Think, Laugh, Cry Issue #19
A fan asked Nick Cave: Do you still believe in us? His reply—stark, beautiful, defiant—might be the most important answer you read this year. What did he say?
THINK
Nick Cave is an Australian singer, songwriter, author, and cultural icon known for his haunting lyricism, deeply emotive performances, and philosophical reflections on love, death, and the human condition.
Best known as the frontman of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, his music blends post-punk, gothic rock, and blues with poetic storytelling and raw intensity.
Beyond music, Cave is a prolific writer and artist, whose Red Hand Files newsletter has become a profound platform where he answers fan-submitted questions with honesty, vulnerability, and startling depth.
Through his work, Cave stands as a rare figure—an artist who explores despair without succumbing to it, and who champions hope not as sentimentality, but as a moral and creative act.
In one of the most stirring exchanges ever published in the Red Hand Files, a reader named Valerio wrote to Nick Cave with a hauntingly simple and brutally honest question:
“Do you still believe in Us (human beings)?”
His letter was not accusatory or cynical—it was exhausted. It seemed to come from a place of weariness, the kind that accumulates when compassion feels futile and the world’s cruelty appears relentless.
Valerio, like so many others today, was asking something fundamental:
How do we keep going when everything around us seems to be falling apart?
Cave’s response—centered around the idea that hope is the warrior emotion—was both defiant and redemptive.