away from attending other artists’ shows while he’s on tour because he is already “sonically and emotionally overloaded” from his own. However, he has been going to live concerts as of late while on break from the road, including Bob Dylan, Swans, Radiohead, Cameron Winter and Dirty Three, according to Consequence.
“At the Radiohead concert at the O2, I was sitting among twenty thousand people. Bizarrely, it was the first time I had ever been in the audience at such large show, and I was stunned by the depth of love in the room — people dancing, screaming, crying, hugging each other, throwing themselves around,” Cave recalled. “I was struck by the realization of just how powerful live music is — that a group of individuals can come together and concoct a sound unique to them, and that people can connect with that distinctive vision as if it were their own experience. I could feel its moral quality — how this singular force has the capacity to repair the world with its goodness.”
Cave continued, “I engage in various spiritual activities — I swim in lake, go to church, walk in nature, meditate — but none offer the transcendent opportunity of a live concert. It is a form of human activity that radiates goodness, working its way through the crowd and into the world as a reparative, cosmic force, improving matters, keeping the devil at bay. I believe Radiohead’s audience was responding not only to the music, which was astonishing, but also to the courage of the performers — the sheer nerve to stand before a crowd and offer up their souls. Like everyone else there, I was deeply moved and humbled.”
He then used this experience to encourage the reader, Manuela, to get over her stage fright, explaining that “every self-aware artist” encounters an “unholy voice” that leads to self-doubt.
“Whenever we take a risk in life, or do something that might set us apart, or draw the judgment of others, these crippling voices provoke a form of ‘stage fright’ — a fear of existence, a fear of life itself,” Cave wrote. “But, if you can summon the resolve to overcome these inner voices, Manuela, you can conquer anything, and the world will lie trembling at your feet.”
Hoping to help Manuela feel “less alone,” Cave encouraged her to step on stage, pointing out that Radiohead’s “vast crowd” at the O2 recognized “a band engaging in a remarkable act of ordinary courage, a distinctly human form of heroism — the audacity to stand before the world and declare, ‘This is what we think. This is what we feel. This is who we are.’”
Photo Credit: Raymond Flotat
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