An Act of Faith
I have had poor dental hygienic practice for most of my adult life. I didn’t as a kid because my parents made me brush and floss. I did both when I lived under their roof, but every kid grows up. In college, my brushing was sporadic. In graduate school, it was non-existent. I know I owned a toothbrush, I just don’t remember using it. Like, Ever. After decades of neglecting my oral hygiene, I resumed the practice of brushing my teeth daily on May 13th, 2024. I decided to begin again as an act of faith, but before I tell you what the hell that even means, I need to introduce to you a human being whom I have yet to meet.
Nick Cave is an Australian musician, writer and actor according to his wikipedia page. If you know who he is, then you understand the corner I have painted myself into. There are no brief introductions when it comes to Nicholas Edward Cave. I was introduced to his band, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, by a college roommate who popped a compact disc of Dig!!! Lazarus, Dig!!! into my boombox one fateful day. It was not love at first listen. Though Cave’s baritone voice had some appeal, musically, lyrically and conceptually, The Bad Seeds were doing things that flew over my head at the time. It was different from the mainstream and it was different from the in vogue underground I had been exposed to. That made liking it dangerous. I was deep in my Radiohead-laden, college music phase. Every band I listened to did two things for me: they had to make music I liked, and (most importantly) they had to make me look cool. I did not know if I liked the music now spinning in my stereo and I did not know if The Bad Seeds would make me cooler than I already was, which left me tottering on an indecisive fence. I am happy to say time and exposure won me over. “Happy,” does not begin to cover it. Grateful hits closer to the mark. Let me give you a taste of why.
Nick Cave has been going through the ringer: over the past decade, he has lost two of his four children. These losses have riddled his recent work with salt, wrath, an elephant gun and his tears. You can feel it listening to Skeleton Tree (2016), Ghosteen (2019), Idiot Prayer (2020), Carnage (2021) and Seven Psalms (2022). In 2018 he started a website called The Red Hand Files. It is a simple idea. There is a submission portal where you, me or anyone else, may ask a question. Then, every week or so, Nick will respond - sometimes to one question, sometimes to a handful. The questions fielded, traverse a wide range of topics, but over the years The Red Hand Files has proven to be a gathering place for the grieving. For all the profane bluster that accompanies his reputation as a Bad Seed, Nick Cave interacts with the audience of The Red Hand Files with gentle reverence, balanced against a wry literary style. Some newsletters are dower, some are playful but all of them are hopeful – including the ones where he answers 50 questions with “Yes,” “No,” or “Fuck You.”
In one newsletter of The Red Hand Files, an expectant parent wrote in, expressing a rollercoaster’s range of emotion he and his wife were experiencing while waiting for the birth of their first child. Nick’s response, featured in Issue #283, moved me to tears. You can read it here if you like. His words carried the weight of a soul who has faced every parent’s worst fear twice, and yet his words were not fearful. They were buoyant. They burst forth from my inbox in a torrent of hopeful exuberance that knocked me back. He called the decision to have a child, “a defiant and outrageous act of positive intentionality, a defiant and outrageous act of faith in the human endeavor and a defiant and outrageous act of resistance against cynicism.” I was in the middle of a major depressive episode when I opened this newsletter. My heart was ladenned with deadness. I felt like I had nothing to look forward to, nothing to anticipate and nothing to hope for. It is worth mentioning that I do have all of these things. I am holding them in spades, but depression’s dark sway had reduced my heart to a parched, empty husk.
I got out of bed to use the restroom that night. Sitting (& shitting) in the dark alone, I started thinking about Issue #283. I have been a joyful participant in the beautiful, audacious act of bringing a new life into this world, but those days are now behind me. As I wiped, I wondered what I could do. What symbol could I adopt to teach myself that there is hope for my heart and a future worth having?
“You could brush your teeth for starters,” came the clear and concise answer. I did not hear this answer audibly and I did not think it mentally. It was simply given to me from someone or something - I couldn’t tell you. I can tell you that doing so was my decisive step away from despair.
I care relatively little for my body. It is an ugly one by most standards and it’s not that good at doing most things. I feel like I am driving an old, beater car with a broken AC - I can get from point A to point B, but this thing is barely worth using. That night, I placed toothpaste on my toothbrush because I have a hope beyond the walls of this world and a future to meet while I live within them. On May 13th 2024, I began to teach myself how to believe in a future worth living to see. I continue to do so every night as I brush my teeth.
I will catch you next month on the 3rd,
-JT⚡
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