Nick Cave: Grief’s Jagged Edges

Summary

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Podcast Summary

All There Is with Anderson Cooper

Episode: Nick Cave: Grief’s Jagged Edges

Date: December 3, 2025
Host: Anderson Cooper (CNN Podcasts)
Guest: Nick Cave (singer, songwriter, author)

Episode Overview

This episode of "All There Is" features an in-depth, emotionally honest conversation between Anderson Cooper and legendary musician Nick Cave about grief, loss, and transformation. Cave, who lost two sons in separate tragedies, speaks with remarkable vulnerability about the way grief has shaped his relationships, his worldview, and his creative life. The episode also touches on the stories of others—such as Megan Fowley, Andrea Gibson, and Andrew Garfield—and weaves personal anecdotes, philosophical insights, and music to explore grief’s jagged edges and unexpected gifts.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Anderson’s Reflection on His Mother’s Death

• [00:00–01:55]
  • Anderson opens with memories of his mother's last days, emphasizing the intimacy and forgiveness that defined their final moments together.
  • Quote:

    “We held hands a lot. Any of the old disappointments or resentments were gone. I knew her, and she knew me.” — Anderson, [01:08]

  • He notes the comfort in recognizing his mother’s giggle in his own.
  • Theme: The lasting, gentle echoes of our loved ones in ourselves.

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Redefining Death: Megan Fowley’s Perspective

• [02:09–03:29]
  • Anderson shares a powerful conversation with Megan Fowley, wife of the late poet Andrea Gibson, who chooses to say Andrea “allegedly died.”
  • Quote:

    “To say Andrea died, as if any of us even know what that means. We actually don't know what it means … It just didn’t feel right.” — Megan Fowley, [02:17]

  • Anderson is emotionally moved by this perspective, reflecting on the limits of language and the mysteries of loss.

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Introducing Nick Cave and His Losses

• [04:00–04:19]
  • Nick Cave lost his 15-year-old son, Arthur, to a tragic accident, and later his son Jethro.
  • This loss fundamentally shattered and reshaped his identity.

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Grief as a Condition of Being

• [04:19–06:30]
  • Cave describes himself as “unformed” before his son died, and grief as an experience that “broke apart my relationship with the world.”
  • Quote:

    “Grief, what I came to understand … we are all creatures of loss, that we are all suffering in our own ways.” — Nick Cave, [04:58]

  • Grief is reframed not just as sorrow, but as shared human connective tissue—an ocean that links us all.
  • Anderson and Cave distinguish “grief” from “loss,” noting the latter’s gentler universality.

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The Connection Between Grief and Joy

• [06:29–07:49]
  • Cave describes joy as a unique kind of emotion, emerging out of suffering.
  • Quote:

    “Joy springs … out of suffering. Joy is this feeling that you get where there is an understanding of suffering and it's a sort of leaping forth from that.” — Nick Cave, [06:30]

  • He contrasts joy with happiness: joy is rare, intense, and rooted in sorrow.

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Navigating Grief’s Early Stages

• [07:49–09:26]
  • Cave recounts the incapacitating first year after Arthur’s death: chaos, guilt, self-blame, and “cosmic betrayal.”
  • The physical and emotional paralysis affects his marriage until he and his wife consciously choose to move forward.
  • Quote:

    “We just came together around the loss of our son … I think it is in some way cemented or bound together by catastrophe.” — Nick Cave, [16:03]

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Transformed Relationships and Empathy

• [09:26–12:20]
  • As grief evolves, Cave and his wife find new meaning and a deeper bond.
  • Their sense of connection and empathy with others deepens, and Cave feels attuned to suffering as a universal experience.
  • Anderson relates, sharing his own experience of seeing people “as all sort of children of suffering.”

    “I’ve started to view everyone as somebody who has suffered.” — Anderson, [11:04]

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Grief and the Divine

• [12:48–14:41]
  • Anderson quotes Cave’s book where grief is described as a state close to the essence of things—“perhaps God is the trauma itself.”
  • Quote:

    “For what it's worth, I see God in everything and in the good and the bad, that it is an animating force within all things.” — Nick Cave, [13:19]

  • Cave elaborates: grief breaks us open to a heart-level connection with the inherent goodness in people and the world.

