Nick Cave Letter to MTV

Brilliant. If you've never read this, please do.


TO ALL THOSE AT MTV,

I WOULD LIKE TO START BY THANKING YOU ALL FOR THE SUPPORT YOU HAVE GIVEN ME OVER RECENT YEARS AND I AM BOTH GRATEFUL AND FLATTERED BY THE NOMINATIONS THAT I HAVE RECEIVED FOR BEST MALE ARTIST. THE AIR PLAY GIVEN TO BOTH THE KYLIE MINOGUE AND P. J. HARVEY DUETS FROM MY LATEST ALBUM MURDER BALLADS HAS NOT GONE UNNOTICED AND HAS BEEN GREATLY APPRECIATED. SO AGAIN MY SINCERE THANKS.

HAVING SAID THAT, I FEEL THAT IT’S NECESSARY FOR ME TO REQUEST THAT MY NOMINATION FOR BEST MALE ARTIST BE WITHDRAWN AND FURTHERMORE ANY AWARDS OR NOMINATIONS FOR SUCH AWARDS THAT MAY ARISE IN LATER YEARS BE PRESENTED TO THOSE WHO FEEL MORE COMFORTABLE WITH THE COMPETITIVE NATURE OF THESE AWARD CEREMONIES. I MYSELF, DO NOT. I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN OF THE OPINION THAT MY MUSIC IS UNIQUE AND INDIVIDUAL AND EXISTS BEYOND THE REALMS INHABITED BY THOSE WHO WOULD REDUCE THINGS TO MERE MEASURING. I AM IN COMPETITION WITH NO-ONE.

MY RELATIONSHIP WITH MY MUSE IS A DELICATE ONE AT THE BEST OF TIMES AND I FEEL THAT IT IS MY DUTY TO PROTECT HER FROM INFLUENCES THAT MAY OFFEND HER FRAGILE NATURE.

SHE COMES TO ME WITH THE GIFT OF SONG AND IN RETURN I TREAT HER WITH THE RESPECT I FEEL SHE DESERVES – IN THIS CASE THIS MEANS NOT SUBJECTING HER TO THE INDIGNITIES OF JUDGEMENT AND COMPETITION. MY MUSE IS NOT A HORSE AND I AM IN NO HORSE RACE AND IF INDEED SHE WAS, STILL I WOULD NOT HARNESS HER TO THIS TUMBREL – THIS BLOODY CART OF SEVERED HEADS AND GLITTERING PRIZES. MY MUSE MAY SPOOK! MAY BOLT! MAY ABANDON ME COMPLETELY!
SO ONCE AGAIN, TO THE PEOPLE AT MTV, I APPRECIATE THE ZEAL AND ENERGY THAT WAS PUT BEHIND MY LAST RECORD, I TRULY DO AND SAY THANK YOU AND AGAIN I SAY THANK YOU BUT NO…NO THANK YOU.

YOURS SINCERELY, NICK CAVE 21 OCT 96

To thine own self be true mthfckers.

She was not a girl who could be “won” in the kinetic sense-she was proof against cleverness, she was proof against charm; if any of these assailed her too strongly she would immediately resolve the affair to a physical basis, and under the magic of her physical splendor the strong as well as the brilliant played her game and not their own. She was entertained only by the gratification of her desires and by the direct exercise of her own charm. Perhaps from so much youthful love, so many youthful lovers, she had come, in self-defense, to nourish herself wholly from within. - Winter Dreams - F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Phoenix

The humiliation I go through when I think of my past can only be described as grace.

We are created by being destroyed.

-Franz Wright

...weave divine moments in your web...

What if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you:

‘This Life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable time more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterable small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence—even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!’ Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him:

‘You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.’

-Nietzche

Blue Parrot Dreams

Another restless sleep. Story of my life. Sometimes I welcome it though, those are the nights when I have the strangest dreams. The standout appearance last night was of two blue parrots perched on a tree outside someone's house. They looked old too, old around the beak lol. So of course I always look up dream meanings if I can't psychoanalyze them myself or just want a second opinion.
"For a young woman to dream that she owns a parrot, denotes that her lover will believe her to be quarrelsome."
That's pretty accurate if I say so myself, although there was no quarreling yesterday.
"Parrots ‘mimic’ what they have been trained to say, but they are also colorful and exotic creatures that can symbolize untapped abilities and unique qualities as in ‘birds of a different feather."
Blue is the color of healing and the color of the throat chakra, which governs communication.
My thoughts? Think before you speak, or the shit is gonna hit the fan.

