Jetsetting is now not the privilege of the elite so much as a veritiginous mundanity for a permanently dispossessed global workforce.
Little Axe's records are wracked with collective grief. Spectral harmonicas resemble howling wolves; echoes linger like wounds that will never heal; the voices of the living harmonise with the voices of the dead in songs thick with reproach, recrimination and the hunger for redemption.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects the interplay between collective grief and the haunting nature of music, illustrating how art can connect the living with the dead.
Mark Fisher's quote delves into the profound emotional weight carried by music, particularly in the context of collective grief. The imagery of spectral harmonicas and howling wolves evokes a sense of sorrow and loss, while the idea of voices harmonizing suggests a connection between the living and the dead, highlighting the enduring impact of those who have passed. The quote encapsulates themes of reproach, longing for redemption, and the complex nature of memory and mourning, underscoring how art serves as a vessel for these deep, often unresolved emotions.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech at a memorial service, one might use this quote to illustrate how music transcends time and connects us to those we've lost.
More from Mark Fisher
All quotes →If it is true, for instance, that depression is constituted by low serotonin levels, what still needs to be explained is why particular individuals have low levels of serotonin. This requires a social and political explanation.
The most powerful love songs always turn on the discrepancy between the act of declaring love and the knowledge that the ostensible addressee is no longer there, was never there, and could never be there.
If people dying as a consequence of the implementation of measures cannot count as evidence that the legislation has detrimental effects, what would?
What many students most want from college, although they would never admit it, is an authority structure. There is a demand for an authority which they can then reject; they want to be told what to do, so they can disobey. It is a textbook case of bad faith, a flight from freedom.
Sometimes a disappearance can be more haunting than an apparition.
Similar quotes
One of the great functions of art is to help us imagine what it is like to be not ourselves, what it is like to be someone or something else, what it is like to live in another skin, what it is like to live in another body, and in that sense to surpass ourselves, to go out beyond ourselves.
It’s a curious thing. I suppose most people think of artists as impatient but I don’t know of any first-rate artist who hasn’t manifested in his career an appalling patience, a willingness to wait and to do his best now in the expectation that next year he will do better.
The character of the artist doesn't enter into the nature of the art
Between beauty of expression and power of expression there is a difference of function. The first aims at pleasing the senses, the second has a spiritual vitality which for me is more moving and goes deeper than the senses.
It's a fact, the majority of films in Hollywood are from the male perspective. And the female characters, very rarely do they get to speak to another female character in a movie, and when they do it's usually about a guy, not anything else. So they're very male-centric, Hollywood films, in general. So I think it's incredible that Ned Benson, when I said I'd love to know where she goes, says okay, I'm going to write another film from the female perspective.
Sorrowful and great is the artist's destiny.