![]() I had a feeling he was onto something, so that’s where I officially started my research: at the crossroads where the song’s protagonist encounters Robert Johnson and the devil making their legendary pact. He insisted that, in overlooking key references to blues music, we had missed the mark. ![]() Some version of that conversation, fueled by craft beer and rich holiday food, was excavated again with my husband - a writing professor like me, but also a musician. On a March 2013 road trip to meet my sister-in-law’s family, my retired math professor father and I debated whether his background in particle physics or mine in literary theory provided the better interpretive framework. It became a soundtrack to some memorable occasions in my life. One song in particular, “Higgs Boson Blues”, took hold of me and remained, feverishly, in my consciousness - and on my playlist - long after the others faded from rotation. I started writing scraps of this essay in my head over three years ago, shortly after the February 2013 release of Push the Sky Away. How better to acknowledge the state of things than to revisit an older Cave masterpiece, one that accidentally or deliberately chronicles the demise of Western civilization? What better occasion than a Nick Cave release to acknowledge our cultural precipice? Devoted Nick Cave fans can at least take shelter for a little while in Andrew Dominick’s new film, One More Time With Feeling, and the recently released Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds album, Skeleton Tree. ![]() No matter how great the temptation to crawl back in bed rather than face another dismal American news cycle, it seems we can no longer deny we’re on the verge of something legitimately major - for better or worse - in 2016.
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