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- [00:00]
Sean
I'm Shiloh Brooks. I'm a professor and CEO, and I believe reading good books makes us better men. Today I'm talking with Nick Cave. Nick is an Australian singer, songwriter, and rock music legend who fronts the band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Carlo Collodi's the Adventures of Pinocchio, published in 1883, changed Nick's life. Today I'm asking him why. This is Old School.
- [00:32]
Announcer
Old School is proudly brought to you by the Jack Miller Center. The Jack Miller Center's mission is to reinvigorate education and America's founding principles by empowering professors, supporting teachers, and bringing civic education to millions of students nationwide. If you believe in educating the next generation to sustain American ideals, join us@jackmillercenter.org Nick Cave.
- [00:54]
Sean
Welcome to Old School.
- [00:56]
Nick Cave
Thank you. It's an absolute pleasure.
- [00:58]
Sean
It's a pleasure to have you here. One of the reasons I'm so excited is I love doing this podcast because the guests choose the books. They come to me with things I've never read, probably would have never read. And you chose one of the most interesting books, a book that would not have been on my radar without you, and that's Pinocchio, a book that looks to be children's literature but is not. I think it's a lot deeper than that. So one of the questions I wanted to begin with is, why did you choose Pinocchio?
- [01:30]
Nick Cave
Well, there's obviously many books to choose from, but Pinocchio is a book that's been with me all my life. I've read it as a child. I've read it as a teenager and as an adult, and recently, too. And so it seems for me to always find its theme in the sense that it always feels acutely relevant to me at any. Has felt acutely relevant to me at any period in my life for one reason or another. Obviously, it's about a puppet boy, an unformed child in a way. And I related to that when I read it as a child. I very much related to Pinocchio and his journey, and it's grown with me. And I very much relate to the Geppetto character these days as the father. So it's just been an important, instructive book to me over the years.
- [02:51]
Sean
One of the beautiful things about books is they meet us where we are. You can read a book when you're 15, and then you can read it again when you're 25, 45, 65. The book has stayed the same. You have changed. But oddly, the meaning of that book will Change for you. You'll see things you didn't see. So I'm curious when you read them.
- [03:09]
Nick Cave
But books become meaningless in the same way. You read them 30 years later and you wonder what was thinking.
- [03:18]
Sean
But this is not one of those for you. And so I'm curious through the eyes of a child, the child. Nick, ca. What was compelling about the book?
- [03:25]
Nick Cave
As a child, I found myself understanding the Pinocchio character quite well. I mean, he's a lazy little, mendacious work shy, you know, incorrigible little guy. Yeah. But wants to be good. He has the best intentions. This is like the comic engine that runs through this beautiful book is that he's always wanting to be good, but he's a puppet to his appetites. And no sooner does he want to do good or do good again, he's sort of drawn away by some other adventure. Usually dangerous, dangerous adventure. And I really related to that character, you know, as a child who wants to go to school, who wants to read their ABC or learn maths, and.
- [04:26]
Sean
Yeah.
- [04:27]
Nick Cave
You know, and. And I kind of rooted for that aspect of him as a child, I guess.
- [04:33]
Sean
Yeah. And we should say, given the way you've described Pinocchio, this Pinocchio, Colotti's Pinocchio from the Adventures of Pinocchio, is different from the Walt Disney version. I think people, you know, people are gonna automatically jump to the Disney cartoon and these sorts of things. But this Pinocchio, and I like the way you've described him, he's a little bit mischievous. He has good intentions, but there's a sense in which he's sometimes genuinely almost mean. I mean, I give you this example. There's a scene in the book where his father, who we'll talk about in a moment, wants to educate him and to send him to school and so sells some of his own possessions to buy him a book, a spelling book. And Pinocchio sells the book.
- [05:16]
Nick Cave
Sells his coat.
- [05:17]
Sean
Yeah, sells his coat. And Pinocchio then sells the book to get some money to be admitted to a puppet show or something of this kind.
- [05:24]
Nick Cave
He goes through a moral dilemma and sells his ABC book that his father bought for him by selling the coat so he can enter the marionette theater. And once he. I mean, it's a very moral book. Once he makes these decisions, he steps literally into these hellish scenes.
- [05:46]
Sean
Yeah.
- [05:46]
Nick Cave
I mean, that is with the head of the circus, the fire eater, who is this terrible, monstrous individual. But he's not the Disney. He's not the Disney Pinocchio who's cute and sure, you know, but he's deep. He's, to me, more endearing than in the Disney character. I mean, he exhibits all the personality types that you don't want as an adult, but as a child, they're actually extremely. They're charming. You know, you love him because he's a child.
