It was very distressing for me at the time. Last year, I lost my beloved Ghosteen notebook with all the scribblings and typed lyrics in it. I then glue it into my bespoke notebook, number it, date-stamp it, and sticker it.

At this stage, I take one of the yellowing back pages I have cut from old second-hand books, and, on my Olympia typewriter, type out the lyrics. Here, I begin the long process of working on the words, adding verses, taking them away, and refining the language, until the song arrives at its destination. At some point, the songs begin to reveal themselves, to take some kind of form, which is when I type the new lyrics into my laptop.

“My process of lyric writing is as follows: For months, I write down ideas in a notebook with a Bic medium ballpoint pen in black. Rather, they are evidence of a kind of ritualistic and habitual thinking, not dissimilar to the act of writing itself, actually. They are a compulsive habit I have had since my school days and I have thousands of them floating around. “Queen Victoria doodled horses, Mark Twain doodled whales, Claude Monet doodled paintbrushes, and I doodle naked women. These figures, religious in nature, are based on the Staffordshire ‘flatbacks’ that were popular in the Victorian era, and were often painted by children in the ‘dark satanic mills.'” “During the pandemic, I have spent time hidden away in the studio of the sculptor Corin Johnson, working on a series of ceramic figures. I have been hit with a kind of mania for making things-the effects of the pandemic, no doubt-and I am forever writing, drawing, scribbling, designing, sculpting, whatever. These days, my desk has become a place of feverish industry. I am not alone in understanding the sacred dimension of a desk-its generosity. “I inherited my father’s desk when I was a teenager, and have used one desk or another every day since. “Or I take a Polaroid or make something out of clay.” The detritus of his creative output is now on display (and available for purchase) at his recently launched online shop, Cave Things. “When the pressure of songwriting gets too much, I draw a cute animal or a religious icon or a mythological creature or something,” he says. But as the lead singer for Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, he has remained, first and foremost, a musician. Over a career spanning more than 40 years, Australia’s high priest of punk has ventured into acting, screenwriting, composing, and even blogging. This is the cosmic dust drifting across Nick Cave’s creative universe.

Nick cave stranger than kindness song