Dear Leah and Lonny,

I’m currently on a flight to the next show. Turbulence abounds, and not just in the air. Easter Sunday has come and gone. The pope has died and been buried. I haven’t slept properly for days and am struggling to find a coherent thought. Frankly, I am in no condition to write a Red Hand File. Still, what else is there to do on a flight from Philadelphia to Chicago, except perhaps keep it brief?

Leah, when I tell the audience that I love them, the sentiment is entirely true. I feel an emotional transaction with the crowd that is powerful and profoundly intimate. I stand before you all – strangers – witnessing you both individually and collectively, and sense an unbounded love. This love is true. It is not symbolic, metaphorical, or platitudinous. I see before me a group of human beings, precarious and vulnerable, granted a brief time on this earth, each filled with a shocking potential for beauty and terror, good and evil, and with the extraordinary capacity to give and receive love. At that moment, love is the appropriate response. Lonny, when the crowd joins me in singing ‘Into My Arms’, it feels like a mutual embrace, an act of conciliation, of comfort, and fellowship – an acknowledgement of our common fate, that we are, in that moment, both living and dying in concert – and it’s hard to keep my fucking shit together, to be honest.

The captain has just announced, “We are beginning our descent” – but it sounds like ‘ascent’.

“We are beginning our ascent,” says the Captain, a week after Easter, and The Bad Seeds step on stage and feel the rising turbulence of the crowd.

“We are beginning our ascent,” says the Captain, as the body of Pope Francis is transported through the streets of Rome, and The Bad Seeds continue their sonic elevation.

“We are beginning our ascent,” says the captain as the nose dips, and we crouch and kiss the ground.

See you tonight, Chicago!

Love, Nick

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