- [06:33]
Sean
I think the charm of this book, in a way, and I wonder what you make of this, is, you know, the Disney movie's called Pinocchio. The book that you gave me to read is called the Adventures of Pinocchio. That education, the education of Pinocchio comes by way of adventure. This is something I often tell my students that we've lost. There are great books like Homer's Odyssey or Cervantes, Don Quixote, where education comes through a grand adventure. Pinocchio is on a great adventure. And I wonder if we might reflect for a moment on the way that adventure tempers and educates his soul. In other words, he leaves his father, he goes out into the world. He meets all sorts of characters, talking animals, a fairy. And he becomes tempered and educated by way of both adventure and what you might call misadventure.
- [07:23]
Nick Cave
Collodi, the author, talks about the university of life. That's where we learn. That's where we learn how to be in the world, is through experience and through making mistakes and all of this sort of stuff, which is true. But at the same time, what Collodi wants Pinocchio to do, what the moral heart, in a way, of the book is that Pinocchio goes to school and learns at school. So these two things are going on, the two things that the various creatures that are always throughout the book that are always telling, including the beautiful blue fairy that Pinocchio should do is honor and obey his father and go to school, basically. But at the same time, where Pinocchio is learning his lessons is through these terrible events that happen in his life and the book. I mean, I love the Pinocchio, the Disney Pinocchio adaption of Pinocchio. It's extraordinary thing, and it is quite dark in its way, but not remotely like the Adventures of Pinocchio, the Collodi book. It's not a world where there's a series of adventures. It is a world that is trying to kill Pinocchio constantly throughout this book. They're trying to. It's a world that's trying to drown him, to skin him, to fry him, to boil him, right where he's eaten by a giant shark, he's stabbed by assassins, he's hung by his neck. It's a book of completely perilous adventure, one after the other. And within that, it's quite beautiful because within that, Pinocchio is incorrigible. He still will not learn his lesson. He will still not learn his lesson until the very end.
- [09:29]
Sean
Right. And through these adventures, he seems to receive some kind of education which points him in the direction of what's good.
- [09:37]
Nick Cave
Yeah, well, it's a little bit. It's a little bit. It's his disobedience that makes him a man in a way he's not. And that says something about virtuousness. That there is something that's sort of widening to the personality about transgression and something perhaps narrowing to the personality about virtuousness where you just obey, obey, obey. That's the sort of the heart of the whole thing. And he does. It's not one lesson for Pinocchio. It's a multitude of terrifying, you know, snakes with smoke coming out of their tails and, you know, it's. It's extra. I find it just a beautifully exciting. It's actually. It's actually Pinocchio's love of danger, I think, that ultimately makes a man of him.
- [10:46]
Sean
Let me ask you about that, because you said a moment ago, which I think is a very perspicacious observation, that Pinocchio, through disobedience, there's a kind of widening of the depths of his soul and of his personality. One way to read this book. So you get to the end. Everyone knows Pinocchio wants to become a real boy. One could read this book as though its moral message is very superficial and shallow. Do your schoolwork, be good and thank you and good night. You know, sort of a thing. I suspect you don't read it that way, that there's more depth to this book than that. That one's not meant to arrive at the end and think, I should take my vitamins and drink my Ovaltine, you know, these sorts of things. And so I wonder if we might talk a little bit more about precisely what moral message the book is meant to convey.
- [11:38]
Nick Cave
There's a sort of moral aspect to art in general, and there's a sort of distance that's traveled from the transgressive personality to the best end, the better end of their nature, that is, their creative. And that distance traveled is where the great excitement of art lives, in my view, that art itself should not be left to the wholly virtuous.
- [12:08]
Sean
That's right. That's right. One thing we could say about Pinocchio in that regard is he's not a boy who wishes to conform. I mean, his disobedience indicates that he has a spirit which is not one of conformity. What you say rings.
- [12:25]
Nick Cave
I'm not so sure that he doesn't want to conform. I think he's just led towards what is exciting, you know, it's not. I think he want. The beautiful thing about him, to me, is that he keeps going, right, I'm going to do it. I'm going to go back to school. And he's whistling back towards what he is told to be good. But there's just the pull of the world is always dragging him back towards what is dangerous, to what makes the heart beat. And, yeah, he's attracted to that. Yeah, he's attracted to that. So I don't think he's willfully rebellious, in my view. He's just attracted to. He's just attracted to what is exciting and colorful and dangerous.
- [13:14]
Sean
Yeah, that's a nuanced distinction. I mean, he meets, for example, the young man he meets when they are both turned into donkeys.
- [13:21]
Nick Cave
Lampwick. Yes.
