I am reminded of Greil Marcus's book Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century, which is one of my personal touchstone books, and a book you should read if you haven't. It's a history of punk and dada and nihilism, and that theme of that kind of absence runs through it: those who believe they've been abandoned and are forsaken, those who believe they've been abandoned and are delighted, those who only wish they could be abandoned by God, and the art that comes from all of them. It's powerful art.