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The Ongoing Nature of Grief

• [14:41–17:54]
  • For some listeners, the idea that grief might ever become “better” feels impossible.
  • Cave is frank:

    “It becomes different. Yes, it is better than it was … but these did ultimately transform into something else.” — Nick Cave, [14:58]

  • He and his wife are “bound together by a deep feeling for each other, but also for a catastrophe.”
  • Keeping open communication about their loss has been crucial.
  • Cave’s wife dreams of Arthur frequently, experiencing small, “extremely beautiful, simple little metaphors of love.”

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Maintaining a Relationship With the Deceased

• [17:54–22:03]
  • Anderson fears that letting go of grief means losing touch with lost loved ones.
  • Cave responds: we never truly let go; the connection changes form.
  • Quote:

    “We can have a tendency to sort of deify the one that is no longer with us … I think about them every day. I close my eyes and you could say I pray to them.” — Nick Cave, [19:19]

  • He draws on memories of Arthur and Jethro in daily life, seeking guidance or comfort.

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Grief, Music, and Continuing Bonds

• [22:03–27:39]
  • Cave often “talks” to Arthur before performing, and the album Ghosteen was deeply shaped by his presence.
  • Andrew Garfield (clip, [24:26]) calls the album “a hymn, a psalm...a friend that kept its hand on my shoulder.”
  • Cave appreciates this, noting the album’s “religious nature.”
  • The song “Spinning Song” repeats “I love you” as a mantra—an act Cave barely recalls creating, as if channeling something beyond himself.
  • Quote:

    “That particular record...feels like there’s someone else to me personally speaking through that song.” — Nick Cave, [26:45]

  • “Bright Horses,” another song, blends longing and hope with metaphysical imagery.

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Confronting Grief’s Practical Realities—The "Jagged Edges"

• [30:11–33:22]
  • Anderson and Cave talk about how trauma is physically tied to places (a balcony, a cliff), and how these “jagged edges” persist.
  • Cave describes vivid, intrusive reminders—cliffs in movies, bus rides past the site—and how he and his family have adapted, finding solace in their continued unity.
  • Quote:

    “Jagged edges are also the sort of glue that holds the relationship together in some way. We are kind of wedded together with a certain pain.” — Nick Cave, [32:42]

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Small Acts and the Return to Life

• [33:22–36:59]
  • Anderson highlights Cave’s advice that grief must “be measured by action”—routine, small acts, and rituals.
  • At the lowest point, a simple act of compassion—a cashier squeezing his hand—profoundly moved Cave and changed his sense of humanity.
  • Quote:

    “This response was so deeply articulate and so meaningful to me.” — Nick Cave, [35:21]

  • Empathy, he notes, is often expressed most powerfully through silent or small gestures.

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What Helps, and When

• [37:13–39:47]
  • Cave is candid: clichés about “it gets better” are unhelpful at first. Grief is cataclysmic, and healing is individual.
  • Over time, he and his wife chose “to be defiant” against a world that felt indifferent, and later, to “soften” toward life and meaning.
  • Hope becomes “a defiant act.”
  • Quote:

    “We started to see that hope was a defiant act. I think we made some conscious decision to, I suppose, to be happy. You can do that. It's possible to do.” — Nick Cave, [37:46]

  • He stresses repeatedly: transformation takes time; “beautiful things often do.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On universality of loss:
  “We are all creatures of loss … the world is suffering from loss. It is the thing that holds us together.” — Nick Cave, [04:58]

• On grief’s transformation:
  “My heart expanded hugely … one of those things is the capacity for joy.” — Nick Cave, [06:05]

• On marital survival:
  “We just came together around the loss of our son … I think it is in some way cemented or bound together by catastrophe.” — Nick Cave, [16:03]

• On ongoing conversation with the lost:
  “His voice comes through, and it's like a, you know, you're awesome. Go and do your job … It's playful.” — Nick Cave, [22:09]

• On the enduring pain of place:
  “The cliffs are too, it’s too brutal, the whole thing … But those—the sharp edges of grief, the practical, horrible realities of it, I think never go away.” — Nick Cave, [30:54]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Anderson on mother’s last days: [00:00–01:55]
• Megan Fowley’s ‘allegedly died’: [02:09–03:29]
• Nick Cave on loss and transformation: [04:19–06:30]
• Joy emerging from grief: [06:29–07:49]
• Early paralysis of grief: [07:49–09:26]
• The ongoing relationship with the deceased: [17:54–22:03]
• Music, Ghosteen, and the conversation with Arthur: [22:03–27:39]
• Physical reminders—the jagged edges: [30:11–33:22]
• The squeeze of empathy: [35:13–36:59]
• What helps, and when (advice): [37:13–39:47]

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Episode Tone & Takeaways

• Tone: Deeply compassionate, sometimes raw, but suffused with tenderness, vulnerability, and hope.
• Takeaway: Grief fundamentally reshapes us and our relationships—shattering, yes, but also forging new capacities for love, joy, empathy, and realness. There is no right way or timetable; transformation is slow, often painful, and always individual. But shared stories, art, and simple human connection can make the burden lighter—even if only by a hand squeeze.

