And I dare call myself a connoisseur of camp! Take away my title! Talking about camp, just look at that cover! Those pups and their sad eyes. The book that has piqued my curiosity, amused me to no end, and sent my klepto urges a-spiraling is a copy of seminal Old Hollywood diva, strong brow pioneer, and wire hanger opinionist Joan Crawford’s 1971 memoir My Way of Life. I’m endlessly ashamed to admit that I’ve never read My Way of Life. I know. I believe I spent around an hour picking through a section of bookshelves that lined one whole wall, next to Ben Smith’s double portrait of Nick, entitled Ink and Solace. Hidden among the texts one would expect from Nick’s library–religious studies, Southern Gothic, classic literature, books on music history, was the book I needed to snatch. They also dominated my attention within the exhibition. Nick Cave’s copy of Joan Crawford’s My Way of LifeĪs I explored in much more obsessive detail in my previous longer essay on Stranger Than Kindness: The Nick Cave Exhibition, books, all from Nick Cave’s own library, dominate the exhibition. But if He felt He had to direct any of these objects, He better direct them into my arms! I mean, I don’t believe in an interventionist God either. But certainly not quite as klepto-worthy as the memorabilia and archival objects in the show.
What is a Nick Cave coloring book like you ask? Well: I bought, among other things, a Nick Cave-made coloring book. This is not to say I left the exhibition empty-handed. If you’re wondering, faithful Filthy Dreams readers: Emily, didn’t you already pen a list of items you wanted to steal from Stranger Than Kindness? Well, yes! However, that was only staring at the then-delayed exhibition catalog in 2020 and using it as a real catalog for looting! But now I traveled across borders to see the show IRL in its Montreal iteration and have an even longer list of potential dream thievery!
And why wait? Let’s set it up now with all the objects I have on my illegal shopping list after visiting Stranger Than Kindness. I have a small but adequate apartment that is two rooms that would be a perfect place for a Nick Cave Museum. In his Last Will and Testament made in 1987, on view in the sprawling exhibition Stranger Than Kindness: The Nick Cave Exhibition, Nick Cave requested: “…money earned on records, both publishing and record sales, should be used to have and maintain a small but adequate room or rooms that will serve as the “Nick Cave Memorial Museum” to pay homage to my life.” Reading this document in Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard’s 2014 documentary 20,000 Days on Earth, Nick chuckles and points out that at this point in his life, the money of which he speaks was nothing. Detail of Ben Smith’s Ink and Solace, including a reflection of Nick’s library and the exit sign beckoning for a snatch and grab!
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