The Australian musician Warren Ellis, from the Dirty Three and Nick Cave’s Bad Seeds, has already had a busy 2021. In March, Cave and Ellis released the collaborative album Carnage. In April, Marianne Faithfull released She Walks In Beauty, the album that she made with Ellis. And later this year, Ellis will publish a book about the time he took a used piece of Nina Simone’s chewing gum and then saved it for 20 years.

In 1999, about four years before her death, Nina Simone played at London’s Royal Festival Hall. Her set was part of the Nick Cave-curated edition of the Meltdown Festival. At the end of the show, Ellis, already a Bad Seed at the time, found a piece of used chewing gum on Simone’s piano and saved it in a Tower Records bag. Ellis kept that piece of gum for himself until 2019, when he contributed it to Cave’s Stranger Than Kindness exhibit. For the exhibit, Ellis had Simone’s gum cast in silver and gold and displayed in a glass case.

In his book Nina Simone’s Gum, Ellis tells the whole story about that treasured wad of garbage. According to the press release for the book, this whole saga will tell us some deep and revealing artistic truths:

Nina Simone’s Gum reveals how something seemingly insignificant and disposable can form beautiful connections between people. It is a story about the meaning we bestow on objects and experiences, and how these things can become imbued with spirituality. It is a celebration of the artistic process and the incomparable power of the art born from it — of friendship, understanding and love.

Sure! Nina Simone’s Gum is out 9/2 on the UK and 10/19 in the US, and you can pre-order it here.