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“I’m just a completely different person than I was before Arthur died. And that’s allowed me to feel things that I don’t think I really felt in the same way before. My capacity for love, it’s just widened hugely.”
— Nick Cave, [39:09]

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Transcript

[Host]

I've been thinking a lot about being with my mom at the end of her life. Maybe it's because Tig Notaro was on the last podcast talking about seeing her friend poet Andrea Gibson die. My mom died in June 2019. She hadn't been feeling well, and I took her to the hospital. That's when she was told she had cancer and didn't have much time. She was silent for a while and then said, well, it's like that old song, show me the way to get out of this world, because that's where everything is. Which I thought was a pretty cool response. Told, you're about to die. Later, she made a joke and we both started giggling. I happened to record it, and it was only when I watched this later that I realized we both had the exact same giggle.

[Co-host]

Is that all there is?

[Host]

I'd always wondered where my giggle came from, but now I know it was hers all along. I took my mom home and we spent a lot of time together in her final days. We held hands a lot. Any of the old disappointments or resentments were gone. I knew her, and she knew me.

[Co-host]

Are you scared?

[Host or Interviewer]

No.

[Co-host]

I'm not either.

[Host]

Her voice was becoming just a whisper.

[Co-host]

Greatest gift.

[Host or Interviewer]

Getting to spend time with you has.

[Co-host]

Been the greatest gift.

[Nick Cave (reading lyrics)]

Yeah.

[Co-host]

The kind of time that we have now is.

[Host or Interviewer]

It's really special. Yes.

[Co-host]

You're a good team, that's for sure.

[Host or Interviewer]

I love you.

[Co-host]

I love you, sweetheart. You know that?

[Host or Interviewer]

I do.

[Co-host]

Always and forever.

[Host]

I say that to my kids now. I love you. Always and forever. I spoke to Andrea Gibson's wife, Megan Fowley, on All There Is Live recently. One of the things she said really stayed with me, and I want to show you part of that conversation.

[Host or Interviewer]

I saw something you wrote where you say you started to use the word allegedly when you talk about Andrea's death.

[Host]

Which I kind of love.

[Megan Fowley]

It felt so weird to talk with such certainty to say Andrea died, as if any of us even know what that means. We actually don't know what it means.

[Host]

It's true.

[Megan Fowley]

I don't think.

[Host or Interviewer]

No, I mean, it's true.

[Megan Fowley]

I had felt so many sort of signs and communications that it felt it just didn't feel right. And it still doesn't to say Andrea died. So I love saying that Andrea allegedly died. To my limited understanding of a body and a spirit, language is very important to me. So if I feel like something is not quite getting it right, I'm going to make whatever adjustments I need.

[Host or Interviewer]

I think that idea.

[Megan Fowley]

I invite you to try it in or something?

[Host or Interviewer]

Well, no, I mean, I'm crying because what you said is so unique and I think true. And yeah, we have no idea what this means.

[Host]

I don't know if I'll start using the term allegedly, but I love suddenly hearing something that makes me look at loss and think about it in a new light. Will be right back with my conversation with singer, songwriter and author Nick Cave. Welcome back. Nick Cave is a legendary Australian singer, songwriter and author. His 15 year old son Arthur, died 10 years ago in a fall off a cliff in Brighton, England. Nick and his wife Susie, have one other son, Arthur's twin, Earl. Nick's first child, Jethro, died in 2022 at the age of 31. At the request of Jethro's mom. Nick doesn't talk in detail about Jethro. Nick has authored a number of books. His latest is Faith, Hope and A Conversational Memoir written with Sean o'. Hagan.

[Nick Cave]

I feel I was an incomplete or unformed human being before my son died. Something happened that completely shattered myself and broke apart my relationship with the world. So that putting the pieces back together again, I found that I became an entirely different person with a different relationship with the world.

[Host or Interviewer]

More fully human, which is what Stephen Colbert talked about, I would say.

[Nick Cave]

More fully human. You know, it's a condition of being for me. Grief, what I came to understand.

[Host or Interviewer]

Condition of being.

