Hot Mutton — The blog of Tom Hutton

What we can learn from Nick Cave and his movie 20,000 Days on Earth.

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I listen to Nick Cave. A lot. Maybe too much (if that's possible).

He's not everyone's cup of tea, but his movie "20,000 Days on Earth" is a very watchable film about mortality and what we do with our lives. The end scene is a lesson for us all! Watch and learn...

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"All of our days are numbered. We can not afford to be idle.
To act on a bad idea is better than to not act at all,
because the worth of the idea never becomes apparent until you do it.
Sometimes this idea can be the smallest thing in the world;
a little flame that you hunch over and cup with your hand and pray will not be extinguished by all the storm that howls about it.
If you can hold on to that flame, great things can be constructed around it;
things that are massive and powerful and world changing.
All held up by the tiniest of ideas.

In the end I'm not interested in that which I fully understand.
The words I have written over the years are just a veneer.
There are truths that lie just below the surface of the words...
...truths that rise up without warning, like the humps of a sea monster.
And then disappear.

What performance and song is to me is finding a way to tempt the monster to the surface.
To create a space where the creature can break through what is real and what is known to us.
This shimmering space, where imagination and reality intersect this is where all love and tears and joy exist.

This is the place.
This is where we live."

NICK CAVE, 20,000 DAYS ON EARTH

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