There are no words to express how parents can feel after such a tragedy, since the death of a child is truly the worst thing that can happen to a parent. Arthur Cave, Nick Cave’s son, has died after falling from a cliff in Brighton, England.
The circumstances of the dramatic event are not entirely known, but Arthur was airlifted to the hospital yesterday evening after being found at about 6 pm, with life-threatening injuries, on a coastal path near the Ovingdean Gap. The death is not being treated as suspicious according to the Argus.
Arthur, who was only 15, had a twin brother Earl, and if you have seen Nick Cave’s documentary, ’20,000 Days On Earth’, you will remember briefly seeing the two boys eating pizza with Nick at the end of the movie.
Nick Cave and his wife told journalists they did not want to speak at this time, and they just released the statement:
‘Our son Arthur died on Tuesday evening. He was our beautiful, happy, loving boy. We ask that we be given the privacy our family needs to grieve at this difficult time.’
Nick Cave’s music certainly occupies in a very special place in my music pantheon, he is an amazing performer, but also an extraordinary writer whose art has always being dominated by the image of God and biblical references, although he said at one point he doesn’t believe in an interventionist God. He always had a very ambiguous relationship with the Divine, building with his work, an angry and pitiless universe filled with heroic, terrifying or doomed characters living in a world dominated by the God of the old testament. it was as if Nick Cave only believes in God in his songs.
With Cave’s musical creation, we were used to bigger-than-life drama but in a way, he could raise hell and announced the apocalypse and we were reassured because we knew he was in control. Nick Cave was God when he sang and performed.
This new tragedy is unfortunately too real, it’s not art anymore, it’s life, or is it life having his revenge, but revenge against what? The absurd always wins. One thing is sure, it’s not art anymore and Nick has lost the control. My heart goes to Nick Cave and his family during this terrible time.