Nick Cave has spent the past few years publicly living through unfathomable loss. In 2015, Cave’s 15-year-old son Arthur died after falling from a cliff. Cave has addressed his own grief through his work — on albums like 2019’s devastating Ghosteen, in his Red Hand Files newsletter, and in Faith, Hope & Carnage, the new memoir that he’s about to publish. Then, earlier this year, Cave’s 31-year-old son Jethro was found dead of undisclosed causes. In a new interview, Cave talks about how he’s coped with those losses in part by interacting with his fans.

The Red Hand Files is specifically structured as fan interaction; it’s Cave answering questions from fans. Recently, Cave spoke with The New York Times in advance of his new memoir’s publication. In that interview, Cave talks a bit about the work of processing his sons’ deaths in public:

I don’t know how to say this, really, but I do know there’s a way out. The terrifying thing about when Arthur died was that it felt like, How could this feeling ever be any different? I don’t want everything I talk about and everything I am to revolve around these losses, but I feel compelled to let people in the same situation of grief know — and there are hundreds of people like that writing in to The Red Hand Files — that there is a way out. Most people who write in, especially early on in their grieving, simply cannot understand what I’m talking about in that regard. I know exactly how they feel. I understand it around Jethro.

In that interview, Cave also talks about how a number of fans have told him about their own intense losses, and he says that those interactions have helped keep him from sinking:

When Arthur died, I was thrust into the darkest place imaginable, where it was almost impossible to be able to see outside of despair. Susie and I somehow managed to pull ourselves out of that, and — I know this sounds corny — that did have something to do with the response I started to get from people who kept writing to me and saying, mostly, This happened to me, and this is what’s happening to you, and this is what can happen. This was extremely affecting for me. The concerts that I did following that, too — the care from the audience saved me. I was helped hugely by my audience, and when I play now, I feel like that’s giving something back. What I’m doing artistically is entirely repaying a debt. It’s — my other son has died. It’s difficult to talk about, but the concerts themselves and this act of mutual support saves me. People say, How can you go on tour? But for me it’s the other way around. How could I not?

The whole interview, which also touches on the value of transgressive art and on Cave’s feelings about the new Elvis movie, is well worth reading, and you can read it here. Cave’s memoir Faith, Hope & Carnage is out 9/20.