- [13:22]
Sean
After disobedience, he seems to be not just attracted to danger, but he falls in with a pretty bad crowd in school. And so that's why I say he seems to be. He's like punk rock. I mean, he goes to the school and he's like, falling in with the kids who are, you know, somewhat transgressive. I mean, I agree in whole with what you say, though, about the connection between transgression and the creative spirit. I call it nonconformity. We can call it transgression. But one of the things I see in my own students is, especially teaching at an elite college, is that they all come having lives that have been shaped to get them into that college. You know, like, you have to go this score on the test. And since kindergarten, you have been. And I always tell them, you need some rough edges, like, you're not interesting. In fact, you're boring, because all you've ever done has been shaped to achieve this particular moment at this college and admission to this university. And I do find that young people, creative people, even business people who have lived lives as Pinocchio has of adventure, have some more substance to them, some depth of soul. And so I take the point that Collodi is not just a moral educator, but by way of Pinocchio. He seems to illustrate a way of filling out the heart and the personality by following your instincts, even when those instincts lead you to. To bad places.
- [14:43]
Nick Cave
There's a couple of things I'd like to say about that. One is that some of the most enriching experiences of my life have been in, in school.
- [14:51]
Sean
Yeah.
- [14:52]
Nick Cave
You know, and, and, and I've had, I, I, I only went, you know, I went to art school after, after I matriculated, or after, whatever you call it, second secondary school. But in that school, I had a literature professor who taught me about certain books, and that has never left me. That was such an incredibly widening experience to understand, to do a deep read on a book. And that really opened me up to literature in general. If I hadn't, I think if I hadn't have had that guy tell me to sit me down with Crime and Punishment and explain what that book was about, I don't think I would have had the same relationship to literature as I do and poetry, too. And that would have had a terrible effect on what I am as an artist to this day. So there is the university of life, but there is also school.
- [15:55]
Sean
That's right.
- [15:56]
Nick Cave
And I think that's what Collodi is trying to say. But the tragic, you know, the tragic life of Lamp Wick, it's deeply sad because Lamp Wick, you know, doesn't con him, but encourages Pinocchio to go to the Land of Toys where they get turned into donkeys. Luckily for Pinocchio, he has the Blue Fairy on his side, and I think the fish eat his ears and turn him back into a puppet when someone tries to drown him in order to use his skin to make a drum. I mean, it's incredibly dark, the whole thing. But Lampwick, he meets at the end of the book. I don't know if you remember this, but he goes, he decides to become. He actually starts to do good things. He starts to work, and he meets Lamp Wick, and Lamp Wick is an old, dying donkey that's been worked to death who dies in front of him, I think. And it's incredibly. Which is a moral tale about that Collardi seems to be saying about if you are simply transgressive, this can be your fate as well. Right. You know, I felt very sad when I read that about Lampwick.
- [17:21]
Announcer
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- [17:30]
Sean
And for good reason.
- [17:32]
Announcer
Ben doesn't tell you what to think. He helps you think for yourself, which is what we're all about here on Old School. And now you can take Ben's show anywhere, along with every Daily Wire podcast, their investigative journalism, and their entire entertainment library all in one place. The Daily Wire plus app. Inside the app, you can chat with Ben, connect with other listeners, and be part of a community that values thought over over noise. Plus, the Ben Shapiro show now premieres one hour early exclusively on the Daily Wire plus app. So don't wait. Download Daily Wire today on iOS, Android, Roku, Samsung and more, and start watching where the Facts Come first the word.
- [18:16]
Sean
Of the day is a word that I've been told by my producer I use in my conversation with Nick Cave. It's one of my favorites, I gotta tell you, is perspicacious. What perspicacious is, is if I say Nick is very perspicacious, what I have in mind is that he's a person who sees subtle details in things that others who see those same things don't see. So if a perspicacious person is reading a book, other people might read that same book and think, yeah, it was entertaining. A perspicacious person is going to notice all the subtle details, the metaphors, be able to make sense of things across many pages that others couldn't make sense of. If a perspicacious person is looking at a painting, some people might look at the painting and say, yeah, that's a beautiful image. A perspicacious person would notice the subtleties of that image and maybe the way certain details that the artist had inserted into the image relate to each other. What I'd like to do now is turn to the other great character in the book, the other main character at least, which is the father. And it seems to me the father has a very complex emotional register. He creates this boy out of wood to some degree. After all, he creates him out of a piece of wood that already talks, which is interesting. But he creates this boy and then he tries to provide for him. We've talked about the book that he buys for him by selling his coat. Pinocchio then goes off to adventure. His father seems to then long for him, search for him. They meet at the end of the book, inside of a Fish. And by the end of the book, rather than Geppetto taking care of Pinocchio, Pinocchio is taking care of Geppetto. And so I want to talk about this character and what you learned from and what we should take from Collode's depiction of Geppetto.