[Nick Cave]

Well, what I came to understand is that that we are all creatures of loss, that we are all suffering in our own ways. You don't need to have someone close to you die to be suffering from this thing too. I think the world is suffering in a collective way. I mean, you must know that too, just by visiting war zones and this sort of thing. But the world is suffering from loss. It is the thing that holds us together.

[Host or Interviewer]

There is an ocean of grief out there.

[Nick Cave]

Yeah, grief has a sort of specific feel about it, but loss to me is something a little gentler and wider. And I think that that's the sort of connective tissue that holds us all together. I can look at you, you can look at me, and we understand that within our lives, whatever they may be, there is this sort of thread of loss that runs through. It's, as I said before, a condition, a condition of being to be. And that's not a bad thing. I don't find grief to be a bad thing. My heart expanded hugely to be able to encompass all manner of things in the world that I didn't even recognize before. One of those things is the capacity for joy. Joy for me, is a different thing than happiness. I think joy springs. It's an emotion that sort of springs out of suffering.

[Host or Interviewer]

Joy does, yeah.

[Nick Cave]

Joy is this feeling that you get where there is an understanding of suffering and it's a sort of leaping forth from that. There's an intensity to that word that has something to do with the awe of things and connectedness.

[Host or Interviewer]

So joy only exists because of sorrow.

[Nick Cave]

I would say that joy comes out of the blues, to put it in musical terms. Whereas happiness is more of a kind of day to day feeling, if you're lucky.

[Host or Interviewer]

For a lot of people who are listening to this, who are in the midst of grief, the idea that you could feel joy again might seem incomprehensible.

[Nick Cave]

Well, not only that, it could feel like blasphemous or an absolute insult to their. To their own feelings. And I understand that. But I've found that there are two ways you can go. You can internalize what's happened and wrap yourself around the absence of something, or you can open up and take in the world and understand that your suffering is not unique and that the world is also suffering and that you were part of a greater thing.

[Host or Interviewer]

Did you feel that right away or did it take time before you.

[Nick Cave]

No, not. Oh, my God, no. When Arthur died, I think there was a year at least of absolute, devastating, incapacitating sorrow. Terrible feelings of self blame and guilt, complete emotional chaos and these feelings of, like, cosmic betrayal. And I remember sitting in the kitchen and I could see my wife. This was some weeks after walking up the stairs and only being able to get halfway up and then just kind of collapsing down on the stairs. And I remember sitting in the kitchen and unable to go through the door to get to the stairs to be of any assistance. Just this incapacity to move beyond our own internal horror. And I remember it thinking, I'm not only lost my son, I'm losing my wife. And my wife spent a long time just in her room, you know, in the dark, entombed in her room. And at some point, some months later, I think we both made the decision that we cannot continue in this way. And we were able somehow to do that. But these did ultimately transform into something else.

[Host or Interviewer]

You said since Arthur died, I've been able to step beyond the full force of the grief and experience a kind of joy that is entirely new to me. This is Arthur's gift to me, one of many.

[Nick Cave]

Yeah. I think we need to establish something here, is that if I could have it back the other way, if I could have Arthur Back. And Jethro back, of course. So I say these things with a thousand caveats that this thing happens, and there's no escaping that. But what springs from it, too, is something of extraordinary beauty. For the first time, I became a part of something which is the world.

[Host or Interviewer]

You felt more connected to other people.

[Nick Cave]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Host or Interviewer]

And everything around you than you had before.

[Nick Cave]

Yeah, absolutely. I felt that I was part of. I became part of the world in a way that I didn't even realize that I wasn't. And my own situation was unique to me, but also ordinary. And that the world itself and everyone in it were living sort of perilous lives. That everything seemed close to catastrophe in the world. And that's true. And this gave me a feeling of a kind of preciousness around humans, that they are things of intense value and extremely precious. And that idea I didn't have a clue about before Arthur died.

[Host or Interviewer]

I've had the same feeling in the last year or two. I've started to view everyone as somebody who has suffered. And it's sort of levels of suffering. It's an interesting way to look at people as all sort of children of suffering.

[Nick Cave]

Yeah. That becomes a philosophy of being in a way to be able to see the world in that way. We're asked really to divide the world up into the good UN's and the bad UN's, but it's way more complex than that.

[Host or Interviewer]

One of the things that has helped me is the realization that I am just one of hundreds of millions of people throughout time who has walked this road and who has. There has been a me before, many times over, who did all the things that I did wrong and about grief and that this is what happens to humans. This is the human experience.

