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Musician Nick Cave reveals the two sentiments 'forever worth declaring'

Nick Cave shares profound thoughts through letters to fans.

Nick Cave sings in concert in 1986

Since the late 70s, Nick Cave has had a lengthy career as a respected musician and writer. He explores themes of death, religion, anger, mercy, and suspicion of the world and all its inhabitants. In one of his most famous songs, "The Mercy Seat," he wrote:

"And the mercy seat is waiting
And I think my head is burning
And in a way I’m yearning
To be done with all this measuring of truth.
And an eye for an eye
And a tooth for a tooth
And anyway I told the truth
And I’m not afraid to die."

This is a man, who alongside his bandmates, has not been afraid to go into the darkest corners of thought and question everything. Even his gentler ballad-type songs have tinges of goth, drama, and intensity.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

In 2018 (and to this day), he began operating a newsletter called The Red Hand Files, wherein fans can send in questions about whatever they'd please: music, philosophy, love, etc.

He writes on the site how and why it all started: "The Red Hand Files began in September of 2018 as a simple idea – a place where I would answer questions from my fans. Over the years, The Red Hand Files has burst the boundaries of its original concept to become a strange exercise in communal vulnerability and transparency. Hundreds of letters come in each week, asking an extraordinarily diverse array of questions, from the playful to the profound, the deeply personal to the flat-out nutty."

He takes these letters very seriously:

"I read them all and try my best to answer a question each week. The Red Hand Files has no moderator, and it is not monetized, and I am the only one who has access to the questions that sit patiently waiting to be answered."

In his latest issue, Amy from Los Angeles asks Cave, "My dad died suddenly and unexpectedly. We moved and only saw him for two weeks of what turned out to be his last year on earth. Now I feel like I have failed him so terribly. How do you apologize to someone who is gone? How do you say I love you and I’m so sorry when their ears and their heart don’t exist anymore?"

Cave writes back with clarity and grace. In part, "Find a quiet spot where you can be alone and away from distractions, close your eyes, and picture your father. Then say these words, quietly or in your head –

You are my father

I am your daughter

I love you

I am sorry

You may feel uncomfortable or embarrassed when you do this because it seems from your question that you fundamentally believe that your father is gone, that his “ears and heart don’t exist anymore,” and that you are speaking to no one, nothing, a void."

He later writes, "I suspect your father will hear your words, but I do not know. At the very least, by acknowledging the sacred and mysterious nature of things, these words will impact the general condition of the world, not to mention your own injured heart. I believe we must take our subtle spiritual intuitions seriously and view them as the quintessence that underlies the ordinary world. The rejection of the sacred is the fundamental reason for our existential discontent. “I love you” and “I am sorry” spoken into the universe are two sentiments forever worth declaring."

In a recent appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Cave shares one of the letters from a man in Stockholm named Valerio. He first reads the question:

"Following the last few years, I'm feeling empty and more cynical than ever. I'm losing faith in other people and I'm scared to pass these feelings onto my little son. Do you still believe in us, human beings?"

Cave then reads his response:

"Much of my early life was spent holding the world and the people in it in contempt. It was a position both seductive and indulgent. The truth is, I was young and had no idea what was coming down the line. It took a devastation to teach me the preciousness of life and the essential goodness of people. It took a devastation to reveal the precariousness of the world—of its very soul—and to understand the world was crying out for help. It took a devastation to find the idea of mortal value. And it took a devastation to find hope."

The studio audience listens silently. Cave continues:

"Unlike cynicism, hopefulness is hard-earned. It makes demands upon us, and can also feel like the most indefensible and lonely place on earth. Hopefulness is not a neutral position. It is adversarial. It is the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism. Each redemptive or loving act, as small as you like—such as reading to your little boy, or showing him a thing you love, or singing him a song, or putting on his shoes—keeps the devil down in the hole.

It says the world and its inhabitants have value and are worth defending. It says the world is worth believing in. In time, we can come to find that this is so. Love, Nick."