- [20:12]
Nick Cave
Geppetto is an interesting character too, because he's not like the Disney Geppetto. Yeah, a complicating factor is that he regrets. I don't know if you remember, but the first thing when he's making. He's got the talking log, which is very interesting in itself, that the sort of consciousness of Pinocchio, or humanity exists at sort of some atomic level. It's already within nature, and he sort of carves it out. And you can see him as a godlike figure, I suppose, creating a little human. But the first thing that happens when he makes Pinocchio's mouth is Pinocchio laughs at his creator. And then the second thing when he makes Pinocchio's foot is Pinocchio kicks him in the nose. Right. And already, I think the following line after that is that Geppetto regrets the making of Pinocchio. This has got a lovely sort of religious feel, the whole thing. Yes, indeed. Nevertheless, Pinocchio leaves and goes on his adventures, and you don't really know what's going on with Geppetto, but many years go by, and there is this subterranean grief, I think, underneath this story that is reflected in Pinocchio's longing for his father and these snippets of information that you get about what, you know, that Geppetto has been walking the world looking for the boy, that he's crossing an ocean. He can't find him in all of Europe, and he's crossing an ocean to go to the New World. It's an extraordinarily moving account without actually, you know, where Geppetto isn't actually featured in the story at all. This is all through the son's longing for his father. And eventually, yes, they wind up he finds him in the belly of the beast, where Geppetto has been for two years. The reunion of the boy with Geppetto is extremely beautiful. And the shark, it's not a whale, you know, he's not living inside the whale as well. There's so many stories with Jonah and all of that sort of stuff. He's living inside a shark. And this. This shark, to me, I guess, represents Satan or a hell inside this shark. It's just this kind of ravenous thing that's rushing through the sea, eating everything. And it takes. It takes Geppetto and then it takes Pinocchio. And I find that on a personal level, the idea of the father searching for his son and the son, the lost son, saving the father, as deeply personal to me. You know, I read this book a lot around the death of my son and the idea that the missing child ends up being able to save the grieving father, the Father, who's been sitting in the belly of the beast on his own.
- [24:16]
Sean
Is.
- [24:18]
Nick Cave
Became extraordinarily moving to me. It's an inversion of the way it should be. The absent child returns to basically parent the parent, if you like. It's deep to me, not just on my own, because of my own experience, but it always was a deeply moving passage of this sort of reversal of what it is to be a father and what it is to be the child. This breaking down of what it is to be a father and son turns Pinocchio essentially into a boy rather than this puppet, you know, that is just following his own narcissistic appetites into the. The sort of the savior character.
- [25:11]
Sean
One of the things that we do on Old School is that we ask our guests to read a passage out loud, one of their favorite passages, a passage that means something to them. I understand you've selected one.
- [25:20]
Nick Cave
I have, yeah.
- [25:21]
Sean
All right, let's hear it.
- [25:22]
Nick Cave
Okay, so Pinocchio is lost in the sea.
- [25:26]
Sean
Yeah.
- [25:26]
Nick Cave
He's trying to find his father. And on a rock appears a blue goat. A goat with blue hair. This signifies the Blue Fairy. It's the Blue Fairy in disguise. Imagine poor Pinocchio's terror at the sight of the monster. He tried to move out of its way, to change direction, to escape, but that immense gaping mouth kept getting closer at the speed of lightning. Hurry, Pinocchio, for pity's sake. Bleated the pretty little goat as loudly as she could. Pinocchio was swimming desperately with his arms, his chest, his legs and his feet. Faster, Pinocchio. The monster is getting closer. It's there. It's almost there. Hurry, for pity's sake, or you'll be finished. And Pinocchio kept swimming as fast as ever, on and on, like a bullet from a rifle. He had almost reached the rock, and the little goat was leaning right out over the water, reaching out to him with her front legs to help him out of the sea. But it was too late. The monster had caught up with him. Drawing in its breath, he swallowed the poor puppet with so much violence and greed that Pinocchio, falling down into the belly of the shark, took such an unseemly blow that it left him dazed for a quarter of an hour. When he recovered his wits, he couldn't even figure out what world he was in. All around him was darkness everywhere, but it was such a deep, black darkness that it felt to him as if he had stuck his head into a full bottle of ink. Pinocchio stumbled, groping in the dark, and started to walk, feeling his way along the shark's insides, taking one step after another as he made his way toward the tiny, faint light he could see glimmering far, far away. The farther he went on, the clearer and more distinct the faint light became, until after walking and walking, in the end, he arrived and got there. He found a small table. On it was a little candle stuck in a green glass bottle. And sitting at the table was a little old man who was completely white, as if he were made of snow or whipped cream. At the sight of this, poor Pinocchio was filled with a joy so great and unexpected that he was within a hair's breadth of going delirious. He wanted to laugh. He wanted to weep. He let out a cry of joy, and opening his arms wide, he threw them around the little old man's neck and started to shout. Oh, my dear Daddy, I found you at last. I will never leave you again. Never, ever, ever.
