Nick Cave on 2025 and hope
I posted a while back about Nick Cave’s The Red Hand Files. It was cool to see the site featured in the New York Times a couple weeks later!
I recommend reading his recent letter about 2025, the state of the world, and the nature of hope: The Red Hand Files Issue #308: 2025 is coming. The world seems to be in such a catastrophic state. Where is the hope? What is hope?.
An excerpt:
So, what is hope, and what is hope for? Hope is an emotional temper that emboldens the heart to be active, it is a condition, a mood, an aura of being. It is a feat of the imagination, both courageous and ingenious, a vitality that inspires us to take innovative action to defend the world. 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. We do not look away from the world, we look directly at it and allow the spirit of hope – the necessary driver of change – to inspire us to action.
Amen.