On the Red Hand Files platform, Nick Cave has been asked to ask himself a question to the community. Here is the question, and my answer below.

« I have a full life. A privileged life. An unendangered life. But sometimes the simple joys escape me. Joy is not always a feeling that is freely bestowed upon us, often it is something we must actively seek. In a way, joy is a decision, an action, even a practised method of being. It is an earned thing brought into focus by what we have lost – at least, it can seem that way. My question is, where or how do you find your joy?« 

NICK, BRIGHTON/LONDON, UK

Dear Nick,

First, sorry to be arrogant enough to believe I can answer the huge question you asked. I bet I’m just trying to practice the exercise. But it is true I certainly need to answer the question, so I can know better if I am on the right way, at least on a good path to build stronger the possibilities to feel joy (I think I can already feel some good vibes just by writing what I just did, so I guess it’s working).

If I may think it’s a particularly accurate time to ask myself where I find my joy, maybe more how I find my joy, it’s probably because I am currently in a strongly emotional state of mind that is no related, though, to anything I have ever experienced. I was about to add it’s also not related to anyone but that would partly wrong : I have been through some sentimental issues lately and it’s of course adding to the background and increasing the impression of total disorder I will try and describe now, shortly enough not to bore anyone, including me, hopefully.

I am living in a country that has nothing to do with any place I have been before. I arrived here only four days ago and I feel like my brain and my heart have been through a rollercoaster of mixed emotions, of ups and downs, that leave me exhausted like out of a shipwreck some pitiful Ulysses on the shore of the Phaeacians.

Whether this place is nice or not is not the point: I have lost all my landmarks. What does is have to do with joy if I feel in a way so distressed? Maybe the fact I have to resist to the deliquesce of my mind. I have to resist to fear and angst of total destruction. Not all the time of course, like I said it’s a roller coaster of ups and downs and after the moments of anxiety I feel suddenly relieved and kind of hysterical. That may be the point: in such a situation where I can find just a few shelters in some familiar activities (cooking Carbonara everyday, which I have not since I was a student), I have to separate joy from all its counterfeits this alarm status I am living in most of the time provide to feed my angst. It’s a metaphysical situation because, for some professional reasons, I should keep staying here three years. Sometimes I am stacking days one upon the others just like a kid with blocks and suffocate before the giant mountain that threats to devour me. In this situation, you feel like everybody has gone. The ones you still write to emerge from now and then. The others are propelled in an other dimension you can compare to the Hades. But it is you who is wandering the Kingdom of the Dead, even if you’re mainly sitting.

It is not comparable at all to any really despaired situation many people are living in, in countries at war for example, and I am still this privileged European man who has the opportunity to debate about joy with one of his idols. I am pretty convinced that in real tragic situations people relate to some poetry, whatever kind of poetry they have access to, in their mind or in their heart. It’s not what I am doing, because my situation, once again, is far from being hopeless. Since, I’m just trying to learn something, to resist to the deluded idea that this is the end of the world, the end of my world. And this exercise is a promise of joy. And maybe joy is always a promise. Learn to wait, to give yourself some time before you accept an emotion for reliable. Let the maelstrom of impressions at rest so you know which one, good or bad, is true. It is not joy, but it’s not either a counterfeit of joy, an antagonism of anxiety, it’s a process, and the progress you make is an indication of joy. It is probably the same way with mistaken love affairs.

And of course, you have to discipline the ego : when I am writing to you, I hope you will choose and print my answer, but I should not. Ok, gambling is also how I get my joy.

Thank you, Nick and Jean-Claude (the latter is a compatriot) for giving me the opportunity to read my mind and my heart by helping shape to the interesting chaos I am experiencing, with the comforting distance of my clumsy English. Joy to you all!

Love, Sébastien

illustration : AT THE WILD GOD Q&A EVENT IN LONDON, AUGUST 2024

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