Push The Sky Away

It's a 30 degree Saturday night. My sister and I are walking to Sidney Myer Music Bowl- taking turns spotting whose coming with us based on what they're wearing. Black skinny jeans. Freshly pressed button up shirts. Pant suits. Dark red lipstick. A vacant stare or sunglasses to hide behind. All the girls and all the boys in black. If they're dressed in the Melbourne equivalent of Sunday's Best Clothes, we figure they're coming to Nick Cave with us.

It's a procession. Hundreds of people all following each other, weaving up the hill- wanting to see and feel something. I had the night off work for my birthday, just in case we bought last minute tickets on a whim. We did, that morning, from someone who couldn't go anymore. Row M - seats 19-20.

It was the first stroke of lightning that day - given that I had just turned 20 and my name starts with M. If you believe in fate, you could call it fate. Whether you do or you don't, I like to think some kind of force beyond me wanted me to be there.

We walk up the hill, into the music bowl, and there's hundreds of people already on the lawn. If they're not sitting down, they're walking with cans in their hands, or maneuvering their arms and head through a shirt from the merchandise stand. We take our seats in the stalls, but it's only minutes till our eyes to wander to the standing area and the "esteemed" front rows.

We bicker like sisters do ("if you go I'll go", "ok, well, go then", "you go first"), eventually psyching ourselves up to join the people at the barrier. We're not the youngest people there- I crane my head around and see families in the stalls who have brought their kids. I smile at them and they smile back. 

It's just on nine when the Bad Seeds arrive, and Nick Cave graces his hometown. He's in a perfect ink blue suit, waving and stalking across the stage, before taking a seat near a microphone. His presence commanding a hushed silence until The Bad Seeds break it. Cave's voice ringing out to the thousands congregated: "all the fine winds are gone / and this sweet world is so much older". I forget to breath for 10 seconds. My throat goes dry. Out the corner of my eye, grown men have tears in their eyes.

It's immediate. The emotional gravity. How important this performance is, to not just Nick Cave, but to every person attending. His voice- somehow more beautiful than I ever imagined it would be. The songs- more devastating. We're all holding our breath and holding onto every word.

Soon, with the older songs, comes the frenzy, the jumping, the kicking - but even in the midst of it all, there's a tenderness. A humour- even. During the harrowing Red Right Hand he casts a warning regarding the man in Whitehouse right now, pointing to a woman in the crowd and singing coyly "you'll see him in your nightmares / you'll see him in your tweets".

At his most maniac, his most menacing- Cave towers over the people in the front rows, howling into the faces of anyone who holds his gaze - scaring the life out of us. Yet the terror and the joy of his unpredictability, of being that close to whatever courses through Cave when he performs, evidently has the best of intentions. He flies, he glows, he transforms- only so we can transform with him.

And it is transformative. Who you are when the performance begins is different to who you are when it ends. There's such a warmth, a presence, an immediacy there, if you can make it to the front rows. He'll grab your hand, he'll single you out and sing directly to you and you alone. The latter, which when it happened to me, all I could was stare and sing back. A memory to treasure, under lock and key, in my brain.

And he'll jump towards you- into the outstretched arms of everyone reaching up to him, without warning. He'll trust you'll keep him up and we do. My sister, two middle aged men and I at one point holding his legs as he sings, riling and pulsating.  Everyone hysterical - singing and laughing with misty eyes- in disbelief that there he is, so close and so giving. Throwing himself into every word.

In so many other concerts, it's the audience alone reaching out. At a Nick Cave concert there is seemingly no hesitation in his mind to reach back. There is something so simple, so beautiful about it. As simple as someone yelling out "we love you, Nick", and him replying "I love you, too".

Before he leaves, he's back at the barrier one last time, telling the couples and the friends and the goths and the old faces and the new ones - "you've gotta just keep on pushing / keep on pushing / push the sky away".

When it ends, when we're walking home across the Botanical Gardens, I feel so in awe that it doesn't feel like my legs are moving, but like we're on one of those travelators you see in airports- gliding across the concrete to Flinders Street Station. We're glowing on the train home, talking about it.

"I feel like I could do anything you know... " my sister, 18, three months out of high school, says, "I don't feel terrified anymore".

That night, I felt like a door opened in my brain. I still feel that way. I want to keep this memory, this feeling, by my side always. It was so special. Cathartic. Pure. True. Heartbreaking and heart-forming, somehow at the same time.

I know these all sound like the same hyperboles people throw around in relation of Nick Cave - but believe me when I say they're all true. Seeing him perform was beyond something else.

A blessing. A born again baptism. The best herald into my twenties, into my young adulthood, that I could ever dream of.

So, yeah, to answer the question- should you see Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds if they come to your town?  Yes. Absolutely. 100%.
Just go.  

[ A/N: All photo credit, regarding those fantastic crowd photos, goes to @karlgertsakis and @ngaereb on Instagram. The rest are photos my sister and I took on our phones.]