{"id":855,"date":"2016-03-19T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-23T04:23:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/?p=855"},"modified":"2025-01-01T15:19:53","modified_gmt":"2025-01-01T02:19:53","slug":"the-sick-bag-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/2016\/03\/19\/the-sick-bag-song\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sick Bag Song"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><strong>Nick Cave<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><em>Text<\/em> <em>Publishing<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size\">Otago Daily Times, March 19th 2016<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Like the not quite-documentary <em>20,000 Days on Earth<\/em>, Nick Cave\u2019s latest offering is a complex and brilliant distillation of life and art that defies categorisation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">As its title proudly proclaims, <em>The Sick Bag Song<\/em> originated as a series of jottings made on airsickness bags during his 2014 tour of North America.&nbsp; In it Cave offers us an insight into his physical experiences and the dark workings of his head; descriptions of life on the road which spin out into free association, fragment into song and transform memory or dream in a prose poem that perfectly captures the essence of life on the road.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">By rights such a dissociative and narcissistic outpouring should be unreadable, yet for all its fragmentary nature it is as carefully crafted as any of his songs. Divided into sections, one for each of the cities in which he performed, it is tied together by repeated themes and recurring characters: the nine essences of creativity, a girl poised upon the railing of a bridge, a boy on a railway track who becomes the man on the stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">The familiar parade of sex, violence and death are of course there \u2013 decapitation is something of a leitmotif \u2013 but Cave also reflects upon his childhood, the artists who have inspired him and the parasitic nature of the creative process, presenting everything with a knowing wink to the reader, as if to say \u2018this is all about me and we both know it.\u201d For every strutting pose he permits us a glimpse of the weary man dying his hair black in a hotel bathroom, overcome by relief when his socks return intact and in pairs from the drycleaners, or sitting in the dark listening to a phone ringing unanswered in his wife\u2019s room at home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">I read <em>The Sick Bag Song<\/em> in one sitting and felt as if I had been there with him the entire time, sharing the moments of exaltation and inspiration, weariness, and homesick longing. It haunts me as much as his music, and I can\u2019t wait to dive back into its depths again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-small-font-size wp-block-paragraph\"> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.odt.co.nz\/entertainment\/books\/insight-dark-workings-musician%E2%80%99s-mind\">https:\/\/www.odt.co.nz\/entertainment\/books\/insight-dark-workings-musician%E2%80%99s-mind<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nick Cave<br \/>\n<br \/>\nOtago Daily Times review March 19th 2016<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[248,370,249,18,375],"class_list":["post-855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-248","tag-fiction","tag-nick-cave","tag-odt","tag-short-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=855"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1794,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855\/revisions\/1794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}