A question asked by a 13-year-old in Australia, is answered by Nick Cave in The Red Hand Files: “How do I live life to its absolute fullest, and not waste my potential?”
Having quickly built up a loyal following for his responses to fan questions, the renowned musician and writer shares a depth of thought you rarely see, including highly personal feelings and experiences in what he says has become “a strange exercise in communal vulnerability and transparency”.
Cave answers the boy beautifully:
“Read. Read as much as possible. Read the big stuff, the challenging stuff, the confronting stuff, and read the fun stuff too. Visit galleries and look at paintings, watch movies, listen to music, go to concerts – be a little vampire running around the place sucking up all the art and ideas you can. Fill yourself with the beautiful stuff of the world. Have fun. Get amazed. Get astonished. Get awed on a regular basis, so that getting awed is habitual and becomes a state of being.
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Absorb into yourself the world’s full richness and goodness and fun and genius, so that when someone tells you it’s not worth fighting for, you will stick up for it, protect it, run to its defence, because it is your world they’re talking about.”
Read Nick’s full answer here.
