Nick Cave issues response after Red Hand Files criticised for becoming ‘grief support therapy website’

Nick Cave has issued a statement in response to a fan’s question about the change in tone to The Red Hand Files.

Cave was asked in the last questions and answers post why the site had become a place for people to share their grief over the deaths of family members. The Bad Seeds’ frontman was accused of repetition, not with his responses, but with the line of questioning he had been responding to in recent issues. The comment about Cave’s recent Red Hand Files instalments reads: “It seems most of the questions are like ‘my family member died, I’m sad!’ And the answers are like, ‘Life is beautiful and mysterious, sadness brings us together and so on and so on…’

“I understand this is important to people who have lost their loved ones, but for a reader, it gets repetitive. When did Red Hand Files become some sort of grief support therapy website?”

Cave took the time to respond to the fan’s probe of what the Red Hand Files had, in their mind, become. Cave wrote: “I briefly answered your question last week, Andrei, in issue #362, but I wanted to come back to it. Your comments kept going round in my mind, and when a tough question makes me feel uncomfortable, it is usually because there is some truth in it.

“You are not the first to criticise The Red Hand Files for its content, however, I think it is important to say that when I answer questions about grief, these are only a fraction of the hundreds of letters that arrive daily from people experiencing various forms of loss. Reading these letters over the years has profoundly changed how I understand the world, so I tend to gravitate towards them. I see them not merely as sad letters, but as letters of immense spiritual value, for hidden behind their distress is an invaluable insight into what it means to be fully alive.

“Through the breaking open of their own hearts, these people, these grievers, point the way toward tending a world many of us feel is in urgent need of reparation. To me, these apprentices of loss are the holy ones who, for an excruciating time, live in acute and shocking proximity to the essence of things. In their raw, unguarded anguish, they stand at the point of revelation, deep in grief, blindly gesturing towards some unbidden thing, unaware that the unbidden thing is, in fact, grief’s own outrageous beauty awaiting them.

“This view has developed not only from my own experience, but also from reading these letters – the writers have shown me the way forward, and I love them for that. I am indebted to these people, and it would be remiss not to acknowledge their considerable efforts in writing and in laying themselves bare.

“In fact, I feel a deep desire to advocate for them, and this is, to some extent, what this website is for. Grief is so often made to hide in the shadows, to be internalised as an unwelcome, disorderly, improper thing. Perhaps, deep down, posting these letters is a form of protest too – against flat-Earthers, against half-lived lives, against respectability, good taste, and decorum, I don’t know.

“But, Andrei, I’ve looked back at the files and you are right, there’s been considerable grief lately – I’m not entirely sure what to do about it though. People die, and the letters come, and people are sad. “Life is beautiful”, I respond, because it is true and good to say so. If you happen to unsubscribe from The Red Hand Files because you feel it is not the place for you, I suggest you still keep them in mind, in case you need them one day. In the meantime, I hear you, and I will try to be a bit more diverse.”