- [28:21]
Sean
So tell me why you've selected those words for us? How do you understand what's happening there? Especially the last bit you read, but the whole.
- [28:29]
Nick Cave
Well, I think that that's a condensed version, but I love the sort of animated hell that is within the sea that Pinocchio has to travel into the belly of the beast to save the father. This is the sort of pivotal moment of the whole book, when Pinocchio finds his father and must take responsibility for his father, rather than the other way around. After that, he goes on to coax his father out of the belly of the beast. Is, for me, an extremely moving part of the book.
- [29:14]
Sean
Is it that last part where you described Pinocchio's joy? I mean, you had said earlier we had talked about the saving power of the child for the father. Is it seeing that joy? I mean, what Geppetto feels when he sees that joy in that boy's face, that saves him. Or.
- [29:33]
Nick Cave
I think.
- [29:35]
Sean
Or that saves you. I mean, imagining the joy of the spirit of the child.
- [29:40]
Nick Cave
Yeah, it's very difficult to talk about. In a way, I think that Geppetto is in a dark place because of the absence of the child, and that the child finds a way back to the father and becomes the father's protector. And for me, that I understand that very, very well, in the sense that an absence can have its own saving presence. And I've found that to be true.
- [30:21]
Sean
So it's not so much about seeing the feeling of joy in the child, the joy that Pinocchio feels upon seeing his father, because previously his father was there and doing great things. For him with the spelling book. And he didn't acknowledge the goodness of his father. But now he seems to say he had no.
- [30:42]
Nick Cave
At the beginning, he had no understanding of good and evil. He's just been created. He had to go into the world to discover what is good and what is evil, essentially. And he learns that and changes accordingly. It's very moving. I find that. I don't know about you. I find that all the time when I'm reading or when I'm watching a movie or something like that, I find I'm welling up or in tears, but I don't really even understand why there's something that's going on in that scene. I have always found scenes of men in distress unable to move one way or another, to be deeply, you know, deeply moving. Personally, my wife's always rolling her eyes at me as I sort of tear up. Some guy having a hard time.
- [31:51]
Sean
Why do you think that is? I mean, is it you say men in particular. Is it that men, ordinarily, at least in their self aggrandizement of themselves, let's say, ought to be people who can execute in any situation? That's what a man is.
- [32:09]
Nick Cave
That's what I'm saying. A man is always reaching and fumbling towards and so often doesn't reach that place.
- [32:16]
Sean
So the paralysis for you. And I feel the same thing that you do when thinking about that. The paralysis is devastating emotionally.
- [32:25]
Nick Cave
Well, in Pinocchio, it's very beautiful. Cause the father is saying. Pinocchio is saying, we must get out of the belly of the beast. And the father's saying, I've been here for years. You know, it's unbelievably haunting. I've been here for years. There's no.
- [32:41]
Sean
There's no getting out.
- [32:41]
Nick Cave
There's no getting out. And the boy says, no, follow me. I can't even swim. You know how. What are we gonna boys saying? Hold me. Hold around. You're just a puppet, you know. And he said, no, I can swim. You mightn't think I can swim, but I can swim. It's incredibly, you know, it's incredibly moving. And actually, Pinocchio isn't a very good swimmer. He's just. He's just saving his father by being a kind of.
- [33:08]
Sean
Yeah. Flotation device or something.
- [33:10]
Nick Cave
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's. It's. You know, these things are simple but extremely complex.
- [33:16]
Sean
Yeah.
- [33:18]
Nick Cave
And I guess that's the nature of most or many great children's books.
- [33:23]
Sean
It's the liberation of the broken man. By the innocent, in a way, and loving child that I think moves you.
- [33:35]
Nick Cave
But what I really love about the book is this spirit, this sense of grief that sort of. This subterranean grief that sort of pulls through the book of the Father. And I find it incredibly endearing when the little boy is in trouble and he's just calling for his father. He's always going, oh, I'm sorry, you know, I shouldn't have, you know, and he's full of regret and full of remorse, but is incorrigible and returns back to the sort of danger of the world. Yeah. And these aspects are this just to me, it's not just because I've experienced something that it relates to always. It always had that feeling to me.
- [34:28]
Sean
Yeah. And I think even for someone who hasn't experienced it, the conflict in Pinocchio's soul is universal, meaning one doesn't have to have lost a child. One doesn't have to be in a situation of the search for the father and the son like we're talking about. Pinocchio is attracted to what's good.
