What followed on the broader level of the music was Nick Cave’s And No More Shall We Part (04/10/01), which interestingly and perplexingly (and quite amazingly too) continued plumbing the same vein of inspiration as if never leaving off (as would Abattoir Blues/ Lyre of Orpheus, and Push the Sky Away). In other words, given the arc of the narrative as she’d delineated it up until contacting him and presenting herself, what she fully expected as the outcome at this juncture was expressed artistically, while being in no way recognized in the real world. This is to say that after recognizing a breaking and separation that had been in his lyrics since 1987, and having undergone a complete interior reversal that flipped her perception so she saw herself in essential enmity with her father and spiritually united with Cave thanks to redemption in Christ, and having just acknowledged this collectively identifying awareness as a spiritual marriage, Cave’s opening declaration, “And No More Shall We Part”, (perfectly contextualized in terms of his inspirational source by his employ of the birds who sing about/to her), -her exact position with the singer/songwriters as the existing nexus of the musical feedback, in the context of a marriage depicted by a ring being “locked upon her finger” after she’d shifted the ring on her finger to signify that in November, recognizing it as a reciprocal contract not with any of the individuals who were involved, but between her commitment to the collective awareness itself, and God. And Cave equated this with his own arrival at freedom, as well as union.
From her perspective it adequately expressed spiritual reunification of a bifurcated rift that had existed with his inspirational object in a feminine since 1987. When that had changed, it was fully acknowledged, in the terms of reference that had awakened her in terms of him, i.e., she’d reacted because she felt if he had actively called her, and called her awake, she was going to get married. When she realized based on his own reaction that whatever had transpired had been transcendent of himself, she had simply reacted by marrying in terms of how she perceived the transcendent reality that had acted, apparently through him, and as per her existing faith in that moment that in terms of God’s existing “glue”, committing in terms of God would work as a transmission because they too were connected to God; Cave actually was still Inspired and happened to be reacting fully in context, even though he’d reacted to her in the real world by saying she was deluded and no connectivity had existed.
For her this only amplified the existing confusion, indicating that both Bono and Billy could be reacting inspirationally as lovers (even to the extent of the reciprocity of SIYL, or even the context of marriage itself) –in real time and still have no inkling of conscious awareness that she existed somewhere in the world as a real person. It only created a full spectrum to the range of the existing question of what might actually be happening, for Cave was fully in context with this album, though the incidence was in four songs only; (this actually was around the level his ratio had run for all those years, in fact it was perhaps only where it had peaked creatively, with the exception of The Boatman’s Call).
The other songs were “The Sorrowful Wife” opening with the announcement that he’d married on the day of the eclipse, a wife who tended flowers (this after the advent of her tending flowers in “Wild Honey”, -a wife who was now sentenced to the “task” of recalling all the clues that had transpired in the past, which in revealing herself in public on the SP Forum, had been exactly what she’d been doing, in terms of listing songs and song parts that delineated the connected consciousness in terms of “June”). She didn’t know if she could make anything of this song since Cave had actually married in this time period, but for her the eclipse had happened very close to when she met both Bono and Cave, and had (without her knowing this yet as it was a B-side), already interjected itself into Bono’s lyrics as the day he’d met “her”, as he cited the day of the eclipse as the day the moon came and sat on his shoulder in “Flower Child”. For her (even without knowing this) it already signified her first meeting with Bono (where she’d opened by declaring that they were already in an existing spiritual marriage connection that appeared to have arisen from both separately perceiving Divine commands to marry in 1987; the encounter that had possibly prompted him to name his son Elijah) which had happened so close to the eclipse she made reference to it in her delivery for Christmas.
This is what she had told him, but the outcome of the encounter had been her complete sense of abandonment and sorrow in that context, where his apparent indifference left her feeling completely alienated from him, her heart listless. The core context where this had really taken place was in the fact, perhaps, that he had consciously chose to integrate what she had told him and assumed possession of that context in declaring “In a Little While” (along with “Always”), and with that conscious act of integration locked a metaphysical ring upon her finger, even while she was utterly saddened by it. It had also possessed its own sorrowful context, a declaration she couldn’t really see ever happening (the promise she would surely be his) when what had happened in actuality was the exact opposite; it didn’t even appear to matter to him that she existed. It was just art, and every prospect or sensibility she’d ever possessed about him felt utterly erased.
To hear this reflected in Cave, it was as if the “male side” reacted in this song for failing to see its own consequence meting out a reciprocal sense of abandonment (the chorus of “The Sorrowful Wife” seeking forgiveness for the consequence of such blindness). The act of divulging and having that reciprocally expressed only inside of Bono’s art/lyrics (and here’s the thing, he had lyrically responded to her in the context of marriage as she’d asserted it, so there was an existing sense of this having just recently taken place, for it only became affirmed when he integrated and acknowledged with his words what she’d revealed), this becoming an existing reciprocity in this manner, had been emotionally shattering for her, and left her totally submerged in a wave of sorrow. So the song was true to the existing circumstances. Not to mention it additionally made mention of her in conjunction with the cry of the birdsong, this with an edge of harrow and foreboding. Birds as the source of song had always symbolized this vein of inspiration with Cave.
Furthermore, Cave produced “Gates to the Garden”, where he turns to find her waiting. To meet at the gates can confer a return or entry into the Edenic state before the Fall, and in the context of the song infers the sacred is found not in religious shrines and places of worship but rather entry to the Garden itself, (the innocent sacred state of Creation before the Fall, also inferentially Nature), where they open the gates; his real acknowledgment being that God was in the hand that he held. This after her whole process of recognizing God isolated as an existing reciprocity inside the aspect of the lovers as had been played out as “June and “Glass”, something she was trying to demonstrate and prove to Billy by asserting that the context between them as she asserted it in the Now would come out in the other artist’s musical feedback. Furthermore Cave’s framing of their inaugural meeting as entry into the Garden not only connoted a return to the Edenic state but had been conferred by the existing feedback that had most closely signified his advent in her consciousness, being what arose with PJ Harvey’s Is This Desire? –also framed their first encounter as taking place in “The Garden”, the song which had happened to most particularly frame the context in terms of Cave’s prior songs/lyrics.
Not to be outdone, the real clincher on the album was the addition of “Sweetheart, Come” which for her obliquely referenced how her public advent on the SP Forum had amounted to a virtual lynching, especially since the last passage of personal betrayal appeared to have been in collusion with the SP site administration itself. But the song could be taken two ways, as she had shed a much more serious threat and history of abuse by rebelling against her father, and his ability to threaten her (at least with eternal damnation) had now shrivelled away, but his efforts at socially ostracizing her were still reaping bitter fruit within the confines of her own family. Again in terms of the rift that had existed from a muse standpoint, this could be “mapped” in terms of Cave’s lyrical trajectory as having originated when she succumbed to her father’s sexual abuse and was under his control, so this was in the context of repatriation she expected of him in what it rejected in the context of reunifying. (Not to mention the context of the black dogs in her dreams was inextricably associated with the consequences her father her wrought on her physically, mentally and spiritually. The lions connoted the lion’s den, being sentenced to death by a pagan king and surviving untouched and unharmed (the survivor being a prophet credited for revealing the mystery of a king’s dream, which prompts the king in turn to credit his God with being “the God of Gods”).) But the verse capturing this aspect worked on multiple levels, depicting “her” as walking away from burdens inflicted by a sum of people (in terms of the forum and family, both true); the closure that threatened a male if ever again he touched her also worked on two levels, for there was the betrayal of “Glass” in the moment in his inability to acknowledge the truth and his attack as “Black Wings”, with her father looming larger in the background.
