In The Pines: The Rollercoaster of Joy, part one

A dark, postpunk musician I’ve admired for decades, a man beloved of Goths and Johnny Cash fans, has somehow become both a mainstream rock star and a religiously inspired advice columnist. Yes, I’m talking about the inimitable Nick Cave.

On his beguiling blog “The Red Hand Files,” Mr. Cave usually answers questions. Recently he turned the tables. He asked us, his readers and fans, to answer his question: “I have a full life. A privileged life. An unendangered life. But sometimes the simple joys escape me. Joy is not always a feeling that is freely bestowed upon us, often it is something we must actively seek. In a way, joy is a decision, an action, even a practised method of being... where or how do you find your joy?”

I began to answer, in a short note to Mr. Cave. It somehow grew from a personal missive penned for a particular man I’ve never met, into a rollercoaster exploration of emotions and how we process them, of life and its awesome frailties and strengths. In the next two installments of “In the Pines,” I offer you the rollercoaster of joy.

At any moment you or a loved one might be struck by cancer, by insanity, by lightning. By a terrible fall. Your investments might fail, your songs might become wildly unpopular, you might lose your voice. The transcendent spell you weave upon your audiences might, startlingly, begin to fail. Your wife might leave (never, you think—but no one truly knows another, any more than one ever knows the future).

Like my husband, you might sustain a traumatic brain injury that nearly kills you, that puts you in a coma and renders you unable to work and create, or even eat, speak, or walk.

The easeful beauty that surrounds you in natural and pastoral places you visit or live among may be ravaged by wildfire; where I live on the West Coast of America, in Oregon, this is now common.

Smoke and pollution in the air may prevent you from going outside. A pandemic might sweep your area, shutting down activity and gathering places, bringing anxiety and fear. Flood and famine, hurricane and earthquake, habitat loss and rising seas, war and rumor of war may shake your foundations.

Your country’s politics and sense of community may crumble into partisanship and fighting so vicious that many people— non-paranoiacally, unfortunately — fear a civil war. You may not be Jewish or Black or gay or an immigrant; you might not belong to any of the usual groups the thugs typically attack when these things get rolling.

But if you’re well-off, who knows? The mobs may tear you out of your plump armchair imagining themselves to be revolutionaries in Versailles, dragging royalty to the guillotine. Or simply out of sheer boredom.

If any of us considers the loveliness of our life and the people in it unendangered, we are fooling ourselves. For most adults, the endangerment itself — the loss, the awareness of fragility — illumines the hiding place where joy may find us.

For children, joy emerges spontaneously, out of astonishment, wonder, and appreciation for how sensory, physical, psychedelic, and fascinating their new world is. Their joy is contagious; sometimes it spreads to us stressed middle-agers and older folks and self-obsessed teens.

For adults who have experienced loss or depression, who feel trampled by the seemingly endless slog of work and bureaucracy, joy arises slowly, out of ashes, like the tiny plants making their way out of the ash-soil in the remnants of the Milli Fire near my home in the forest.

For most adults, joy arises not as a crown to top the rich, well-lived life of a satisfied man wandering his palace in his deep crimson robe. For adults and the young ones who experience grief and trauma, joy arises from between the cracks of pavement, from beneath the rubble of lost civilizations and lost families.

Does one “decide” joy, practice it like the oboe? Is it truly “earned?” Could that attitude not be a sign of hubris, of Western civilization’s obsession with control? We ought to be careful here. We know what pride goeth before.

Perhaps joy is a gift from God*, readily given. It is uncovered as we roam the dystopian landscapes of our burnt forests, uncovering gorgeous sculptures composed of charcoal stumps and silvered tree trunks. It is uncovered as we tentatively emerge from our phones into a seemingly fractious world, only to find community among people with varying political and religious beliefs, helping each other in emergencies, mending bridges through small talk and volunteer work.

We can court joy and look for it. We can imagine it is within our control. Or we can turn our back and wait for it to tap us on the shoulder.

To be continued next week.

*Readers are encouraged to use whatever word makes sense to them here: perhaps the Universe, gods & goddesses, the Great Woo, YHVH, or Mother Nature.