Dear Nick, 

 

OK yeah, there is a 99.9% chance that that is not your name. But it felt really weird addressing a letter to everyone and no one in particular all at once so, from now on, all letters will be written to Nick Cave. That’s right! You thought you were subscribing to a standard newsletter but really, you have just tapped into an admittedly one-sided conversation between myself, Lucy Rice (Last Apollo), and Nick Cave (Nick Cave). 

 

I have picked Nick because, as you might have guessed, I love the Red Hand Files. If you want to read the opinions and gritty stories of a successful musical icon click here. If however, you prefer the opinions and sort-of gritty stories of a real-life struggling artist, just STAY HERE. 

 

I have wanted to write a newsletter for a long time, since before Last Apollo even existed. I have always had a bit of an unhealthy compulsion regarding the exhibition of my creative ventures to the world. When I was younger, I was a fiend for setting up Instagram accounts for various ‘visual art projects’. While pushing the limits of visual art and the limits of my mother's iPad camera, I was also writing a lot of poetry (that I was convinced was exceptional due to the fact it didn’t rhyme) and I was playing A LOT of music (classical, trad, choral, you name it - this unfortunate swot was probably a member of the club).

 

As much as I like to make fun of how precocious (and possibly insufferable) I was as a teenager, I admire and almost envy that version of myself now. I created with a huge sense of freedom and conviction that I lost as I grew older and more self-conscious. I lost so much confidence in my creative abilities and the once limitless universe I used to plunge myself into shrank away, becoming smaller and smaller until I could barely grasp it at all. 

 

It was so gradual that it was almost imperceivable but, by the time I had reached college (or ‘uni’ depending on your persuasion), I had grown colourless and my brain was left dulled and derelict. In 2020, as my personal reality continued to morph into something unrecognisable, so too did the world around me.

 

Although the pandemic was a terrifying and difficult time, I am, in one way, grateful for it. Without two years away from ‘regularly scheduled programming’, I would never have had the confidence to start writing music again and to begin thawing the thick frost that had formed over my creative identity. 

 

A particular moment of catalysis was receiving the book ‘Devotion’ by Patti Smith from a friend for my birthday. Throughout lockdown, there were signs of the icy shell cracking and splintering, but upon reading Devotion, that shell exploded. Until this point, musicians, writers and artists had all existed in immensely separate planes of creativity. Suddenly, I saw how fluid the definition of an artist could be. Even more importantly, I realised that you did not need to be a master of your craft for it to still be a truly compelling and evocative piece of art. This is something I seem to have subconsciously known as a child and am grateful to be learning again as an adult.

 

Thanks to the beautiful friendships I have made through art as well as the opportunities I have had to spend so much time immersed in the creative world, I have felt the universe of art return to the colourful, playful expanse it had been when I was younger. I no longer feel tethered to the idea of defining myself as only a musician as opposed to an artist of general description. 

 

I am excited to be pursuing a newsletter and creating a space where my collaborators, my friends and I can explore this definition of ‘the artist’ together. This newsletter is a huge celebration of a creative liberation! Art now, to me, feels like a big, warm, powerful heart. It might consist of different chambers but the same vivid blood flows through them all. It is such a privilege to get to explore this ‘house of a heart’ with you. Thank you so much for subscribing, truly. 

 

Lucy.