Nick Cave shares advice for young fan on gap year lacking direction

nme.com:

Nick Cave has responded to a fan who has asked for advice about how to enrich their current gap year.El from Frankfurt in Germany asked The Bad Seeds singer on his Red Hand Files blog how one might find purpose in “this bizarre and temporary world”.“I am 20, high school graduant, in my gap-year and I find it pointless to pursue anything in this bizarre and temporary world that is so much against my values in every way possible,” the fan’s message began. “I believe I am speaking for a generation here.

I am asking with the biggest admiration, what would you do in my/our situation?”Cave replied to the fan, summarising that they should seek out humility and curiosity in order to make the most of their time off from studying or working.“You are right in describing the world as ‘bizarre and temporary’ – it is indeed a strange and deeply mysterious place, forever changing and remaking itself anew,” Cave began. “But this is not a novel condition, our world hasn’t only recently become bizarre and temporary, it has been so ever since its inception, and it will continue to be such until its end – mystifying and forever in a state of flux.“The same can be said for our values, they too can be temporary and exist in a state of flux.

If my experience is anything to go by, the values that you hold sacred now may change and be considerably different to those you hold dear in ten years’ time – and be almost unrecognisable when compared to those you possess when you reach your later years.“You may also find that some of the values that you perceive now as incontestable truths will be looked at with suspicion, even contempt, by the generations that come after you – a humbling realisation if ever there was one.