Faziolis, fanmail, friends When I think of Nick Cave, I think first of the murder ballad he wrote and performed with Kylie Minogue. I was 12 when I saw the music video, which was slightly scary, slightly ephemeral; I think of John Everett Millais’s painting of drowning Ophelia, a pale woman strewn out in a river surrounded by the greenery of the British countryside; but the music box in my head is playing a Gainsbourg/Birkin song. I see Nick Cave, Australian rock star, standing, tall, gaunt, musical and melancholy.

Since Cave lost his teenage son in a tragic accident in the UK, I’ve paid attention to how he has digested his grief. And when I open the latest edition of his email, Red Hand Files, I feel like I am passing through his kitchen as he is talking to a colleague, friend, fan or neighbour: just enough to feel the warmth of a stove top, of conversation and of feeling. Cave told a fan in the past that only he opens these fan emails. He reads 50 of these questions or stories a day, choosing one to republish and reply to.

Some of them are long, and sad, and ask him about his music, or share their experiences of it, and probe into his sadness and survival. Others are brilliantly brief: there was one from a man in Greece who asked Cave about some gossip and whether he had been with Kanye West (Cave writes back: "Dear Vassilis, No. Love, Nick").

One other delight of a correspondence came from Mike in Birmingham, after fans had started a crowdfunding service for Nick Cave to get a Fazioli piano: “Why don’t you just buy your own fucking piano, you cheap c**t” – to which the musician signed off his email: "Mike is right, God bless him, I really should just buy my own piano. Love, Nick." If you’re looking for community, this is it.

Nabeelah, conversation editor The Red Hand Files (reading time: as long as you want)
The alt-right movement explained via toxic gender relations Since Trump came to office, attention has been given to a white supremacist and alt-right movement that has existed for years, but only came out of the shadows in the past four years. Understood only in crude terms, these new movements are, in fact, varied and sit fascinatingly not only at the intersection of race but also of masculinity, patriarchy, and social exclusion.

Few articles illustrate this as well as this piece from The Atlantic that reads like a movie script. The story of a young woman who sits at the heart of an alt-right social media movement unpicks all the strands that come together to form such nationalist movements and shows how, in the end, so much hatred of fellow humans is about fear and fragility.

Nesrine, Better Politics correspondent The Atlantic: ‘The alt-right’s star racist propagandist has no regrets’ (reading time: 18 minutes)
A brilliant, terrifying ode to sleeplessness I haven’t been sleeping well these past six months. If it’s 2am where you are and you can’t catch a wink either, I recommend spending some time on this piece by The Morning Context’s Roshni P Nair. But don’t wake the neighbours because it is harrowing reading.

Roshni talks about the mind-blowing damage that lack of sleep can do to everything from the brain to the heart – particularly relevant given the havoc Covid-19 has wreaked on our circadian rhythms. She exhumes the forgotten story of "sleepy sickness" that coincided with the Spanish flu and afflicted 1.6 million people with either too much sleep or none at all.

Has Covid-19 come with its own version of encephalitis lethargica? Read on to find out. But also do enjoy the sheer brilliance of Roshni’s prose – each word so delicately placed along the next as if a master horologist were arranging time itself. Who knows? It may just coax you to call it a night.

Tanmoy, Sanity correspondent The Morning Context: ‘The other pandemic that’s keeping Indians awake’ (reading time: 12 minutes)

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