- [34:43]
Nick Cave
But can I just say. Sorry, but that's manifest in the Blue Fairy, you know, this extraordinary character. I don't know if you remember, but he's running from the assassins, the fox and the cat who are hiding in. Who are covered in sacks, and they're chasing him. They're assassins. And he runs to a house and he knocks on the door and no one answers. And then this ghost child with blue hair comes to the window and says, everyone is dead in this house. Yeah, it's incredibly moving. And he says, well, what about you? And I am dead, too. This is the mother. She actually asks him to call her. She keeps returning to him throughout the story, this ghost of a mother, and asks him that she be his mother. And this idea of motherhood as this constant, returning, nurturing force is also extremely beautiful. She's always there, always there to save him, is extremely affecting as well.
- [36:01]
Sean
A book can be, for a person, a source of nourishment at just the moment at which they're hungry. And so I was going to ask you the question, and you've, in a way, already answered it, although maybe I'll ask you to articulate it more sharply. The person who is suffering from what? From what disease? This is the question. From what disease would find their medicine or their nutrition if they're hungry in Pinocchio? Does that make sense? Some people, for example, turn to religious texts as nourishment in times of hardship. Some people might search for self help. Their careers are on the rocks. They don't have money. They just got a divorce. What is the thing that a person is suffering from? The ailment that Pinocchio, when picked up, provides some salve for?
- [36:48]
Nick Cave
Well, first of all, in my view, it is a religious text, you know, not just for its. The little. The religious metaphors, which we might be able to sort of tease out of it. It is religious in the sense that it has a deep spiritual heart. And I think in that respect, it is nurturing for grieving people, for sure. It's encouraging for people who don't know whether they're on the right path, that their lives seem to be constantly, you know, that the world seems to be constantly trying to kill them, you know, metaphorically, you know, so it's a book for people in distress. I would say that's reflected both in Pinocchio and Geppetto. And it's also extremely funny. You know, it's not a heavy book. It's. Even though terrible things are going on, you don't even realize how terrible these things actually are.
- [38:03]
Sean
It's.
- [38:03]
Nick Cave
It's a fright. It must be a frightening book for little children. Yeah. You know, the hanging of Pinocchio and him. His little body knocking around in the. In the wind. It's. It's. It's. You know, and that's the Fox and the Cat. The assassins have hung him because they tried to stab him in the kidneys.
- [38:23]
Sean
Yeah.
- [38:23]
Nick Cave
But the knife is shattered. I mean, it's dark and violent. Very violent book. But there is a lightness to the touch of the writing that doesn't. It doesn't become bogged down in any way. It just rolls along.
- [38:38]
Sean
Collodi, as a writer I was captivated by. Of course, we should acknowledge we're reading this in translation. So inevitably, there's something that we're missing. And we read the Penguin translation, which tries to be literal and has notes and these sorts of things. And I recommend people pick that up. You know, like a lot of children's books, there's a simplicity of language. There's a lot of monosyllabic words, at least in the English. You know, single syllables, simple phrases, simple sentences. But what he does with these simple words and simple phrases is paint the wildest tapestry you've ever seen in your life with fairies and foxes and snakes and whales and these sorts of things. And so it's a beautiful testament. And I wonder, you know, how in a way, this relates to music. To take simple ingredients. You hear musicians say, all the time? Well, there's a finite number of notes and a finite number of chords and an infinite variety of ways to put them together to make an infinite number of songs. He does a similar thing. He takes a simple palette and makes a very complex book that has a complex plot, an emotional resonance, but also just the complexity of the imagery. And so I wonder if, you know, are you struck by Collode in any way in his writing and literary talent?
- [39:49]
Nick Cave
I don't like kind of magic realist writing very much. I don't get it a lot of the time. But this is a deeply human story. It has these magical elements to it, but they're always part of a very, very human story. So I love that about it. There's a kind of realness and a toughness to the writing that I really like. It's not a fairy story. Even though there are fairies in it.
- [40:19]
Sean
Yeah. I mean, you know, we talked about this a little bit earlier. There's a darkness that settles over the whole book. And yet its imagery, it's like going to the circus. I mean, you know, it's this lively circus. And it's just sort of amazing to me that those two seemingly polar opposites, this darkness which settles over the whole book with the poverty, the violence, the hunger, the disobedience is combined with this menagerie of sort of bright and lively characters and turning into a donkey and, you know, a blue haired fairy and going to the world of toys and these sorts of things. And you just don't see that as much in children's literature anymore. It's a masterful combination. Yeah.
