Nick's Cave, Accidental Initiations, Walking the Skeleton Tree of Eight and the Shock of Recognition?

I caught a one off screening of the Nick Cave movie, 'One More Time With Feeling' on the night of September 8, 2016, and his previous film like this called, '20,000 Days on Earth' the next night at GOMA in another one-off screening.

And in that order those movies are quite emotionally powerful if you have never seen either of them before, because you get to view the earlier made movie in hindsight after watching the latest movie first.

I have to say that I've never been a real big Nick Cave fan, as far as his music goes, but I've always liked his movies.

A sick bag of mine from
'The Spirit of Tasmania'
and Nick Cave's book

It wasn't until I had picked up his book, 'The Sick Bag Song' in Armidale, because of the sick bag theme in my life at the time, that I became a bit more of a Nick Cave fan -
The Sick Bag Song

Before I saw Nick's movie '20,000 Days on Earth', I had attended a book talk that afternoon with Barry Jones about his book, 'The Shock of Recognition', a book I had bought earlier this year and still haven't finished. 

Barry Jones at the Brisbane Writers Festival
September 9th, 2016

"'How much time do I have left? 
A hundred days? 
A thousand? 
If I knew I was going to die next week but could be taken to see The Marriage of Figaro tonight, would I go?
Absolutely.'
In a long and generously lived life, Barry Jones has been on an endless quest to share the extraordinary and the beautiful, to encourage the pursuit of an abundant life of reading and listening."

Barry Jones is the owner of the largest private autograph collection in Australia, which is ironic, because the only reason that tipped the scales of me buying Barry's book was because the bookshop I bought it from was selling autographed copies of the book.

I also thought it was ironic that Barry Jones was a Canberra politician at one stage, who has maintained a long-standing public profile as an outspoken opponent of capital punishment, as I once designed a t-shirt with the above slogan on it, and I'll be making that trip again next week.

I thought it was rather apt that Barry Jones was talking about  
the allegory of Plato's Cave and I had seen and was going to see Nick's Cave projected onto the cinema screen in front of me.

My personal shock of recognition came the night before when I saw Nick's new movie 'One More Time With Feeling', because they pulled out a painting Nick's late son Arthur had painted of one of his favourite subjects, a windmill.

The last photo that Arthur took ... a windmill

This kind of freaked me out as I had only bought Nick's book because of my trip to Tasmania and the sick bag I had from going there, and if I had not of read that book, I doubt if I would have made the effort to see those movies of Nick's at the cinema this month.
The thing that really struck me with Arthur's windmills was that windmills were the things that drew my attention as I traveled across Tasmania, as I wrote about in this post -
The Windmills of My Mind
I was so moved by both of Nick Cave's films, not by sympathy, although I was sympathetic to his present life situation, it was from "the shock of recognition" of my own life events that I had no hesitation in buying his 'Skeleton Tree' album the next day on iTunes.

I thought it was rather Radio8Ballish that 'Skeleton Tree' had only 8 tracks on the album, so you could technically play your own version of my friend Andras Jones's game with it, but on iTunes you could only get the eighth track,'Skeleton Tree' by purchasing the album, not by getting the iTunes download.
Which made me think of Andras more, since he had written a book about walking a tree.

The Radio8Ball Show: Season Zero-Episode Three with Sandman & David Ury
I had posted the above post the day I saw Nick's new movie, September 8th, 2016.
It's weird how personal life journeys seem to tangle like red strings of fate getting tangled into each other, but I had no real interest in Nick Cave until a string of personal coincidences drew me into his art ... and life.
Now I have another album ... minus the song 'Skeleton Tree', to play as I embark on my third road-trip of the year ... so stay iTuned;-)