This is met with a huge round of applause, as if the audience really simply needed to hear it.

Some forward-thinking artists are making electronic music with, yes, barcode scanners.

You can make music from just about anything. When my youthful exuberance was at its highest and my net worth at its lowest, I once made a beat by recording myself slamming doors and punching tables.

My experiments, admittedly, didn’t sound great. But some forward-thinking musicians have built an entire art form by seeking sounds in unusual places—and in the case of Electronics Fantasticos!, a Japanese project centered around Ei Wada, by transforming "outdated electrical appliances into new electronic instruments." In an incredible viral YouTube video, they demonstrate their most famous piece of gear: the Barcoder, a barcode scanner that generates sound not through a cash register but by "connecting scan-signals of a barcode scanner to a powered speaker directly."

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

In the clip, two "barcodists," Wada and Akira Ataka, appear to be set up in a makeshift performance space, where each scan various blocks of black-and-white patterns. When arranged rhythmically, the synthesizer-like sounds they produce—low, pulsating grunts and high-pitched squeals—wind up resembling intense electronic music. (Bonus points for scanning their own striped shirts, which look like referee outfits.)

The YouTube comments are outstanding. One person (accurately) joked, "This is like the 1990s’ prediction of what 2020s music would be," and someone else chimed in, "When you lost your job as a DJ and ended up becoming a cashier." Also, props to the viewer who suggested they "just need a zebra to complete the band."

Electronics Fantasticos! have filmed a lot of Barcoder demonstrations, and they even took it to another level with the Barcodress. In this experiment, a dancer wears a dress "on which signals are engraved as striped patterns," and sound waves are created as the Barcoder scans their movements. They describe it as an artistic expression "where clothes, dance, and music playing become one." They continue, "It’s just like a dress serves as a record, dance as a turntable, a player as a record player needle, and expands the record and play mechanism to a physical expression. We explore possibility of 'Electromagnetic Dance!'" Mind-bending stuff.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

The project includes many bizarre instruments beyond the Barcoder. Take the "Hoovahorn, Tofoovahorn, and Vacuumonica," which vibrate reeds "by suction of a vacuum cleaner." There’s also the CRT-TV drums, which "produce sound when a player catches static electricity emitted from CRT-TV screens with bare hands and sends the electric signal to a guitar amplifier through a coil attached to the leg of a player." Other staples include the "Factory Fan Bass," "A/C Harp," and "Electric Fan Harp."

Wada has grown Electronics Fantasticos! into a larger community, establishing six activity bases throughout Japan and creating a "worldwide lab on the Internet" with nearly 100 members. They held the Electro-Magnetic Bon-Dance Festival in 2017 and, two years later, formed a multinational band to perform at Austria's Ars Electronica Festival.

If you're interested in supporting other creative people who make unusual instruments, check out YouTuber Burls Art, who’s built guitars out of 800 pieces of paper, 14 skateboards, 700 sheets of newspaper, 1,600 RadioShack dollar coins, 50 pounds of copper wire, and 1,000 melted cans.

Talk about alternative electronic music!

Canva

A string quartet that needs no instruments

Imagine seeing a string quartet play beautiful music.

Strings are pretty much my favorite kind of instrument; it's hard for me to listen to a cello or violin and not feel something. And when you get four musicians all playing together? Beautiful.


In 2015, Plymouth University's Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research and the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability in London teamed up to create a spectacular string quartet.

But this wasn't your typical performance.

The musicians in this quartet all had severe motor impairments, which can affect a person's ability to move.

Motor impairments can be caused by a number of different things, such as a motor neuron disease like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (known as ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease). In severe cases, a person may not be able to move or speak at all.

For musicians like these folks, their condition would normally present a considerable barrier to being able to play music like they once did. But in this case, researchers and doctors found a way to let them play anyway.

The thought was this: If the musicians still have musical talent but simply can't do the physical motions, we'll just make it so they don't need to do any physical motions.

science, music, research, real-time

Researchers place device on the head of musician.

