Nick Cave Takes On NYC

Yesterday (Sept. 14), the always brilliant Nick Cave descended upon New York City's Union Square to take part in Barnes & Noble's Upstairs at the Square event. Cave just issued his long-awaited book, The Death of Bunny Munro, and this was his only U.S. stop in support of the novel.

Dressed in a gray suit with a boy-blue dress shirt, the lanky Bad Seeds frontman, sans mustache, seemed thrilled to be there. The fourth floor setting was absolutely packed. I got there at 4:30 (and the reading was scheduled for 7pm) and people were already pouring in, aiming to get a seat up close. Luckily, I landed in the sixth row.

The Q&A session, lead by author and journalist Katherine Lanpher -- aka the co-host of the Air America Radio program, "The Al Franken Show," in 2004 and 2005 -- was quite enjoyable. Nick was incredibly funny and charming. He'd tell me later at the book signing that it was "quite nerveracking" to be up there, on stage, doing such a thing.

During the near hour-long discussion, he and Lanpher chatted about the new book (Nick said that writing this book was "a joy to write" and "easy" versus the three years it took to complete his first novel, And the Ass Saw the Angel), how fatherhood has affected him, and how Warren Ellis first came into his life, and more. There was a lot of laughing from both Nick and the crowd. He also read a bit from the new book.

Something to Consider ... Something to Remember

"Write it on your heart
that every day is the best day in the year.
He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day
who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety.
Finish every day and be done with it.
You have done what you could.
Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt crept in.
Forget them as soon as you can, tomorrow is a new day;
begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit
to be cumbered with your old nonsense.
This new day is too dear,
with its hopes and invitations,
to waste a moment on the yesterdays."

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Write It On Your Heart

Uh Huh

"Happiness is a matter of one's most ordinary and everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self."

-- Iris Murdoch

[Image by Bethany Steinsieck]

Words to Live By

"If you expect nothing from anybody, you’re never disappointed."
-- Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

R-E-S-P-E-C-T?

"The dismal fact is that self-respect has nothing to do with the approval of others -- who are, after all, deceived easily enough; has nothing to do with reputation, which, as Rhett Butler told Scarlett O'Hara, is something people with courage can do without."

-- Joan Didion, from her chapter On Self-Respect, Slouching Towards Bethlehem

[Image courtesy of Mostly Americana]