I’ve been thinking about our heroes lately. Most of all, because I saw mine, Nick Cave, self-proclaimed ‘bride of Jesus’, last Wednesday, 6/6/18 (just one six off brand for old Nick’ who, at sixty, has retained his wholly contrived style; like a wounded crow bred with Lucifer). A friend of mine recently dubbed me a ‘gormless dullard’ for not seeing the objective worth in his heroes – and I understand that. When we talk about our heroes we very often talk about ourselves, the strange and ritualistic meanings we’ve so furiously wrestled from the art. I felt a swell of victory too, tired from work, having been patted down by the Gardaí and standing against the open sky, as Nick Cave took the stage. My hero was in front of me, in front of us, in the beautiful gardens of the Royal Hospital Kilmainham.

“You’re an old man sitting by the fire, you’re the mist rolling off the sea,” Cave cries across the sparse, ambient arrangement of Jesus Alone. Cave picks out Voodoo doctors, demons, victims of an air crash and sublime natural phenomena through the song’s lyrics. We, the adoring crowd, the subjects of the song, are in his words but so many things, and yet nothing definite. That is, we’re not the Voodoo doctor or the mist, but the general ‘you’ that is called to throughout the gig; hanging contingently upon his lip.

Cave lurked down the stage as they fired into their second song Magneto, dancing just within the clasp of the audience, a sea of hands he beckons constantly. Cave thrives on the crowd, whispering “come on, come on, come on, one more time with feeling.” Despite opening with two aching ballads from their most recent album, Skeleton Tree, the gig quickly became about Cave, the man, laughing, joking, muddling his lyrics and honestly relishing the opportunity to perform.

A vicious, near ten-minute version of From Her to Eternity was a truly awe inspiring moment. Cave shrilly screaming about pressing his ear to a girl’s floorboards, leaping on and off his grand piano, freely plucking out something like the melodies of the original. Key member of the Bad Seeds and part-time muse for Cave, Warren Ellis wrung fiendish shrieks and feedback from his violin, dancing spasmodically, as Conway Savage smashed his electric organ with fists and elbows, while Cave collapsed in front of the audience, shrieking “Just kneel and cry!”

Cave’s particularly poignant attempt to pluck out the tune of Distant Sky on his piano reduced me to tears. Whereas the wild interpretations of Jubilee Street, his mic throwing, and stuttering, lyrically interpretation of Stagger Lee confirmed only the glare of the myth in my eyes, despite whatever meanderings seemed to accompany it.

Lame, maybe; but I’ve been thinking about my hero a lot. I’m not trying to sell his genius to you, but it felt important, even momentous, when he stalked into the centre of the crowd during Weeping Song, directing and drawing a clap solo from the audience; until it was tight. In that moment it didn’t matter why he was a hero to any of us, whatever unique readings of his work we prized. It mattered only how he co-opted the various myths, unifying them, and us, in action. To Cave, the man, we are still his adoring crowd, instrumental to his own greatness. He is many things to us: Voodoo doctor, lonely mist and Lucifer among them.