- [40:59]
Nick Cave
I mean, the theater and the circus are hellish places and they're not fun places at all. He always thinks they're going to be fun to get in, you know, and in some of these places they love him. They love him at the theater of marionettes for a while, but they are forms of hell. The theater marionettes has at its center, the director of the. The theater is called the Fire Eater. And he's a terrible individual, although a deeply, horribly, weirdly sentimental kind of character too, that actually, that releases. He wants to roast him and eat Pinocchio? No, he wants to roast his leg of lamb, but he needs wood, so he wants to use Pinocchio to burn him. Like I've said before, everyone is trying to annihilate this puppet, but eventually he lets him go. But the theater and these places that, where Pinocchio always wants to go are small hells in themselves that Pinocchio has to go into and confront himself and confront the sort of various demons that live inside there and somehow escape from these things.
- [42:27]
Sean
Yeah. Even for people in distress, oftentimes light alone is not the medicine. You know, we have this kind of view today. It seems to me that one should always be happy, you know, and if you're not happy, there's something wrong with you. What you've just shown is that oftentimes when you're grieving, you're in deep distress. There's a way in which that which is dark can lead you to the light. You shouldn't just simply avoid these things. Dostoevsky, he's an author of this kind of his books deal, especially if people have read the Brothers Karamazov, deal with terrifying thoughts, the godlessness of the world, the violence of man. Why are babies run through with bayonets? I mean, you know, it just is horrible. And yet somehow there's this liberation which comes precisely through a confrontation with the darkness rather than avoiding it. And I think that's something we've lost sight of. I want to ask you, since you're such a. A creative spirit, you've touched on this when we discussed a moment ago, the transgressive character of creative people. Often there's not a simplicity to them, a moral simplicity. And I know in your own life, you've gone through a great deal of things with respect to the death of your children, drug addiction, these sorts of things. I'm curious how you see this book, or what you see this book saying about creativity. Geppetto creates this boy. He seems to regret that creation.
- [43:56]
Nick Cave
Then he seems to, I would say, momentarily.
- [43:58]
Sean
Momentarily, yeah, absolutely right. And then he searches out and longs for that creation. And in reading the book, I was, of course, thinking about Geppetto's creativity, but also collodes. I mean, where does this stuff come from? There's animals everywhere. As you put Pinocchio's hanging, he turns into a donkey. I mean, you cannot predict what's gonna happen next. It's very unformul literature. Where does that come from? And what is this book saying about creativity? You have created a lot in your life. Where does it come from?
- [44:30]
Nick Cave
Okay, well, there's a couple of things there. First of all, the thing that I like about Pinocchio, it's morally inconsistent as well. You know, these things. It's not pat. It's a bit of a mess. Do you know what I mean? It's like life. It's a bit of a mess. There are things that return and characters that return. And there's some cleverness there, but it's a big, long, rambling mess in a way. And that is beautiful in itself. And you don't know what's coming around the corner. And you never know with this book. I mean, what happens in this book is beyond belief. Where does this stuff come from? I mean, I think people. Artists have very different ways that they approach things. For me, it is personally, it is about practical application that you sit each day in preparation for the idea and that the rest is pretty much left up to the gods, shall we say. You hone your skills in that you can do the best job when the idea arrives. But that initial sort of little epiphany you might have that by writing it out turns into a larger idea is the great mystery, I think, and the great beauty of being a creative spirit. The thing I've noticed. I don't know if this has really got anything to do with what you're talking about, but the thing I've noticed is that the epiphany sits adjacent to boredom, that is, that nothing is happening. Nothing is happening. And then bing, something, something. And there is this. People say, look, I can't write. I can't. I sit there. I can't write. Well, this is a necessary part of creation itself. You know, I think to be creative, you simply need to be alert to what's going on. But where the ideas come from, I wish I knew, and I'd visit them, right?
- [46:54]
Sean
You'd be there all the time. Do you feel the relationship to your creations in the same way that Geppetto feels the relationship to his creation? In other words, he's a father to it. And I have in mind this is a great theme in literature. I was thinking of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein when I was reading this, that Victor Frankenstein, the scientist, creates this monster. And then there's this whole novel about his very complex relationship to this monster who sees Victor as a father. We've talked about God and Adam and this guy, and so there's this sort of relationship to the creation as the father of it. But it's also like Pinocchio, its own independent thing, and you can't control it. And so I'm just curious, as somebody who's put a lot of creations out into the world, songs and these sorts of things that take on a life of their own that other people hear and attribute meaning to, that's not the meaning that you had when you wrote it. That happens in books, too. Do you feel a relationship to your creations? That's Complicated and complex, the way Geppetto's is.
- [47:54]
Nick Cave
I mean, of the good stuff, of the good songs that I write, there is an ongoing relationship with them, for sure. If they're good and they haven't just sort of died, you know.
- [48:08]
Sean
Yeah.
