Those days at São Pedro’s were simple and good. They were the best of times. Now, developers are tearing the bar down and building a luxury apartment block in its place. I understand that this is the way of world — things come and go — and I know that we are facing more pressing problems than the demolition of a little bar in Sao Paulo, yet even still, a piece of Vila Madalena’s soul will be lost when they rip that place down, and a piece of mine too.

Nick Cave, The Red Hand Files, Aug 2021

Nick Cave’s response to the questions:

1. What is your favourite bar and can we have a drink there?
2. Nick, the bar “Mercearia São Pedro”, a place you used to go when you lived in São Paulo, will close its doors and be replaced by an expensive building. What do you think about it?

I was very taken by Nick Cave’s articulation of the tension between the head, and the heart. So many times I feel this way about development and progress, versus memory and soul.

It is the way time works, that we exist in it, and belong to it, yet we take from it, and create from it.

Alas, time is a lion and you are a lamb.

Time is a lion, and you are a lamb.

Joe Henry, Time is a Lion, 2007