Nick Cave and the doors of perception (aka Linate's Gate B29)

Without warning, a Nick Cave lookalike appears in the departure lounge of Linate airport in Milan this afternoon. He's amazingly similar to the Nick Cave figure made familiar from all those photos over the years: raven-black hair, very straight and thick and grown out almost to the shoulders - a huge post-goth helmet of hair in fact; skinny body encased in a dark suit worn with nonchalant élan; a tight, heavily unbuttoned shirt underneath, jewellery glinting at his throat; semi-flared trousers and rather dinky (and no doubt expensive) loafers. The full lounge-lizard-on-a-not-insignificant-budget look. Yeah, man, a very high-grade Nick Cave Impersonator, absolutely no doubt about it. This striking figure is striding about the seating area near the gate. The London flight's delayed (story of my life), but I don't mind because I've got a book to read (Aldous Huxley's genteel-trippy The Doors Of Perception and Heaven And Hell) and now I've got the apparition of the uncannily good Cave impersonator to divert me. And blimey, he's really good. Even while waiting for this boring Saturday afternoon flight he's totally in character. After strutting imperiously back and forth a couple of times (no humdrum sitting down for Nick The Stripper), "Nick Cave" links up with a woman who's now appeared on the scene (a faintly glam-goth woman with exactly the same shade of blacker-than-black hair) and they now saunter to the gate, apparently confident of boarding without delay. They're right! They're immediately through the gate and away - albeit they'll still have to stand on the shuttle bus for 20 minutes (perchè questo è il sistema italiano). Meanwhile, in true non-rockstar style, I'm still marooned with dozens of other passengers, waiting for my group number to be called. But never mind - that whole Nick Cave Impersonator thing has been fun. But hang on. No, surely not. No, it couldn't be, could it? Could the Nick Cave Impersonator, the guy who had apparently produced not someone just vaguely similar to the great man but the absolute incarnation of everything fundamentally Nick Cave-ish - could this person (gulp) be the real Nick Cave? It's a shattering thought. Frankly I'm loath to seriously entertain the idea. The hair, the loafers, the tight shirt and necklaces - no man, no. It's not possible. It's ... too much. No, instead I remain convinced that the Nick Cave apparition at Linate's gate B29 this afternoon was a piece of living art. That this was performance art by a highly skilled practitioner. (I was seemingly the only one watching the performance, but nonetheless ...). Huxley's book dwells on the visionary potential of mescalin and other drugs for transporting the person ingesting them to a rarefied place of heightened sensory awareness, a place Huxley calls the "antipodes" of the mind. Huxley thinks certain works of art can do this too. Such a work, he writes, "transports me, it makes me see with eyes that transfigure a work of art into something else, something beyond art". Exactly! That's how I experienced the Nick Cave performance art in Milan today. It was exquisite, something beyond art. An Antipodean superstar from the disturbed antipodes of the mind. Yes, an Aussie rock god seemed to appear before me clothed in his familiar rock god robes. And he glowed. He appeared, a vision of pure Nick Cave-ness, and then he disappeared. Incredible and perfect. It was a transport of music-fame otherworldliness. Miraculous (miracolo a Milano) and mind-blowing. All this and absolutely no LSD, mescalin or other mind-altering drugs were involved.

Anything to declare Mr Huxley?