Letter to Cynthia Nick Cave & Warren Ellis

It seems to me, that if we love, we grieve. That’s the deal. That’s the pact. Grief and love are forever intertwined. Grief is the terrible reminder of the depths of our love and, like love, grief is non-negotiable. There is a vastness to grief that overwhelms our miniscule selves. We are tiny trembling clustеrs of atoms subsumed within grief's awesomе presence. It occupies the core of our being and extends through our fingers to the limits of the universe. Within that whirling Gaia all manner of madnesses exist ghosts and spirits and dream visitations and everything else that we, in our anguish, will into existence. These are precious gifts that are as valid and as real as we need them to be. They are those spirit guides that lead us out of the darkness. I feel the presence of my son all around, but he may not be there. I hear him talk to me and parent me, guide me, though he may not be there. He visits my wife in her sleep regularly, speaks to her, comforts her but he may not be there. Dread grief trails bright phantoms in its wake. These spirits are ideas, essentially. They are our stunned imaginations reawaking after the calamity. Like ideas these spirits speak possibility. Follow your ideas because on the other side of the ideas is change and growth and redemption. Create your spirits, call to them, will them alive, speak to them. It is their impossible and ghostly hands that draw us back to the world from which we were jettisoned, better now and unimaginably changed