- [48:08]
Nick Cave
You know, died a few days after birth, let's say there is a conversation that continues. And so with each time you sing them, you know, people often ask, how can you sing that same song again and again and again? Or why do you sing the same songs? Why have you chosen these particular songs from all the songs that you've written and you come back to again and again? That is because they have the capacity to sort of present themselves in different ways to you each time. And there is an ongoing revealing of meaning, of the complexity of the song that goes on throughout the life of that song. Sometimes they stop revealing anything, and I sort of put them away. When I look at some lyrics, something, if they're good, if I grab one line and see another line on another page that I've written down and pull them together and this thing starts to happen, this sort of conversation between the two lines that's really kind of interesting. And then you pull another line in or write another line and this thing starts to. It's much more a kind of sort of shimmering soul feeling rather than that you actually understand what these things actually mean. You pray to God it actually means something. But the meaning is a secondary. Is the next step from original creation is meaning. And I find that the songs, if they're good, reveal that meaning over many years. They have the capacity to do that. And I think that that's what Pinocchio has done for me. It continues to mean something else. And it's funny because in preparation for this interview, I read it again and it meant something else again. It was just a very, very beautiful, funny, a deeply entertaining story. The sort of darkness, you know, that I felt when I was reading it, say, 10 years ago, had sort of lifted. And that's because I feel I'm a different person, you know, now than I was 10 years ago. And it's just a very beautiful story about a puppet who wants to become a boy. You know, why does he want to become a boy? And I guess that no one wants to have their strings pulled. You know, we want to be able to be, you know, have our own lives and our own agency and not to be the puppet of, you know, of our more base desires. And that's the other beautiful thing I think about what's so endearing about this puppet boy is that he's unformed. He's an unformed thing. He hasn't truly become a human being in the way that young people are, in a way that they are unformed and requiring adventure before they become wholly real human beings or complete human beings, as complete as we can be.
- [51:48]
Sean
That's a beautiful way to encapsulate this book. I could go on with you forever. I know you have to run to your studio. Can I ask you a couple of quick lightning round questions? Is there a book that's changed your mind about something in the past few years where you read it and thought, you know, I didn't see that fully and now I do, that changed my mind.
- [52:10]
Nick Cave
The Bible?
- [52:11]
Sean
Yeah. That's a good one. That's a good one as any. That's a good one as any. Is there a book that you've picked up that you just simply couldn't finish?
- [52:18]
Nick Cave
Look, hundreds of them, in fact. Sadly, it gets worse and worse the older I get.
- [52:24]
Sean
Who's the most underrated rock band of all time? Jesus.
- [52:27]
Nick Cave
These questions. I don't know. The Bad Seeds?
- [52:34]
Sean
That's a great answer. That's a great answer. Is there anything that Australians know or do better than Brits?
- [52:42]
Nick Cave
The thing that we had as Australians was that we were. We saw it as our moral duty in some way to sort of trouble the waters creatively. We have a long, wonderful line of people that came out of Australia that were just cultural agitators and we may have lost that, but that was something that I was always very much, very proud of Australia for creating these sorts of people.
- [53:14]
Sean
And lastly, you have this red hand files that you have started, which people should look up if they haven't seen it. But you answer these questions and you do so in a very profound and intimate way. I'm curious, having asked you all these questions, if there's a question that you've been asked there that's really shaken you or that you found odd or revealing or enlightening. I mean, just a question that you can kind of remember as one that was a kind of moment for you where you thought, you know, this has really required me to think.
- [53:46]
Nick Cave
Well, one of the things I find out, one of the things that, you know, a lot of the questions are on matters of loss and grief. There's just this river of grief that runs through the Red Hand files because people are writing in about people they've lost, because I started up a dialogue about that. They're not only about that, but that's one of the sort of threads. And the thing that really, that happens time and time again is someone is talking about someone they've lost and how sad they are and how, you know, they're in the belly of the beast, and then you realize that they're actually talking about someone that died 10 years ago or their husband that died 20 years ago or something like that. The most beautiful aspect of the Red Hand Files for me is it's allowed people to the space to be able to talk about people they love and have lost where the rest of the world really. It's. It's time to move on. Yeah, it's time to move on. It is time to move on. I agree with that. But there is a sort of residual feeling that it's very difficult to find anyone to talk to about that. And so people write in these extraordinary letters remembering the people that they've lost. And I find those questions or those letters the most profound.
- [55:20]
Sean
Well, Nick Cave, I want to thank you for calling my attention to and our listeners attention to the profundity of Pinocchio. Not a book that I think is on everybody's radar, but which, when you read, shakes you and moves you no matter what age you read it at. So thank you for giving me that gift.
- [55:35]
Nick Cave
Thank you, Sean. Thank you very much.