After listening to Nick Cave's Skeleton Tree for the first time...
(Go here for some background on Nick Cave’s Skeleton Tree)
What do you do with a stranger’s grief? What do you do with a stranger’s grief when that stranger doesn’t feel like a stranger at all? When they have not just touched your life with their work but shaped it over the course of three decades? What do you do when they turn their grief into art, and make it public?
You consume it. You open wide and take it in unfiltered, letting it flow into you in a brutal rush. Because you owe them at least that much. It’s the only thing you can do for them, to stand witness to their pain. You can let their pain mix with your own. You can, through the transmigration of art, let their pain be yours.
And it’s okay if that feels holy. It’s okay if your reception of the offering of their grief feels like prayer. Even if—especially if—you have never prayed before. Because that’s who we are for each other, the artist and the audience. The artist gives and we receive. And what we give back to them is our act of receiving. By receiving, they are seen. You are still here, we say to them. You are hurting, but you are still here and we love you.
Nick, I hear your grief. I hear your loss. Your grief is not mine, your loss is not mine. I have my own. My grief and loss are here as witness to yours. Here we are together, though only I know it. Here we are together. I see you. You are still here, and I love you.