the sick bag song
This isn’t a book which will go down in the history of literature. It’s one of those whim-object-books which have been invading our bookshelves recently. Just like in so many other areas, we have make books into objects and containers have become more important than contents. Novels, essays and classics have less and less space amongst best-sellers. Books to keep you entertained are fashionable. Books connected with original ideas and aesthetics.
And, of course, there are all sorts of things amongst them. As we have a fetish about object-books, we don’t see anything wrong with this phenomenon, but we’d like to underline that we reckon that if all balance is lost then bookshops will become junk shops before too long. There’s unquestionably a feeling that you’ve walked into a Chinese bazaar when you go into multinational book and record shop FNAC. They use less and less space for books and music. Corte Ingles also uses what used to be areas for culture for selling you clothes and paraphernalia for running and other sports and leisure activities which we’re now obliged to do. Sure, I know that’s been quite a long introduction, but I had to get it out of my system. As I’ve said above, nowadays you can only find books which aren’t mentioned in newspaper supplements in small, specialised bookshops and one such is the special diary written by musician Nick Cave when on tour in the US and Canada: a diary written on the bags they give you on planes to be sick in when you get dizzy. The musician who dyes his hair when he calls his wife from his hotel each night and she doesn’t answer writes her a long song in this book.
It’s a gem for Nick Cave’s fans. The Australian musician’s usual obsessions and dark interior landscapes, dark irony and images from dreams come together in the reflections and sounds written on the sick bags. The one in which Bryan Ferry appears in swimming trunks, the list of songs to hide, the ones in which the plastic bags become angels… There are magical moments in Cave’s lines. And with this sick bags on my hands and listening to the wonderful lyrics the australian singer has written and sung for the last decades, I remembered the tragedy Cave family is living right now and I even if I don´t, I would like to believe that there is something after this life / I don’t believe in an interventionist God / But I know, darling, that you do / But if I did I would kneel down and ask Him/ Not to intervene when it came to you / Not to touch a hair on your head / To leave you as you are / And if He felt He had to direct you / Then direct you into my arms / Into my arms, O Lord / Into my arms, O Lord...
And, of course, there are all sorts of things amongst them. As we have a fetish about object-books, we don’t see anything wrong with this phenomenon, but we’d like to underline that we reckon that if all balance is lost then bookshops will become junk shops before too long. There’s unquestionably a feeling that you’ve walked into a Chinese bazaar when you go into multinational book and record shop FNAC. They use less and less space for books and music. Corte Ingles also uses what used to be areas for culture for selling you clothes and paraphernalia for running and other sports and leisure activities which we’re now obliged to do. Sure, I know that’s been quite a long introduction, but I had to get it out of my system. As I’ve said above, nowadays you can only find books which aren’t mentioned in newspaper supplements in small, specialised bookshops and one such is the special diary written by musician Nick Cave when on tour in the US and Canada: a diary written on the bags they give you on planes to be sick in when you get dizzy. The musician who dyes his hair when he calls his wife from his hotel each night and she doesn’t answer writes her a long song in this book.
It’s a gem for Nick Cave’s fans. The Australian musician’s usual obsessions and dark interior landscapes, dark irony and images from dreams come together in the reflections and sounds written on the sick bags. The one in which Bryan Ferry appears in swimming trunks, the list of songs to hide, the ones in which the plastic bags become angels… There are magical moments in Cave’s lines. And with this sick bags on my hands and listening to the wonderful lyrics the australian singer has written and sung for the last decades, I remembered the tragedy Cave family is living right now and I even if I don´t, I would like to believe that there is something after this life / I don’t believe in an interventionist God / But I know, darling, that you do / But if I did I would kneel down and ask Him/ Not to intervene when it came to you / Not to touch a hair on your head / To leave you as you are / And if He felt He had to direct you / Then direct you into my arms / Into my arms, O Lord / Into my arms, O Lord...
