My Warrior Emotion
Lazarus Digs Hope
After a sweet, sweet summer traveling with my daughter (which I discussed in the last edition of The Junction), I returned to work on Monday to begin my 25th year teaching, about which, as you might imagine, I have all sorts of big feelings.
In the sparse moments between classes and the repugnant, seemingly endless laundry list of inane miscellany that accompanies the start of school, I tried to pause to check in myself. Then to mark at the end of my first week back in the cage, I planned to write something of a vibe check as I dive headfirst, cautious but confident, into season 25 of this wackadoo sitcom.
And I might just do so next week. But in thinking about where I’m at vis-à-vis teaching, my wandering mind keeps wandering back to this text I got from a former student on Monday, which simply reads, “Hey DL! Just saw this. It fucking floored me. Thought of you. Watch it when you have a chance. Beers next week sometime?”
Sir, you had me at beers.
Per his other suggestion, I watched this Stephen Colbert interview of Nick Cave, which I assumed he sent me because Cave’s Dig Lazarus Dig album dropped during my first year teaching in Berlin, when these posters were all over town:
And so I became “Lazarus” to a fine flock of fellas I taught in 2008. It could’ve been a tough time to be Mr. Lazar if the album wasn’t so dope. Dig that.
But my former student’s suggestion had nothing to do with that crackerjack of an album. His reason for sharing became clear about 20 minutes into the interview when Colbert prompted his guest to discuss The Red Hand Files, Cave’s project where he responds thoughtfully to random letters sent to him by strangers.
Colbert asked Cave to read his response to one such letter from 2022:
Following the last few years I’m feeling empty and more cynical than ever. I’m losing faith in other people, and I’m scared to pass these feelings to my little son. Do you still believe in Us (human beings)?
-VALERIO, STOCKHOLM (AND ROME), SWEDEN (AND ITALY)
Cave read his response. I dare say you should read it too.
Dear Valerio,
You are right to be worried about your growing feelings of cynicism and you need to take action to protect yourself and those around you, especially your child. Cynicism is not a neutral position — and although it asks almost nothing of us, it is highly infectious and unbelievably destructive. In my view, it is the most common and easy of evils.
I know this because much of my early life was spent holding the world and the people in it in contempt. It was a position both seductive and indulgent. The truth is, I was young and had no idea what was coming down the line. I lacked the knowledge, the foresight, the self-awareness. I just didn’t know. It took a devastation to teach me the preciousness of life and the essential goodness of people. It took a devastation to reveal the precariousness of the world, of its very soul, to understand that it was crying out for help. It took a devastation to understand the idea of mortal value, and it took a devastation to find hope.
Unlike cynicism, hopefulness is hard-earned, makes demands upon us, and can often feel like the most indefensible and lonely place on Earth. Hopefulness is not a neutral position either. It is adversarial. It is the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism. Each redemptive or loving act, as small as you like, Valerio, such as reading to your little boy, or showing him a thing you love, or singing him a song, or putting on his shoes, keeps the devil down in the hole. It says the world and its inhabitants have value and are worth defending. It says the world is worth believing in. In time, we come to find that it is so.
Love, Nick
Longtime readers may recall how hope is a recurring theme in this rag (here for instance). I strive and frequently fail to be a hope junkie. I even named my first podcast after a Chicago radio legend and author of Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Troubled Times.
The day before the Cave interview, another radio legend, Marc Maron, interviewed Moon Zappa on his WTF podcast. Hope was a central theme in their compelling conversation. Maron said he’s working on a joke about hope being the perfect placeholder for existential angst. I dig this framing of the problem. Also, I LOL’d.
Cave and Maron have both been thoroughly devastated. Cave lost two sons and Maron lost his partner, both in sudden, tragic circumstances.
I, on the other hand, through nothing more than dumb luck, have been spared devastation. I don’t want to have to arrive at hope through devastation; I want to arrive at hope as my default position on my own terms.
It is with this “adversarial” position, armed with that “warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism”, that I pursued week 1 of year 25.
Love,
Daniel
P.S. When I looked up Cave’s interaction with Valerio I was thrilled to find that this Philip Guston painting was beside his response.
