Warren Ellis on how a serendipitous moment altered his life’s path for good

Looking back, my music thing happened by accident.

When I was 24, I was studying music but was never particularly good at playing [my instrument], the violin. So I went back to the city and was on drugs and alcohol, at a loose end. One day I was walking down the street, and a guy rolled the window down and yelled out my name: “Hey, Warren! Do you still play the violin?” I said it had been a while, that it was in the past – and when you’re younger, the past can be, like, six months ago. He said, “Look, I have a friend who has a bunch of songs, do you wanna come play? She’s got a concert at the end of the week.” So I went and played, and then everything stemmed from there. I found myself playing with different people, and formed the Dirty Three. Then a couple of years later I met Nick [Cave], and I’m where I am now.

If that guy hadn’t rolled the window down when he saw me, I might have been doing something really different right now. I might have been dead and buried in the ground, because I was running down a one-way street at the time. I’ve always been aware that the path of my life has been changed by seemingly innocuous little accidents. But it’s about interacting with people – I think people are just ideas waiting to happen. We have all that stuff within us and it’s who we come in contact with that draws it out.

The moment I realised that I could really move in [the music world] was doing The Proposition with Nick. I had no idea that I could write a score. He asked me if I would go in and help him work on it, and after five days, we managed to compose a score for the film. At the time, I didn’t know what I was walking into. With these moments, you never know when you’re walking into them, and there’s been this change within you. In many ways, I feel the same way as the first time I walked into that studio – I still feel as vulnerable. But I think other people help us find our better selves.