Note for My Wall

it's no good
after all.
it has been cut in half
drawn and
quartered and
hung out to dry.

it was hardly good
even when it was good.

the ego gets caught
in a web of desire
the ego creates that strange mirage,
love.

I need a new home for my ego.
who will she be
this time?

~Charles Bukowski

Release

So silly of me to think for a split second that I was the cause to that demise. My ability to lock out certain people and turn off the stream of emotion isn't self-sabotaging after all- it's the single greatest quality of self preservation. My heart can sense when the pieces of the puzzle don't fit, way before my logical and impulsive brain catches up. So I thank my guarded heart for being way wiser than my conscious self will ever be.
I feel a renewed sense of hope in love today!
Mahalo <3

When will you choose to be born?

"He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves."
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

Una Nueva Vida

Makes me just want to pick up and go.....

http://overtherio.blogspot.com/

Intuition? Ha!

Sometimes it’s really hard differentiating between pessimism and intuition. Of course I want things in my life to work out. I just know deep down that there’s a very small percentile of people in this world that don’t end up being pieces of shit at one time or another, even more so when they have a spotted past. What makes me different? What is it about me that will prevent their douchebaggery from surfacing? It can’t be avoided. If they’re going to fuck you over, it WILL happen. Might be tomorrow, might be years from now, but pieces of shit will not be able to hide forever. So what do I do? Half-heartedly be a part of something while I sit on edge waiting for the other shoe to drop? I can’t do that.
Now what’s the first thing I do in this situation you ask? Well I create conflict and then walk away, as always. I don’t lack faith in men; I’ve had some amazing boyfriends. I lack faith in humanity and happy endings. I have an uncanny knack for figuring out all the bad shit about someone and magnifying it until it completely outweighs all the good.
I’m so off the reservation sometimes that I’ll actually believe my train of thought is intuition instead of pessimism. Granted, I have been dead-on, intuitively, in probably 2/3 of my past relationships; I do view most people in a negative way.
I want to be that happy-go-lucky lady who swan dives into love and puts on those neat little blinders, but I can’t let some walls down. The worst example is that it took me 2 ½ years to even believe my ex-boyfriend about trivial bullshit, and that was 2 ½ years of him doing nothing but proving his love and devotion to me!
What the fuck is wrong with me? It’s not a self-image thing, or even a fear of getting hurt. I can bounce back from a break up quicker than a Britney Spears marriage. I just lack faith. It’s the worst feeling in the world. This doesn’t mean I’m not happy in relationships. I’m in a relationship right now and I couldn’t be happier, but there’s that part of me that surfaces every now and again who asks all the faithless questions.
Should I be relieved that I’ve always got one eye out for bullshit, or be frustrated that it takes me longer than anyone I know to trust someone?

Nature's Got My Number

I've stepped into this pattern-
Where the sea becomes the air,
and the air becomes the rain,
and the rain becomes the sea.
I'm going to have to fight hard against nature
not to get pulled out of your bay by the riptides.

Sweet charity!

Why is it that with a heart full of hate and a fistful of rage, I could write a book. Between the eyes bulls-eye, my creativity is always higher when I have a target. Even if that target is sometimes myself.

That stench.

Can you see me down here from that high horse you're on? It amazes me how someone so logical can get caught up in such a world of ignorance. Anarchy? Defiance? How's reception on that cellphone.
If you want to be a pillar of the examplatory human, get it together. Stop preaching about how much you don't care what other people think, if that were the case you would drop the tough exterior. Nothing irritates me more than someone who presents themselves one way to the world and acts completely different behind closed doors. Be consistent. Be yourself.
I'm assessing the view from down here. Don't look at it as judgement, who am I to judge. I have more defects than an '86 Ford Tempo and no qualms about admitting them. Shit, I blog about them.
Just please stop acting like you hold the book of answers. If you're selling it, I'll surely pass.

Nothing But Death by Pablo Neruda

There are cemeteries that are lonely,
graves full of bones that do not make a sound,
the heart moving through a tunnel,
in it darkness, darkness, darkness,
like a shipwreck we die going into ourselves,
as though we were drowning inside our hearts,
as though we lived falling out of the skin into the soul.

And there are corpses,
feet made of cold and sticky clay,
death is inside the bones,
like a barking where there are no dogs,
coming out from bells somewhere, from graves somewhere,
growing in the damp air like tears of rain.