[Nick Cave]

That's. Yeah, beautifully put. And this is what happens to humans. And this feeling towards the world was new to me. When I see a human being walking down the street, this person has all this stuff going on, all this sorrow and happiness going on inside them. And we are all like that.

[Host]

We'll have more with Nick Cave in a moment, but if you want to listen or watch past episodes of the podcast, you can do that wherever you get your podcasts or at our community [e-mail] commerce. You can also watch our new weekly companion show there All There is live. That's Thursday nights at 9:15pm Eastern. We'll be right back with more from Nick Cave. Welcome back. Here's more of my conversation with Nick.

[Host or Interviewer]

Cave in this remarkable book that you did in conversation with Sean o' Hagan you said something that really just stopped me. You said, perhaps God is the trauma itself. Perhaps grief can be seen as a kind of exalted state where the person who is grieving is the closest they will ever be to the fundamental essence of things. You went on to say to me, it feels like grief and God are somehow intertwined. It feels that in grief you draw closer to the veil that separates this world from the next. You see God in grief?

[Nick Cave]

Well, for what it's worth, I see God in everything and in the good and the bad, that it is an animating force within all things. You could say within that trauma that the face of God was revealed to me and that I understood that this world was good. It's good. It's not indifferent. We as human beings tilt towards what is good, even though a lot of the time there is no evidence of that. I just feel that on a fundamental level that there is a essence within us that is good, that we stack on top of it all sorts of agendas and needs and desires that get in the way of that essential essence. And I think grief breaks that open and allows us to connect on some fundamental level, some sort of heart level, with the goodness of things. And that's what changed for me about the way I saw the world rather than before I think Arthur died, where I was just kind of consumed with my own world and my career and all these sorts of things.

[Host or Interviewer]

There's a lot of people listening who are in the midst of or in the very early moments of their loss and grief. And. And I know you get this question a lot. Does it get better? And if so, how does it get better for you?

[Co-host]

How did it get better?

[Nick Cave]

It becomes different. It's different. Yes, it is better than it was. As I was describing it before. Susie and I, we lead. I would say it's difficult to say this stuff because I don't want people to get the wrong idea, but we lead more meaningful lives because you and.

[Host or Interviewer]

Susie are open in a way you were not before.

[Nick Cave]

We just. To each other. We love each other in a different way. We're sort of bound together by a deep feeling for each other, but also for a catastrophe that happened in our lives. It's a mutual language that we have that's new and beautiful, actually, and real and real. It's real. It's real. Exactly. That's right. And the world is real in a.

[Host or Interviewer]

Way that it wasn't before.

[Nick Cave]

Yeah, I think completely different.

[Host or Interviewer]

So many couples do not survive the loss of a child, the death of their Child.

[Nick Cave]

The statistics are terrible, you know, but.

[Host or Interviewer]

You were able to.

[Nick Cave]

We were able to. Some months after it happened, we just started to come together with things. We. There was no blame. That often, I think, often happens. Susie didn't blame me. I didn't blame her. It was for us, just this terrible accident that happened. We just came together around the loss of our son. We had. Arthur, had a twin brother. We focused on him, too. And we all. All of us have a very strong relationship. And I think it is in some way cemented or bound together by catastrophe. And that's part of the sort of beauty of our relationship, the depth of our family.

[Host or Interviewer]

You were able to ultimately talk to each other about this, which is what drives, I think, so many couples apart.

[Nick Cave]

I mean, we talk about it all.

[Host or Interviewer]

The time, even now.

[Nick Cave]

Yeah. You know, and I don't dream much. Susie dreams all the time, and Arthur is always entering her dreams.

[Host or Interviewer]

That must be so nice.

[Nick Cave]

Yeah. I mean, absolutely. I'm hugely jealous of that, envious of that. And these dreams are not complicated. You know, she just sits with Arthur. And the last one, she woke up and said, I had a dream about Arthur last night. I was just putting his toys away. And then she said it was kind of sad. They are very simple. She's tying his shoelaces up, or she's making something for him, or these extremely beautiful, simple little metaphors of love for her son. And it's a great gift, I think.

[Host or Interviewer]

I worry that if I move beyond the grief or past the sense of loss, that I will lose touch with the people that I've lost, that they are there in the grief.

