Nick Cave on how to have hope while feeling “fearful and depressed” in the new year

nme.com:

Nick Cave has shared words of advice to fans feeling “fearful and depressed” in the new year, telling them to hold onto hope.The Bad Seeds frontman spoke about his own battles with taking on a new year via a new entry on his Red Hand Files website, responding to two fans who wrote in to wish him a happy new year.

One of the comments asked him where he thinks people can find hope when “the world seems to be in such a catastrophic state”.Explaining his understanding of hope, he began by reassuring the fan that it is common to take a pessimistic view of the world around the new year, and that hope is the main thing that can make things easier going forward.“It is understandable to feel alarmed by the current state of things, to feel fearful and depressed.

We are presented with a constant communiqué of despair, that we exist in the worst of times, indeed, the end of times,” he began. “Many feel impotent in this dreadful imminence – words like ‘Happy New Year’ ring hollow, like a hangover from a bygone better time… here we are at the beginning of a new year, and like you, many feel hopeless.”He continued: “Hope is essential to our survival and our flourishing.

We achieve this vitality of spirit by rejecting the relentless promotion of despair and opening our eyes to the beauty of things, however imperilled, degraded, or difficult to love the world may appear to be.“We try to view the world not as it is packaged, presented and sold to us but as we imagine it could be.