Nick Cave - The Sick Bag Song

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Also by Nick Cave
And the Ass Saw the Angel
The Death of Bunny Munro

Published in Great Britain in 2015 by Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1TE, UK

www.thesickbagsong.com
www.canongate.tv

This digital edition first published in 2015

Copyright Nick Cave 2015

The moral right of the author has been asserted

The Artist by Denise Levertov reprinted by permission of Pollinger Limited (www.pollingerltd.com) on behalf of the Estate of Denise Levertov

Designed by Pentagram

ISBN 978 1 78211 668 4

Ebook production by Laura Kincaid

To the boy on the bridge

Contents

A young boy climbs a riverbank. He steps onto a railway bridge. He is twelve years old.

He kneels down, under a harsh sun, and puts his ear to the track. The track does not vibrate. There is no train approaching around the bend on the other side of the river.

The boy starts to run along the tracks. He arrives in the middle of the bridge. He stands on the edge and looks down at the muddy river below.

On the left side is a concrete pylon that supports the bridge. On the right, a half-felled tree lies across the river, its branches sticking out into the dark water. In between there is a small space about four feet wide.

He has been told that it is possible to jump in at this point, but he cannot be sure, as he has never seen anybody do it.

The stones beneath his feet begin to tremble. He crouches down and again he puts his ear to the track.

The track begins to vibrate. The train is coming.

He stares down at the dark, muddy water, his heart pounding.

The boy does not realise that he is not a boy at all, but rather the memory of a boy.

He is the memory of a boy running through the mind of a man in a suite at the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Nashville, Tennessee, who is being injected in the thigh with a steroid shot that will transform the jet-lagged, flu-ridden singer into a deity.

In three hours he will burst from the hotel room. He will move through the empty city, crossing vast rivers, driving through empty prairies, along tremendous, multi-laned highways, under darkening skies, like a small god, to be with you, tonight.

And I will walk on stage at Bonnaroo Festival in Manchester, Tennessee, and become an object of great fascination to almost no one. The dazed crowd will drift back and forth across the fields and the sinking sun will flood the site with orange fire. After the show, I will sit outside on the steps of our trailer and smoke.

On the way back to Nashville, our van will be stalled on the highway for two hours at the scene of a terrible automobile accident. We will watch as ambulances and police cars speed down the slip roads. We will see a helicopter chopping above us, its searchlight cutting through the dark night. For an hour we will sit silently in our van, smoking and drinking. Eventually our tour manager will leave the vehicle to investigate. He will come back to report that two vehicles have collided, up ahead, and a girl lies decapitated on the road.

I will fall asleep in the back of the van, waking up when our vehicle begins to move. From the slow-moving side window I will see the decapitated body lying on the road, covered by a grim, bulging, blue plastic sheet.

I will pick at a thread in my jacket sleeve all the way back tothe Sheraton in downtown Nashville. Pick, pick, pick.

An angel will unfold its wings and speak into my ear.

You must take the first step alone.

Then the angel will nudge me and send me sailing out into the unknown.

This is how I will begin The Sick Bag Song.

You must take the first step alone.
I move tentatively toward the lip of the world.
North America stretches out before me like a split bag of sick.
The nine daughter-Muses sweeten their encouraging breath.
And the nine unfolding angels prepare to bear me away.

Bear me away on their white wings to Louisville, Kentucky,
Where I walk across the Big Four Pedestrian and Bicycle Bridge,
Eating fried chicken, right across the mighty Ohio. Right on!

And leaning against the railing, staring down at the water below,
I see a black girl in a tiny stars-and-stripes mini-skirt.
I open up my sick bag and say, Right on! Jump in! By the way,
This is exactly the sort of thing that will end up getting me hurt.

The girl in the stars-and-stripes mini-skirt leans out.
She elicits the sympathy of the entire world by revealing
The touching forethought of a sudden matching thong.

I am going to put that in my sick bag song!
I dont care about the flak!
Ive got a flak jacket with the stars and stripes on!

The jacket is actually a sick bag,
And the sick bag is a long, slow-motion love song,

That has something to do with the ballad of The Butcher Boy,
Which ends with the line That the world may know I died of love.

The girl places a single, shoeless foot on the railing of the bridge.
And then stands up on the barrier.

Take care, I say, and the girl turns to me and smiles and salutes.

My wife once heard The Butcher Boy sung so beautifully she cried.
She folded up her flak jacket, closed her eyes and basically died.

I am a small god made of terracotta, trembling on a pedestal,
Interred in a maelstrom of sound.

Look what the little clay god has found, neatly folded!
A jumbled bundle of young black bones,
Secured by a teeny half-digested thong.

I read somewhere that my best work was behind me.
But where? When I turn around, the flying girl is gone.

The next morning, I stand in the lobby of the 21c Museum Hotel in Louisville, awed by four terracotta sculptures of nakedchildren, by the artist Judy Fox, arranged in a row behind the reception desk. They are really something to see as youcheck out of your hotel. The little child-heroes are small,scorched gods. They press their young faces against thewindows of the iconic roles they are set to play. Look atthem on their shuddering pedestals! Look at them standingon the precipice of their child-selves, with their baked and bletting bodies, preparing to leap! Look at them!

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