Nick Cave on the Fragility of Life | The New Yorker

The creative process—especially original creation, which, for me, is writing words and music—can feel like hard labor and much of the time is as far away from anything you might call spiritual. I find it can be an agonizing and debilitating and solitary business. But there are sudden mystifying moments of spiritual freedom, where I am lifted from my feelings of inadequacy and I am suddenly flying around the room like a giggling fool, rapturously transported. That’s not just the creative process—that’s life in general. We lead our common lives, but all around there are hunches and intimations and whisperings of something else. These small, softly spoken suggestions are enough for me to feel that there is some enigmatic otherness to be experienced, and that’s where my belief lies.