[Nick Cave]

You know, I mean, the idea of letting go, as, you know, we don't do that anyway. No one lets go of this sort of thing. I mean, how do you let it go anyway? It simply becomes a part of you. We can have a tendency to sort of deify the one that is no longer with us. That absent person becomes everything. It becomes everything. And I'm not so sure that that's a very good idea. There's a sort of comfort in despair. I can only talk about myself. I didn't do what you did. My wife did. But she sort of surrounds herself, I think, with kind of sacred objects, you know, photographs. And she's kept every little thing of Arthur's. And so these things have huge importance.

[Host or Interviewer]

To her because you're feeling the other person in it.

[Nick Cave]

Yeah. You're connected. Yeah. You're connected to the person that you. That is no longer with us. And for me, personally, I Needed to become part of the world. For me personally, I've developed a relationship with my sons, both of them actually, and I think about them every day. I mean, I don't just think about them idly. I close my eyes and you could say I pray to them, but essentially I think about them and I talk to them. And do you feel them Sometimes? You know, sometimes they're of huge, it's of huge benefit. They're actually like patron saints, you could say. I mean, I have a whole. I'm old and I have a whole collection of these people, right? My mother, my father. And in a way they all represent something to me. Arthur, for example, represents kind of joy. Jethro represents like chaos. And sometimes you need some chaos. Sometimes my life becomes really stuck and ritualistic and I think of Jethro and I call to him to sort of disrupt things a little bit or with Arthur, when I'm about to go on stage, for example. And in fact, before I did this, I'm worried about what I'm going to say and whether I'm going to be able to be articulate because it's serious, what we're talking about and I don't want to not be articulate about things. I worry about that all the time. But I think of Arthur and I also think, well, so what? The worst has kind of happened. It really puts things in perspective. Just go and see what happens. And Arthur is that sort of freeing spirit that I have. So these people live on in a different way within me, this collection of people that I have inside me. And so I don't feel that I've let them go. I know the feeling that you're talking about, but I feel the conversation is still continuing with these people. And maybe it's all a kind of madness and maybe I'm sitting there talking to myself, I don't know. But it feels like they are having within their passing, massive influence over my life.

[Host or Interviewer]

You said that you've talked to Arthur before going on stage. What do you talk about?

[Nick Cave]

I just say, look, I'm tired. I'm not sure quite how I'm going to do this concert. And I talk about things that are immediate problems with me. I need your help. And sometimes I get these sort of weird, sort of humorous, I would say affirmations that come from Arthur, which he always did in real life in a way. Arthur could never be really particularly serious about anything. He was just a crazy little 15 year old guy and funny. And so there's a sort of joyful humor in These sort of, let's say, responses that I get. Or we could say imagined responses. I get. His voice comes through, and it's like a, you know, you're awesome. Go and do your job or whatever, you know, it's playful. It's playful.

[Host or Interviewer]

You've talked about with the album Ghosteen that Arthur is kind of roaming around in the songs.

[Nick Cave]

I would say that's definitely the case. You know, I think that there was something going on with the making of Ghosteen, that I felt his presence very closely, the songs were fashioned by him in some way, and that I was finding a way to articulate my need for him. I think one of the things we all want to say to the people who've passed is that we're sorry, that we're sorry that they're gone, and did we pay them enough attention when they were with us? But I felt when I was making Ghosteen, this opportunity through these songs to articulate the way I felt about my son and to talk to him and to say that I loved him and that I'm sorry. Sorry that he's gone. Sorry for whatever failings I may have had as a father and that I love him.

[Host or Interviewer]

We had Andrew Garfield, the actor on the podcast, as well, whose mom died of cancer. I just want to play something that Andrew said about Ghost Ian.

[Nick Cave]

Okay.

[Andrew Garfield]

Nick Cave.

[Host or Interviewer]

Nick Cave, yeah.

[Andrew Garfield]

Nick Cave writing Ghosteen, the album Ghosteen. I don't know if you've.

[Host or Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah.

[Andrew Garfield]

I would walk around with that album. I would walk around London with that album. I would get lost in London. And Ghosteen is this beautiful hymn, Psalm. It was a friend. Nick Cave's work became a mentor and a friend that kept me company, kept its hand on my shoulder, kept me from falling into too deeply. Into the abyss. Or at least I could meet him down in my own abyss while he was in his.

[Host or Interviewer]

I love him. Calling it a psalm.

[Nick Cave]

Yeah, I like that, too. I like that. Because ghosting is sort of religious in nature, in my view. There's a lovely thing that happened with the central section of that song where it says, and I love you.

[Host or Interviewer]

Well, let me play this part of the spinning song where you say I.

[Nick Cave]

Love you, and you're sitting at the kitchen table listening to the radio.

