But then again, no

On the freedom to throw it all aside, mid-sentence

The opening track on the exquisite new album Wild God by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds has a line that makes me chuckle with recognition each time I hear it.

In the Song of the Lake, the singer presents us with a character seemingly in the midst of a transcendental experience of beauty:

On the shore of the lake, an old man sat

And watched a woman bathing

With its golden touch, the light was such

That the moment was worth saving

And he sang the song of the lake

The song of the lake

And all the king's horses and all—

Ah, never mind, never mind

It's that last line I love - the abandoning of where he was going with the familiar line, instead surrendering to the ineffable - the way that becomes the refrain of the song, giving up the rote response we all know and choosing to throw it aside instead.

It reminds me slightly of another gear-change line, this time in Elton John's Your Song:

If I was a If I was a sculptor, but then again, no

Or a man who makes potions in a travelling show

I know it's not much but it's the best I can do

My gift is my song and this one's for you

That "but then again, no" used to make me laugh too, but not in a good way. As a young man it seemed incredible to me that Bernie Taupin had allowed such provisional, unpolished lyrics into a song. The perfectionist in me sneered at him for what seemed a halting, clumsy rhyme - but in later life I'm in awe of the courage simply to embody what has become evident to me.

That we're all kind of making it up as we go along.

In the first half of life - Your Song was written at the start of Taupin and John's career - our provisionality is like the spurts of adolescent potential firing off in all directions. I'll do this - but then again, no, what about that - I can't even finish my thought because I'm so alive and chaotic in the glow of first love and what it makes possible.

In later life I can feel the pull of different types of interrupting flow. A more shadowy part of me, even now as I write this, cold blooded, reptilian almost, wants to sink below the surface and disappear. Who the fuck cares what I think about song lyrics, it's all just part of this churn of provisionality, all of us desperate for some kind of acknowledgement of our meaning in the grand scheme, but honestly, does it even matter... Ah, never mind, never mind.

Someone once called me out as conceited for this dismissive, nihilistic streak in me, and I'm grateful to be able to see how linked it is to the ego, to the need to be seen as somehow special, not part of the masses. A fear that I'm insignificant and don't really matter.

Another strand is more freeing. If we were to complete the nursery rhyme couplet that the singer begins: "All the kings horses and all the king's men/couldn't put Humpty together again". As Cave said in a recent interview with Mary Ann Hobbs, we're all essentially broken, and that's okay. In this It frees us to create knowing there is no such thing as perfection, only how much we show up.

I actually wrote everything until this point about two months ago and left it in draft form, feeling (as ever) that it wasn’t ready yet. Then this week I went to see Nick Cave perform live in Glasgow (about which more later, perhaps) and my god!! The man is fully alive precisely because he is so uncompromisingly himself, so willing to show it all, shadow and light.

There’s much I want to share about what I’m reading about his life, and what it is teaching me. But for now, I want to press “send”. What I find in this wild, ageing, defiant poet is permission to be unfinished, permission to be broken and sad, permission to -

Ah, never mind, never mind.