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

Product Information

having read this book again, I can affirm that it's the most quietly odd memoir I've yet read, and actually so so good. Once the initial cast was made and the spell unbroken, Ellis went on to collaborate with other artists, turning the gum into relics both private and public: a silver ring, a white gold ingot, and finally a sculpture the size of the human heart — the same size and shape as the human fist, the fist Nina Simone had raised that long-ago summer night hard with her sorrow and her power, chewing her gum.

The gum ended up on display at Cave’s Stranger Than Kindness exhibition at Copenhagen, Denmark in 2019. It also brought him to the attention of Nina Simone’s daughter, Lisa.

I hadn’t opened the towel that contained her gum since 2013. The last person to touch it was Nina Simone, her saliva and fingerprints unsullied. The idea that it was still in her towel was something I had drawn strength from. I thought each time I opened it some of Nina Simone’s spirit would vanish. In many ways that thought was more important than the gum itself. I had never seen her live before and I just never thought I would. She was like the divine incarnate. Like seeing Alice or John Coltrane. I’d heard she was living in the South of France and her health wasn’t great. There were stories about her firing a pistol on her neighbors and things like that. So to actually think that there would be an actual chance to see her was never something I thought would be an option for me. It didn’t really matter what the concert was like, as far as I was concerned. I just wanted to see her because she’s one of the giants. It’s like you’re seeing history. I hadn’t opened the towel that contained her gum since 2013. There were two periods when I didn’t look at it at all. I had taken the gum at her London Festival Hall concert in 1999. Between 1999 and 2004 I opened it periodically. Something shifted when others became aware of the gum’s existence. I thought about how many tiny secrets there must be out there in the universe waiting to be revealed. How many people have secret places with abandoned dreams, full of wonder. I'm not sure what counts as a spoiler as there's not a whole load of plot but I talk about stuff from the end of the book, so spoilers)

Both of those albums are beautiful if sometimes difficult listens, the lyrics written as Cave struggled with subjects such as life, love and loss in the aftermath of his teenage son Arthur’s death. To Ellis, the gum was a talisman, a holy relic, in which the spirit of Simone lingered. Others – a jewelry maker, a music curator, the staff at his publisher – felt a similar power in its presence, he writes. Warren Ellis at Cannes film festival 2021. Photograph: Stephane Cardinale - Corbis/Corbis/Getty Images Even after he finished the book, the serendipity of the gum and its influence on the imagination continues. A unique study of a fan’s devotion, of transcendence and of the artistic vocation — it’s got depth and great warmth. It’s a beautiful piece of work.’The assurance was soon amplified by Upritchard’s conscientious craftsmanship and her devotion to rendering the perfect cast, both physically and symbolically. After considering the two possible approaches to casting — making a mould, or scanning the gum and having it 3D-printed — she felt the computerized option was “too impersonal and dismissive” to properly honor this strange and tender relic. Instead, she settled on “something cruder but also more honest and human.” So when the editor asked me to review this book, it felt like the moment I’d been waiting for without knowing I was waiting, the time to share this small story of an artist I don’t know but appreciate a lot. Here’s why:

What a thrill to see a person whose work gives a little extra beauty and meaning to our lives casually inhabiting the same physical space! Visiting shrines, hanging out with his family, just being so normal — an elevated person down on the same ground. We didn’t try to approach, not wanting to bother him on his own vacation, nor did I sneak off with any of his discarded detritus, but I think of that distant encounter semi-often: a gold nugget we stored away whose shine brightens our brains when recollected. Warren Ellis: People ask me all the time, but there was no thinking about it. It's not something I had ever done, or have ever done since. The concert was so powerful, it was a dream to see her play. I guess I just wanted something that connected me to her, and to that moment. Ellis: No, I feel relieved. The gum is kept in a safe, in a specially designed box that keeps it at the right temperature, so that the colour and the structure don't change. Actually, they don't know what to do with it, and I don't know what to do with it. But it's so beautiful. Of course I was worried about losing my mojo. But letting it go was like making a record and putting it out into the world. It got a life.Starting with 2013’s “Push The Sky Away,” Cave and Ellis have been credited as the sole composers of music for Bad Seeds albums. (“Carnage” might have been a Bad Seeds album, too, Ellis says, but for the difficulties of getting the entire band together during the pandemic.) What does the gum represent to you? Has this small artifact taken on new meaning these past two decades? If I engaged in the making of the music the same way that I do in the listening of other music, I wouldn’t be able to do my job,” Ellis says of writing and recording songs of grief and sorrow. “‘Skeleton Tree’ was an incredibly difficult record to make. Such a mad, happy book about art and music and obsession. I’m so glad I got to read it. It made the world feel lighter.’

Nina Simone’s gum cast in silver by London jeweller Hannah Upritchard. Photograph: Hannah Upritchard

Need Help?

It was cool. If you like odd books and artistic people doing strange things, you will like this book. And actually, what we’re talking about is a thing that’s so kind of amazing and beautiful,” Ellis says. The last couple of records, like ‘Ghosteen’ in particular, and ‘Skeleton Tree,’ we worked really closely together,” he says. Cave issued an overeager “OK!” (In my mind, he curtsied.) And so, after his introduction, the show — which would end in “mutual rapture”: the audience in a state of grateful transcendence, Doctor Nina Simone “restored, awakened, transfigured”— began with intense emotional discord. Sometimes even writing it, I’d sort of pinch myself and go, ‘I’m writing about a piece of chewing gum,’” he says. “Then I realized what I was writing about, these exchanges with people, and things like that.