[Nick Cave (reading lyrics)]

I love you and I love you. And I love you. And I love you. And I love you. And I love you. And I love you. Peace will come and peace will come.

[Nick Cave]

And peace will come in time. I'm not gonna cry at my own souls.

[Host or Interviewer]

That's right. That repetition of I love you beyond, you think it's over and it should be over. And yet you continue going. And it's extraordinary to me.

[Nick Cave]

Yes. That particular record has throughout it, things that feel that they've come from some other place. I don't remember doing this stuff. And that feels like there's someone else to me personally speaking through that song.

[Host or Interviewer]

The line, you sitting at the kitchen table listening to the radio. That's the memory you have of your wife before you got the phone call.

[Nick Cave]

Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So she's listening to a particular song, but that's the sort of, I think, the final or the last complete image of my wife before everything, before we got a phone, before we got this phone call, you know, before everything shattered.

[Host or Interviewer]

I want to play one more part from Ghosting Bright Horses.

[Nick Cave (reading lyrics)]

The time can't dissolve at all. Sam. Well, this world is plain to see it don't mean we can't believe in something and anyway my baby's coming back now on the next train I can hear the whistle blowing I can hear the mighty roar I can hear the horses prancing in the pastures of the Lord oh, the train is coming and I'm standing here to see and it's bringing my baby right back to me well, there are some things.

[Nick Cave]

It'S hard to explain.

[Nick Cave (reading lyrics)]

But my baby's coming home now on the 5:30 trees.

[Host or Interviewer]

It's beautiful.

[Nick Cave]

Thank you.

[Host]

We'll have more with Nick Cave in a moment. But but if you want to listen or watch past episodes of the podcast, you can do that wherever you get your podcasts or at our community [e-mail] allthereis. You can also watch our new weekly companion show there. Allthere is live. That's Thursday nights at 9:15pm Eastern. We'll be right back with more from Nick Cave. Welcome back to my conversation with Nick Cave.

[Host or Interviewer]

One of the things that I've had a hard time with, my brother's death, who killed himself in front of my mom, is very much getting stuck on how his life ended. My brother leapt off a balcony of our apartment building, and I cannot go to that part of New York City where that building is. If I drive down the FDR Drive, the building, the balcony is very prominently seen. And I literally tried to avoid that. And I read you had to for a long time drive by the cliff where Arthur fell. Well, and, you know, if that's too personal, I don't know.

[Nick Cave]

I mean, you probably get it the same way, but, you know, the idea of a cliff in itself as a Thing is, seems. It's hard to say this, but look, you know, we'll never get over that. And in the end, we found it too difficult to live in the place that we lived in. And we shifted and we went elsewhere in Brighton, even though Brighton is full of memories in that way. The cliffs are too. It's too brutal, the whole thing. Little Earl, his brother, had to travel, had to go to school and had to get the school bus past that place and back again every day, you know. And how he dealt with that is, to me, you know, I'm just awed by that child, how he's dealt with the whole thing and continues to deal with that. But those. The sharp edges of grief, the practical, horrible realities of it, I think, never go away. You may know it with balconies. I sit down and watch a movie with Susie. It starts off with a scene of some cliffs. It happens all the time. It's crazy.

[Host or Interviewer]

The amount of people who jump off buildings in movies is extraordinary. Once you. Once. That's something that you notice, it's. And it happens out of the blue in movies all the time.

[Nick Cave]

Yeah. I mean, these are the kind of. These are the things you don't.

[Host or Interviewer]

The jagged edges.

[Nick Cave]

The jagged edges, I would say. It's funny, though, when we are watching TV together and something like that happens. Susie reaches across and holds my hand or whatever. And jagged edges are also the sort of glue that holds the relationship together in some way. We are kind of wedded together with a certain pain that is very, very strong and very deep and full of meaning. It means something. And even those terrible things are part of the sort of beauty of things, too.

[Host or Interviewer]

Is there something you've learned in your grief that would be helpful to others? One thing I heard you say, which I found interesting and helpful, you said, essentially, I think grief needs to be measured by action. You have to construct a series of actions around your day in order to survive. You exercise, you go down to the sea for a swim, you meditate, you make breakfast for your kid. You do all the small things that maintain order.

