In his completely charming and joyful memoir Nina Simone’s Gum, Ellis tells the story of his acquisition and stewardship of this magical keepsake, but also of vocation, understanding, interconnectedness, and the power of artistic communities to support and sustain their members and fans. Bu değer vermenin insanlar arasında paylaşılabilen, o nesnenin zamanla bir nevi "müritler" oluşturmasına olanak sağlayan toplumsal bir hadiseye dönüşmesi Nina Simone's Gum'ın da temel meselelerinden birisi. 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. She came up with the idea to make a beard oil with my face on it and all the money from that went to the orangutans.

it's a hands down unique book, taking an object we would - at best - ignore and telling a story about it, a story filled with care and admiration, because things aren't only what they seem to be, people aren't only what they seem to be. Warren has turned this memento, snatched from his idol's piano in a moment of rapture, into a genuine religious artefact. müziğe nasıl başladığını, Yunan sanatçı Arleta ya da sonradan kendisinin en büyük işbirlikçilerinden biri olacak Nick Cave gibi yolunun kesiştiği birçok insanla olan ilişkisini kitap boyunca okuyoruz.The gum remained with Ellis for twenty years – a sacred totem, his creative muse – until 2019, when Nick Cave, his collaborator and great friend, asked him if he had anything he could contribute to Cave’s Stranger Than Kindness exhibition . He bundled it in the towel she used to wipe her brow, wrapped that in a Tower Records bag, and proceeded to keep it with him for the next two decades.

Through writing about the gum, I also found a way of reconnecting with people who meant a lot to me and trying to close a few narratives that had remained open-ended and unfinished somehow. Marvel as Ellis' collection of eccentric personal mementos morphs into a celebration of the intangible wonder of music. 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). He recently announced the opening of Ellis Park, a wildlife sanctuary in Sumatra for bears and monkeys that cannot be released into the wild owing to the injuries they have suffered from abuse by humans.The pair met in 1993 and have been through a lot together since, including coming off heroin at around the same time – “I don’t talk about it,” says Ellis, “because it’s the least interesting aspect of anything about my life. 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. And then she said it would make a good connections text if the theme was how fame inspires people do weird things.

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. 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. There is a completely natural focus on love and respect, without the ethereal superfluousness that is all too often observed to accompany these emotions. It is a celebration of the artistic process and the incomparable power of the art born from it – of friendship, understanding and love. Ne tik dėl milžiniško tikėjimo žmonijos gerumu užtaiso, bet ir dėl to, kad istorija neeilinė, o ir apie ją dar išgirsime.

Thanks to Ellis’s willingness to share his revered item with the world, Simone’s gum provides an occasion for visitors to “marvel at the significance of this most ordinary and disposable of things,” as well as “how it could transform, through an infusion of love and attention, into an object of devotion, consecrated by Warren’s unrestrained worship, not just of the great Nina Simone, but of the transcendent power of music itself.