Finally, the wrap up to a long season in the Kootenays, trip to the island, then Nick Cave in New Westminster.
I'm a fan, you know.
It wasn't a concert - although he played about a dozen songs, scattered throughout the show - starting with "The Ship Song", which has to be one of his most requested, although I was pleased he played "Breathless" as well - apparently, from the number of requests, a favorite of a few people.
This tour, though, wasn't so much about his playing his music as it was him simply answering questions to his fans. And boy, did they have some questions. In the beginning they were fairly straightforward - but as the evening evolved they got ever more entangled. One girl, reading aloud an essay she had written - he cuts her off "This isn't going to be a poem, is it...?" - he can sense trouble, he's been doing it a while, she turns over the sheet of legal paper she's brought with her as her cue card, breathlessly continuing on the back, it's not so much a question, he's as perplexed as the audience, it's not so much a question as it is an introduction to herself, the purity of her thought, and he graciously answers the question he could decipher and moves on...
There are a lot of these, fans, tongue-tied in front of the microphone, oversharing their own life stories, and I'm a little perplexed - why, it's supposed to be a Q & A, why has the train derailed, but it only takes a little figuring and I have it.
The thing with him - with probably any writer - is that he's touched so many people, so many people have imagined a connection, or an understanding of him via his work - that they have no questions for him, rather they take the opportunity to introduce themselves - they want him to feel the connection with them, to know them, as they feel they know him.
He's ever gracious, kind, compassionate, but a lot of this, it becomes like watching a lion being taken down by jackals, this opportunity to maybe ask real questions and arrive at a real understanding, well, it's turned into a sideshow of introductions and gushing adulation by fans suddenly awestruck that he's speaking to them...
It was good, always good, I rate Nick Cave very highly, his audience, well, less so, although it speaks well of him that Elvis Costello and Diana Krall were in attendance, he is, in a way, a legend on a par with Leonard Cohen.