Sometimes I see alone
coffins under sail,
embarking with the pale dead, with women that have dead hair,
with bakers who are as white as angels,
and pensive young girls married to notary publics,
caskets sailing up the vertical river of the dead,
the river of dark purple,
moving upstream with sails filled out by the sound of death,
filled by the sound of death which is silence.

Death arrives among all that sound
like a shoe with no foot in it, like a suit with no man in it,
comes and knocks, using a ring with no stone in it, with no
finger in it,
comes and shouts with no mouth, with no tongue, with no
throat.
Nevertheless its steps can be heard
and its clothing makes a hushed sound, like a tree.

I'm not sure, I understand only a little, I can hardly see,
but it seems to me that its singing has the color of damp violets,
of violets that are at home in the earth,
because the face of death is green,
and the look death gives is green,
with the penetrating dampness of a violet leaf
and the somber color of embittered winter.

But death also goes through the world dressed as a broom,
lapping the floor, looking for dead bodies,
death is inside the broom,
the broom is the tongue of death looking for corpses,
it is the needle of death looking for thread.

Death is inside the folding cots:
it spends its life sleeping on the slow mattresses,
in the black blankets, and suddenly breathes out:
it blows out a mournful sound that swells the sheets,
and the beds go sailing toward a port
where death is waiting, dressed like an admiral.

I love old Ads and propaganda.

Surrounded by people in need.

Some days I feel like I'm completely drained- like they've sucked my energy dry. If I come across a miraculous patient who is strong willed, very positive or exceptionally calm, it's a beautiful thing. Rather than draining me of my physical and mental ability to comfort and tend to- they reenergize me. Those patients are far and few in between. These last few weeks it seems instead on a daily basis I'm met with needy, whiny, controlling, infuriating, lazy, and ignorant patients. The ones who know they have to pee, yet piss in a diaper and lay in it for two hours because they're too lazy to wake up for ten minutes and use a bedpan or god forbid- go into the bathroom. Yes-lazy. These are patients that are not incontinent and are not suffering any life threatening ailments. I'm not that fucked up. These are men with knee or hip replacements who bitch and moan about pain. Men are so much worse in the hospital than women. I see 85 yr old women with hip replacements that make some men look like wussies. Anyway it's these sort of routine rehab patients pissing in diapers out of sheer laziness that gets me started.
Then the ones who call you in to raise the head of the bed, meanwhile their fingers are 1/2 an inch from the bed controls.
The ones who use the urinal and act amazingly self-reliant, yet once their spouse leaves are asking you- nurse, can you hold it for me? As they pretend to helplessly grapple with the urinal.
The ones who can't even name the medications they take, yet blame them for making them nauseous.
And of course the ones who call you in as if your title suddenly switched from patient care to maid/servant. "Can you pour me water?", yet they can reach clear across the table to answer a cell phone.
Most times I think they ring just to see who's out there.
Don't be mistaken, I am compassionate. We all have job angst. Unfortunately I over analyze people. I expect too much from them. I unrealistically expect people to WANT to do the right thing. Who want to work at getting better.
I can be extremely empathic and get a distinct feel for people almost immediately. Unfortunately I'm also extremely intolerant of bullshit and still learning how to keep a grip on my temper. In a rehab program patients are encouraged to do things on their own. This is one step until you're out back on your own. It seems being in a hospital leads some people to feelings of entitlement though, 'YOU'RE supposed to wipe my vag for me- I'm in the hospital." Sweetie, if you're able to wipe your own vag and you still want me to do it- you have some major issues. Truth is, a lot of people don't realize how they come across until someone says something. Communication is everything. Your superiors will tell you, don't say this- don't do that- but as you go along you develop your own way to battle through the never ending days.
When I first started I gave into their every whim, I know better now. Within minutes you can access how much a person is able to do and use that as a meter. I've carried that over into my personal life as well.
So I write. I vent. I have ongoing monologues in my head. I walk around singing. It's healthy outlets that keep me sane. I ask old biddies about life 50 years ago. I observe people in their worst states and see the strength in humanity. I cringe with the weak. I'm angered by the ignorant. I do my job with a heavy heart and fist full of rage sometimes, but I know my place.

I want a big beefy tattooed lumberjack to come carry me away.

Busy busy busy...a much needed update coming soon.

Earlier Ramblings

http://salty-essence.livejournal.com/