The Captain's fore-arm like buncht-up rope, With Anita wrigglin' free onto skull n' dagger, And a portrait of Christ, nailed to an anchor, Etched int… - Nick Cave

O you recall the song ya used to sing-a-long,
Shifting the river-trade on that ol' steamer,
Life is but a dream!

And as the company passed from the valley, into a higher ground,
The rain beat on the ridge and on the meadow, and on the mound, Until nothing was left, nothing at all except the body of Sorrow,
That rose in time, to float upon the surface of the eaten soil.

Writing a good song is not mimicry, or replication, or pastiche, it is the opposite, it is an act of self-murder that destroys all one has strived to produce in the past. It is those dangerous, heart-stopping departures that catapult the artist beyond the limits of what he or she recognises as their known self. This is part of the authentic creative struggle that precedes the invention of a unique lyric of actual value; it is the breathless confrontation with one’s vulnerability, one’s perilousness, one’s smallness, pitted against a sense of sudden shocking discovery; it is the redemptive artistic act that stirs the heart of the listener, where the listener recognizes in the inner workings of the song their own blood, their own struggle, their own suffering.