Nina Simone's Gum: A Memoir of Things Lost and Found

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A captivating, often moving memoir - a tribute to the power of great art wrapped in an exploration of the minutiae gathered in the itinerant life of the nomadic musician. A lovely little book about how collected objects can turn into magical totems, about observing and participating in art, and about how these things can bring out great care and kindness in people. After the show, in a state of awe, Warren Ellis crept onto the stage, took Dr Simone’s piece of chewed gum from the piano, wrapped it in her stage towel and put it in a Tower Records bag. On one hand, it’s just a piece of gum, but on the other hand it’s the fuck-you power of a titan in her waning years, pulling out all the stops despite everything.

The well-known story of Warren’s own interest being sparked by a discarded Hohner piano-accordion he found on a rubbish dump is just one way in which the randomness of thrown away items can provide new meaning, life or inspiration.

On stage, his extravagantly expressive playing is something to behold, all flailing arms and furrowed brow, his bow held aloft like a matador’s sword before being drawn across the strings of his amped-up violin. A distinctly amiable and intelligent host, Ellis provides insight into some unusual creative minds . Kuo labiau kitas apsinuogina, kuo labiau pasako, kad rūpi, kad skauda, kad neramu, tinkamas partneris – gyvenimo, draugystės, profesijos – gali ne tik suprasti, bet ir atliepti, papildyti emociją, ją įgalinti ir patvirtinti jos reikšmingumą, net jei pats norėtum numenkinti. Yolda bulduğumuz şekli güzel bir taş bazen uğur nesnesi oluyor bizim için ve aylarca cebimizde dolaşıyor, çocukken taktığımız künye annemizin çekmecesinde sonraki nesillere aktarılmayı bekleyen bir andaca dönüşüyor, başka zaman görsek dikkatimizi dahi çekmeyecek nesneler arkadaşlarımızın elinde, onların sözleriyle karşımıza çıkınca kutsal emanetler gibi değer kazanıyor birden.

When Ellis takes Nina Simone’s gum from her piano after a transcendent performance, it takes him on an epic adventure while he contemplates the meaning and importance of these precious objects that we carry with us. Ellis includes seven of them, one after another, each powerful on its own but gaining in poignancy as they accumulate. It is in the recording studio, however, that the dynamic between the two has transformed Cave’s music of late. The gum remained with him for twenty years; a sacred totem, his creative muse, a conduit that would eventually take Ellis back to his childhood and his relationship with found objects, growing in significance with every passing year.Indeed, one of the key ideas of the book is about the way friendships are deepened by things – empty bottles, old VHS tapes, fading pictures, scraps of paper – that often are lost, but which exercise a power even in their absence. Warren has turned this memento, snatched from his idol’s piano in a moment of rapture, into a genuine religious artefact. After a Nina Simone performance in 1999 Warren climbed on the stage and collected the gum that she had taken out just as she started and put in her towel at the side of her piano.

Obviously Ellis loves Nina Simone, but it's in a very reverential way - he literally put the gum on a marble plinth, was awe inspired enough to climb onstage after her show to take it in the first place. Nina Simone'un sakızı üzerinden eşyalara, yaratıcılığa, tutkuya, takıntılara ve hayata dair çok şey anlatıyor.On Thursday 1 July, 1999, Dr Nina Simone gave a rare performance as part of Nick Cave’s Meltdown Festival. Zaten projenin en başında sadece sakızın s��reç boyunca çekilmiş fotoğraflarından oluşan bir kitap varmış Ellis'in aklında ama neyse ki hayat karşısına onu doğru tarafa yönlendirebilecek insanları çıkarmış da hem Nina Simone'un sakızına daha fazla anlam katan hem de sakızdan aldığı anlamı çoğaltarak kendi başına değerli bir nesneye dönüşen bu anlatıyı okuyabiliyoruz okurlar olarak.

Warren Ellis is one of the most distinguished musicians in today's music and his colab with Nick Cave is just amazing. I want to build this big stone replica of the gum and place it in the middle of a water feature so that the bears and monkeys can play on it.From the eponymous gum, Ellis radiates backward and forward in time, including saturated detail from his imaginative childhood, charting the development of his superstitious nature and somewhat mystical way of looking at the world, which persists to this day. This book is Ellis' exploration of magic in found object, such as his first Accordion, a thing he found in the garbage; or the magic his first violin held, and continues to hold inside it and how that magic took him to a place where he could preserve a strange little bit of the Almighty Nina Simone's magic.