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

Product Information

In a way which perhaps allows everyone to experience a little bit of the wonder which it brought the guy who had guarded it for two decades. Ellis includes seven of them, one after another, each powerful on its own but gaining in poignancy as they accumulate. He is one of those people who makes special things happen and, as a result, to whom special things happen! The gum remained with him for twenty years; a sacred totem, his creative muse, growing in significance with every passing year.

EVERYBODY HAS THEIR celebrity stories: chance encounters with the very famous in which somebody regular sees somebody renowned, recasting the day with a patina of enchantment. That’s why the book was such an interesting read for me – on one level, it’s a metaphor for the creative process, but it’s also a deep insight into his inner life told through the obsession he has with the chewing gum. It sort of reminded me of Patti Smith's books a little (I know I said this about The Sick Bag Song too, but I'm not just trying to relate everything to Patti Smith I promise), not just because of the hero worship but because of the guardianship of things that the author's personal icons used to own.The book, at heart, is about the power of things, and of the way those things both effect the individual, and how they lead to bonds between people.

It was his mastery of Orange Blossom Special, learned from a tape of The Johnny Cash Show, that won him a music scholarship to attend a local private school. The pair have created hauntingly atmospheric scores for a dozen movies, including The Proposition (2005), The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford (2007), The Road (2009) and Lawless (2012). And while these items and enthusiasms come and go in physical terms, the reader is never left without the sense that these ephemeral things have lightning-bolt importance. kad Warrenas – ypatingas, kažkoks truputį pusdievis, neabejotinai ir truputį išprotėjęs genijus, galintis prakalbinti bet kurį instrumentą, bet ši knyga įrodo, kad jis dar ir traukia panašius į save – jautrius ir ypatingus, galinčius suprasti, kuo dviejų dešimtmečių senumo gumos gabaliukas yra vertas ne menkesnės pagarbos, nei koks Monet originalas.Nina Simone’s Gum] is a metaphor for [Ellis’] creativity — the blossoming of a small idea into something bigger and bolder — but also a journey inside the impulsive, improvisatory mind of Warren Ellis, his passions, obsessions and superstitions.

It’s where Simone famously asked for “some champagne, some cocaine and some sausages” before the gig (and was served all three) and where one of the world’s greatest pictures was taken. 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. Simone, towards the end of her life and in poor health, went from an apparently shaky start to a barnstorming, blinding finish. 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.I have so many silly little things from silly little important days in my life that litter my home and cover our bookshelves. Worrying the gum would be damaged or lost, Warren decided to first have it cast in silver and gold, sparking a chain of events that no one could have predicted, one that would take him back to his childhood and his relationship to found objects. Nina Simone‘s Gum - and the way Warren collects, cares for and curates it - as a metaphor for the devotion that fanatics feel for the “divine relic”, provides a centre point to the story of Ellis’s life and connection with music and “things”. She then began a performance that Ellis describes as “transformative” – both for her and the audience. He seems like a person who goes about the world in a state of wonder, that he seems so grateful for the life he leads.