Image pulled from YouTube video

First, researchers put stretchy, cap-like devices that can read brainwaves on the musician's heads.

Then, during the performance, a computer screen presented the four musicians with selections of short different musical phrases.

The musicians could choose what phrase they wanted by simply looking at it. The caps then picked up these brainwaves and sent the information to four other, nearby musicians who played the music for them (so, technically, maybe this would be an octet).

The end result was brilliant — four motor-impaired musicians, picking and playing in real-time to create beautiful music, all with their brainwaves.

One of their performances was captured in this short, nine-minute documentary by Tim Grabham and professor Eduardo Reck Miranda, who spearheaded the project.

Check out their brilliant performance here:

Brain-computer interfaces have gotten us this far and are taking us further still.

We've already seen brain-computer interfaces that can help us control prosthetic arms with thoughts and restore senses of hearing and touch to folks without them.

There's a lot more work to be done in these fields, of course, but one day soon, we might be hearing, seeing, and visiting a lot more performances and projects like this.

This article originally appeared on 10.25.16

Pop Culture

Pink shares a proud mama video of her daughter's first singing recital

'This 11 year old (11,000 year old soul) blows me away.'

Pink's daughter is following in her mom's footsteps with her own unique voice.

One of the best things social media offers is the ability for parents to share some of their kids' big moments. Proud parents are going to proud parent, and modern technology gives us ample opportunity to publicly gush about our offspring without forcing anyone to bear witness to their burgeoning talents.

Celebrity parents are in a bit of a different boat, however. When you're a household name with millions of followers, you might think twice about sharing your proud parent videos. But iconic pop star Pink has shared a video of her daughter's first singing recital just like any other proud mama would, and it's totally sweet.

Pink posted the video to an Instagram reel with the caption "This 11 year old (11,000 year old soul) blows me away."


Pink's daughter Willow can be seen standing on a stage holding a microphone with a purple curtain behind her. A Christmas tree sits on stage to her left and a piano to her right. The piano accompaniment begins, and she begins to sing "The Rose Song" by Olivia Rodrigo.

Imagine being the child of one of the best singers in modern times and wanting to be a singer yourself. It would be so hard not to feel a huge amount of pressure or feel like people are going to expect you to sound like your mom.

But Willow's voice is sweet and unique. She doesn't sound that much like Pink, but her performance shows the apple doesn't fall far from the tree nonetheless.

Watch:

It takes a lot of courage to stand on stage alone and sing, no matter how talented you are. So kudos to Willow for that alone.

But people are loving the performance itself, the way she connects emotionally with the song and how she keeps control of her voice. Even some other famous singers weighed in with praise for the 11-year-old.

"Holy cow!!! What a voice! What composure. Superstar," wrote singer and actress Mandy Moore.

"Whoah Nelly!" wrote Nancy Wilson from Heart. "They’ll be no stopping her!"

Chrissy Metz of "This Is Us" fame shared a simple, emoji-filled "Wow."

The video has thousands of comments from supportive fans, of course, but as any parent knows, the pride that comes with watching your child succeed at what they set out to do doesn't require any fanfare. Pink's sharing of her daughter's recital comes from the same urge most parents have to celebrate our kids' achievements and encourage them in their endeavors. (Did you notice the camera starting to slip up and up before coming back down? A sure sign of a parent trying to balance recording on a phone while watching the performance. Classic.)

It's especially sweet to see this proud mama moment from Pink, as she's previously shared that she never had an urge to be a mom.

"It surprised me. I didn't really want to be a mom," she told Carson Daly on Today last year. "I didn't not not want to be a mom, but it just wasn't sort of on my list of to-dos. I had Willow and, man, that saying of watching your heart go walking outside of your body, it's truly how it feels."

Indeed it is. Congrats to Willow on a beautiful recital and congrats to Pink for raising such a talented, self-composed young lady.

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