I Believe In Vampires

An Interview Series

His name is Ruben, and he sent this question to Nick Cave via The Red Hand Files:

I’m 13. In a world ridden with so much hate, and disconnect; How do I live life to its absolute fullest, and not waste my potential? Especially as a creative. Also, what is a great way to spiritually enrich myself? in general, and in my creative work.

And in his distinctly Nick Cavian way, here is a portion of the response:

Read. Read as much as possible. Read the big stuff, the challenging stuff, the confronting stuff, and read the fun stuff too. Visit galleries and look at paintings, watch movies, listen to music, go to concerts – be a little vampire running around the place sucking up all the art and ideas you can. Fill yourself with the beautiful stuff of the world. Have fun. Get amazed. Get astonished. Get awed on a regular basis, so that getting awed is habitual and becomes a state of being. Fully understand your enormous value in the scheme of things because the planet needs people like you, smart young creatives full of awe, who can minister to the world with positive, mischievous energy, young people who seek spiritual enrichment and who see hatred and disconnection as the corrosive forces they are. These are manifest indicators of a human being with immense potential.

Be a little vampire sucking it all up. Man I love that, and I say that as one who hopes to goodness I was once a little vampire who grew into a bigger vampire and is now a big aging vampire. The heart of the thought is cousin to Jean Rhys’ “feeding the lake,” but Jean’s phrase feels sleepy to me. I prefer a vibe with a bite, like vampires sucking. If you don’t like the vampire image, well, sorry, that’s what we’re going with here.

I believe the world is teeming with vampires, mischievous suckers filling up on beauty’s blood. I’d love to introduce a few to you and so yes, you guessed it, I’m calling this series—Interview With A Vampire.

The format will be straightforward, a brief intro with a nod to where you can find them online followed by their answers to two questions born of Cave’s response to young Ruben:

1. What are you reading right now, and how is it challenging or confronting you? (And this would encompass that expansive reading vampires do which means sucking from many necks—books, movies, music, art, etc.)

2. Tell us when you were last amazed, astonished, or awed? Charm us with the whole sucking story (charm from the Latin carmen “to sing”).

That’s it. Short enough to get your attention, not long enough to bore you. I do hope you’ll follow along and meet some new friends.

One last thing, something I want to drive a stake into the heart of before this gets started. The vampires I choose to introduce to you will comprise a deep and wide coven. That’s intentional. If you think I agree and/or endorse everything they say or think or feel or sing, you’re gravely mistaken (and probably on the wrong Substack channel). That all-or-nothing view is picayune, the hobgobblin’ of little minds (Emerson), and nope, we’re not doing that here.

Stay tuned!