Do you believe in god?
Well, I believe in the idea more than the
actuality. I think it’s a part of us as human beings that we search outside of
ourselves for meaning. It’s a hugely endearing aspect of our characters as
human beings, despite how corrupt and destructive some of those ideas can be.
But whether I actually believe in a god, in the traditional sense? I don’t. Religion
is an act of the imagination, but on some level, it can be seen as a kind of failure
of the imagination, because the idea is not that great. The idea is as small as
our collective imagination can be, if you know what I mean, I’ve got to say
that the first thing that disappeared for me when I got clean was my belief in
god. I was fucking crazy. Toward the end, I was waking up cold turkey and going
to church, sick as a fucking dog. I’m sitting there sweating and listening to
everything, and then trotting down to the golden road and scoring and getting
back home and shooting up and going, “I’m living a well-rounded existence.” You
know, a bit of this and a bit of that. So the first thing that went was the
supposed spiritual need of that conventional kind. But I don’t know why we went
from nothing to something. The origins of the world and all that sort of stuff.
I guess we know how with the Big Bang, but what exists behind that gives me a
certain kind of vertigo, even getting my head around that. Personally I find
the story of Christ incredibly moving. And the way the Gospels were written—despite
the kind of hell those stories unleashed upon the world, even to this day, I
find those stories very powerful and moving.
- Nick Cave
