What Nick Cave's new Montreal exhibition revealed to me about grief and dreams

Nick Cave has inspired fervent devotion from fans of his experimental art rock, novels and poetry, movie soundtracks and screenplays, and so much more art during his nearly 50-year career. But it was something else entirely that drew me to his work for the first time: his meditations on grief.

That's how I found myself at Stranger Than Kindness, an exhibition about the artist that he co-created, which made its North American debut at L'Astral in Montreal on April 8. 

Reading the exhibition's dimly lit description, like the start of a dark labyrinth, I spot a mention of The Red Hand Files, an online forum where Cave directly answers fan questions. One of those is what originally pulled me into his murky world full of sex, saints and sacrifices.

In 2018, Cave wrote an open letter in response to a question about grief from someone named Cynthia. He addressed the tragic death of his son Arthur in 2015, saying, "I feel the presence of my son, all around, but he may not be there. I hear him talk to me, parent me, guide me, though he may not be there. He visits [my wife] Susie in her sleep regularly, speaks to her, comforts her, but he may not be there."

A friend sent me that post, knowing how much it would resonate, since it perfectly described what I'd experienced with my own departed loved ones — my father, uncle and dear friend, all of whom I've spoken to in the ghostly land of sleep. I'm here at this exhibit to try and peer into the man who knew about my shadowy dreams. 

Searching for signs of this experience, I start making my way through engrossing spaces that are reconstructions of periods of Cave's life. With over 300 unique pieces in eight rooms, we move through his childhood in Warracknabeal, Australia, set to the sounds of barking dogs and a children's choir. This gives way to circus-inspired chaos from Cave's days in post-punk band The Birthday Party, then to an immersive replica of his 1980s apartment in Berlin, before we arrive at his most iconic act, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and finally land in the pared-down present. The exhibit begs for a detective's eye to catch details like clues of an existence: a King James Bible open on a bedside table with an underlined passage from which Cave's novel And the Ass Saw the Angel gets its name; letters to his mother; pin-up girl posters; locks of hair bought at a flea market; a stark photo of him with arms around his twin sons in a secluded corner. 

The exhibit's largest room is a version of his home office, flanked by stacks of books by Dostoyevsky, biographies of Edith Piaf, Joan Crawford and Cave himself, and multiple copies of Lolita. Though maximalist, it's also a calming place full of family photos, behind-the-scenes snapshots and musical instruments. I spot a white door at the back with the words "I married my wife on the day of the eclipse" painted in black — the opening line from his mournful noir song "The Sorrowful Wife."

Before I can open it, Cave, the legendary man in the flesh, walks in from a side door, as if emerging from the exhibit itself. He asks the room of photographers and journalists, "What are you doing in my office?" before sitting down at his desk, littered with pornographic doodles drawn on a Montreal hotel's stationary, W.B. Yeats's poetry and an electric-blue typewriter. He answers questions genially, telling us the room behind the door is called the Hallway of Gratitude and that it represents his new life. He says this exhibit keeps growing, pointing out that a letter from Tom Waits was recently added to the adjacent wall. I raise my hand and ask why the letter isn't in the next room that represents this new life.

"The thing about the Hallway of Gratitude is that the particular things in that room are of massive importance to me," he replies, "like the letter from Leonard Cohen sent after my son died. It says, 'Dear Nick, I'm with you, brother.' Such a simple thing that meant so much more than so much else that was said to me at the time."

Seeing how Cave slots death on equal footing with everything else, without driving himself crazy looking for answers that don't exist, reminds me to appreciate the potential within uncertainty.

After he leaves, I step into the Hallway of Gratitude. Though present, his son's death isn't all-consuming. Home videos and photos of happy moments share the space with his family's 19th century bible, a piece of Nina Simone's chewed gum, a bust of Elvis — his hero — surrounded by recordings of thunder and lightning, and the framed email from Cohen on a mostly blank page. Cave's veneration for Cohen is peppered throughout the exhibit, from the first room where there's a video of Cohen performing "Avalanche" in 1972, to books of his poetry slid into tall stacks, like a common thread through time. (As the daughter of a Montreal-born boomer, I was nursed on this reverence too.)

After peering through all the bits and pieces, I find an answer of sorts to my quest — there all along in his response to Cynthia. When he says his son "may not be there," the "may" leaves room for possibility, interpretation. For the last decade, I've been fixated on trying to understand and justify these dreams that don't quite feel like dreams, these visitations from the people close to me who have passed. Seeing how Cave slots death on equal footing with everything else, without driving himself crazy looking for answers that don't exist, reminds me to appreciate the potential within uncertainty. In Stranger Than Kindness, made up of all these bits of life that say everything and nothing about its creator, there's room for that too.

Before leaving, I stop in at the small gift shop where a word catches my eye: grief in black letters on a white background. Cave turned his letter to Cynthia into a single I can play to be reminded that there is, thankfully, no true answer in all things dead.