Jessa Crispin unearths an old Nick Cave lecture on love songs. Cave insists that the Psalms and the Song of Solomon are two of the greatest love songs ever written:
The love song must be born into the realm of the irrational, absurd, the distracted, the melancholic, the obsessive, the insane for the love song is the noise of love itself and love is, of course, a form of madness. Whether it be the love of God, or romantic, erotic love – these are manifestations of our need to be torn away from the rational, to take leave of our senses, so to speak. Love songs come in many guises and are seemingly written for many reasons – as declarations or to wound – I have written songs for all of these reasons – but ultimately the love songs exist to fill, with language, the silence between ourselves and God, to decrease the distance between the temporal and the divine.
He adds:
Alas, the most endearing form of correspondence, the love letter, like the love song has suffered at the hands of the cold speed of technology, at the carelessness and soullessness of our age.
Update from a reader:
Love the Nick Cave song, "Into My Arms", you featured. Thought you might like to know that it's an even more complicated ode than it might seem at first.
It's not only about his love for God, or his love for a woman, but also his love for heroin, which he suffered/enjoyed a long-term addiction to. You should listen to the lyrics more closely. When he talks about "taking you into my arms", he's meaning not just the outer embrace, but the intravenous injection. His lack of interest in "an interventionist God", is not just theological, but literal. He didn't want an "intervention" in his heroin addiction. And "candles burning bright" refers not just to prayer candles, but the candle used for preparing heroin for injection. All three of these meld together in his mind and life as part of the same painful love affair. That's what makes the song so beautiful.
The Dish 