{"id":8675,"date":"2024-09-06T18:06:27","date_gmt":"2024-09-06T22:06:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/the-paradox-of-joy-with-a-nick-cave-song-and-a-lisel-mueller-poem-the-marginalian\/"},"modified":"2024-09-06T18:06:27","modified_gmt":"2024-09-06T22:06:27","slug":"the-paradox-of-joy-with-a-nick-cave-song-and-a-lisel-mueller-poem-the-marginalian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/the-paradox-of-joy-with-a-nick-cave-song-and-a-lisel-mueller-poem-the-marginalian\/","title":{"rendered":"The Paradox of Joy, with a Nick Cave Song and a Lisel Mueller Poem \u2013 The Marginalian"},"content":{"rendered":"

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In this world heavy with robust reasons for despair, joy is a stubborn courage we must not surrender, a fulcrum of personal power we must not yield to cynicism, blame, or any other costume of helplessness. \u201cExperience of conflict and a load of suffering has taught me that what matters above all is to celebrate joy,\u201d Ren\u00e9 Magritte wrote<\/a> just after living through the second World War of his lifetime. \u201cLife is wasted when we make it more terrifying, precisely because it is so easy to do so.\u201d And when the war within rages, as it does in every life, the practice of joy, the courage of joy, becomes our mightiest frontier of resistance. \u201cYour joy is your sorrow unmasked,\u201d Kahlil Gibran<\/a> observed in one of his prophetic poems. This paradox remains one of the 17 most important things I have learned about life<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Nick Cave<\/a>, who has lived through some unimaginable loss<\/a>, brought the paradox of joy to the 300th edition of his wonderful journal The Red Hand Files<\/em><\/a> \u2014 an oasis of largehearted anticynicism in our world, and my favorite email by orders of magnitude. He writes:<\/p>\n

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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. It is an earned thing brought into focus by what we have lost \u2014 at least, it can seem that way.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This paradox comes alive in Nick\u2019s song \u201cJoy\u201d from his altogether soul-slaking record Wild God<\/em><\/a>. \u201cWe\u2019ve all had too much sorrow \u2014 now is the time for joy,\u201d goes a lyric spoken by the ghost of his dead son.<\/p>\n