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

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This is a magical book about a magical artifact that Ellis took for his own and kept secret and kept safe for many years, Nina Simone's Gum. Ellis includes seven of them, one after another, each powerful on its own but gaining in poignancy as they accumulate. There's something satisfying in a piece of writing that uses a very small, very specific thing as a way to talk about, well, larger, more general things.

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. The larger, more general thing that Nina Simone's Gum explores is creativity, friendship, and the outsized emotional value we often place on physical objects.At one point during the casting of the gum into a limited series of metal pendants, Ellis notes that he feels “overwhelmed by Hannah’s care. With his blessing, the Belgian fashion designer Ann Demeulemeester produced an intricately carved silver ring in its image and, in September, her sculpture of the gum will be exhibited in Waterstones, Piccadilly, to mark the book’s publication. It is a story about the meaning we place on things, on experiences, and how they become imbued with spirituality. The story of the gum's journey from soft palate to marble plinth is tracked, but this is also a delightful diary of Ellis's musical life and friendships, as well as a consideration of how objects become meaningful when connected to memory. The gum remained with him for twenty years; a sacred totem, his creative muse, growing in significance with every passing year.

Particularly illuminating is a reminiscence by the London jeweler Hannah Upritchard about the time she spent working with Ellis to figure out how to cast the gum in metal without destroying it. Made after the death of Cave’s 15-year-old son, Arthur, in 2014, it is infused with an almost otherworldly spirituality that has no precedent in recent rock music. 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. At first Ellis found it hard to find a place for his violin in the Bad Seeds’ established lineup – “There really wasn’t a lot of room. He is one of those people who makes special things happen and, as a result, to whom special things happen!

Home to William Golding, Sylvia Plath, Kazuo Ishiguro, Sally Rooney, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Max Porter, Ingrid Persaud, Anna Burns and Rachel Cusk, among many others, Faber is proud to publish some of the greatest novelists from the early twentieth century to today. Nina Simone’s Gum reveals how something seemingly insignificant and disposable can form beautiful connections between people.

I really liked the parts about Ellis's youth as well - finding an old accordion in a dump, the box of collected things under the bed, the Australian summerness nostalgia. Arguably the most important teacher he pays tribute to is Mick Geyer, the guy who introduced him both to the music of Nina Simone at a time when “you couldn’t just look up ‘Nina Simone live in ’69’ on YouTube” and to Nick Cave in person in 1994, a meeting that would change both musicians’ lives. I found this book in the moments between sleep and awake, and bought it then and there and I found that each and every time I picked up the book, I was transported back to that magical place. At the gig’s end, Ellis mounted the stage, and souvenired the gum, placing it and its towel into a yellow-and-red Tower Records bag. Enthusiasm, obsession and veneration combine to provide a warmly human picture of both the object of worship and the author himself.Scrolling through that list, a book with such an "obsurd" title jumped right out of me, "NINA SIMONE'S GUM. You don't need to know anything about music (or exhibitions) to marvel at the account of how lovingly and professionally they set about preparing suitable conditions for the display of a fingertip-sized piece of chewing gum.