Jetsetting is now not the privilege of the elite so much as a veritiginous mundanity for a permanently dispossessed global workforce.
Mark FisherRead
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
GriefMusicLossRedemptionCollective Memory
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.
Mark FisherRead
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.
Mark FisherRead
If people dying as a consequence of the implementation of measures cannot count as evidence that the legislation has detrimental effects, what would?
Mark FisherRead
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.
Mark FisherRead
Sometimes a disappearance can be more haunting than an apparition.
Mark FisherRead
Similar quotes
We name one thing and then another. That’s how time enters poetry. Space, on the other hand, comes into being through the attention we pay to each word. The more intense our attention, the more space, and there’s a lot of space inside words.
Charles SimicRead
Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods.
Iris MurdochRead
Why, if 'tis dancing you would be, There's brisker pipes than poetry. Say, for what were hop-yards meant, Or why was Burton built on Trent? Oh many a peer of England brews Livelier liquor than the Muse, And malt does more than Milton can To justify God's ways to man. Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink For fellows whom it hurts to think: Look into the pewter pot To see the world as the world's not.
A. E. HousmanRead
To hold a pen is to be at war.
VoltaireRead
I had a funny feeling as I saw the house disappear, as though I had written a poem and it was very good and I had lost it and would never remember it again.
Raymond ChandlerRead
When I'm writing a book, sentence by sentence, I'm not thinking theoretically. I'm just trying to work out the story from inside the characters I've got.
Salman RushdieRead