[Nick Cave]

Yeah, I would say that's good advice. You know, the very early days, none of what we're talking about is of any help at all. You know, you're just in this thing. It's so cataclysmic, the whole thing. So physical. It's so physical. I could feel this sort of roaring feeling running through my body's body and this feeling like bursting out the ends of my fingers, you know, it's not something where I can sit and listen to a podcast and get some help and Susie, too. But I remember the small acts that started to sort of penetrate this feeling. I meditated for quite a while before this happened with Arthur, and the thought of meditating was impossible. How can you meditate with this feeling that's going on in your body? But I did do it. And for a small second, there was this moment that was just like a tiny light going on that felt suddenly something had sort of drifted away a little bit, the second or two where I felt things were okay. And I've told this story, but I tell it because I think it's. People often want to know, how do you respond to a grieving person? What do I do? My. You know, how should I be? And the first time I went out in Brighton, you know, I'm well known in Brighton, I went to this vegetarian restaurant to get some takeaway food and bring it back home. And there was a girl that served the food there, and I stood in a queue, and I could feel people's sense of me being in the queue and all of that. And I finally got to her and she just said, what do you. What do you want? And I know her. And she didn't say anything to me. And I ordered the food, and I was thinking in my mind, doesn't she know? And when she gave her the money, when she handed back the change, she squeezed my hand like that and let it go. And to me, this response was so deeply articulate and so meaningful to me.

[Host or Interviewer]

Did she look you in the eye when she did that?

[Nick Cave]

Yeah, she just. She just. Yeah, yeah, she just did. She just gave my hand to squeeze. I understand.

[Host or Interviewer]

It's beautiful.

[Nick Cave]

It was more articulate than any anything that I've read, and I've read all the books. It was just one human being feeling empathy towards or compassion towards another human being. Deeply sort of spiritual thing to do that told me that people were good. It was not something that I ever even thought about before, but there was a moral dimension to what we can be as human beings. And that this person was good and that on some level, it changed the way I started to see people. And I still. You know, it's weird. I still get that in.

[Host or Interviewer]

You still feel that space.

[Nick Cave]

Yeah. In sort of stressful times, I still feel a kind of. I know it sounds crazy, but it's quite a squeeze. It was quite a squeeze. Yeah. Quite a squeeze.

[Host or Interviewer]

So in answer to the question, is there something you've learned that would help others? What do you say?

[Nick Cave]

After a while, I Think you can make certain decisions about things, about how you're going to be in the world. And I think at the end of it, it was to be defiant. That's how I think me and Susie felt after a while, to be defiant about what we saw at that time. And I don't see it this way now. At that time was an indifferent world. We were not going to allow that world to. Break us. There was that feeling. Neither of us feel that way anymore. We've softened to the world. But at the time, we weren't going to allow the world to have its way. We started to see that hope was a defiant act. I think we made some conscious decision to, I suppose to be happy. You can do that. It's possible to do. The thing is, I think everyone does this in their own ways. And back in the day, I used to go to Narcotics Anonymous and stuff, and I used to sit there two days clean, absolutely destroyed. And there would be some guy there who was 20 years sober, going on about what a wonderful life he has and all that sort of stuff. And I used to sit there and go, for God's sake, you know, And I'm afraid of doing that too. You know, if anyone had have said those sort of things in the first few months after Arthur died, I would have just, you know, I would have not been impressed by that at all.

[Host or Interviewer]

Early on, that kind of a message.

[Nick Cave]

That, don't worry, it gets better.

[Host or Interviewer]

You'll view it as a gift, ultimately. Yeah, as a gift that's like. To you.

[Nick Cave]

Yeah, exactly.

[Nick Cave (reading lyrics)]

Right?

[Andrew Garfield]

Yeah.

[Nick Cave]

Deeply. So, yeah, the word gift just has a sort of New Age feel about it or something like that. But, you know, I'm just a completely different person than I was before Arthur died. And that's allowed me to feel things that I don't think I really felt in the same way before. My capacity for love, it's just widened hugely. And I want to stress that way of thinking is something that comes through time. It's not some sort of failure if you're not feeling that way.

[Host or Interviewer]

It's taken a long time.

[Nick Cave]

It takes a long time. It takes a long time. But beautiful things often do.

[Host or Interviewer]

You could say, yeah, thank you so much.

[Nick Cave]

Okay, thank you.

[Host]

Next week on All There Is, I talk to actor, comedian, director Ben Stiller about the loss of his parents and the process of going through all the things they left behind. That's next Tuesday. This Thursday, join me at 9:15pm for the new episode of my weekly companion show called All There Is Live. It will be live streamed on our Grief community [e-mail] allthereis that's every Thursday night at 9:15pM wherever you are in your grief, I'm glad we're together.