Absence functions as a palate cleanser allowing nostalgia to re-inflate a faded artist

Evidence

The willingness to hallucinate is certainly there. Witness the sheer heft of the coverage, and feel the desperation behind it. The prospect of Bowie’s return was guaranteed to tickle the palate of a certain age of listener, but the desires that it triggered were also for something missing from contemporary popular music. These days, Bowie stands for all the lost possibilities going by the idea of art pop — which is to say, not only pop plus art, or pop as art, but a circuit where fashion, visual art and experimental culture connected up and renewed each other in unpredictable ways. His absence was a palate cleanser — his string of forgettable 1980s and Nineties records now forgotten, he could once again be the thin white space onto which fantasies are projected. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1309

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the book’s recurring argument that cultural loss manifests as psychopathology and that the past haunts the present (hauntology of ch34/66). — connects to: Pervasive cultural nostalgia signals an inability to make new memories — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 249; Total sensory absence can feel generative rather than merely frightening — George Michelsen Foy, Zero Decibels: The Quest for Absolute…, 496; Total abandonment and isolation can register as pleasure rather than dread — Julien Gracq, Balcony in the Forest, 506 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Pervasive cultural nostalgia signals an inability to make new memories #complicates (0.75) — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 249
• Total sensory absence can feel generative rather than merely frightening #corroborates (0.72) — George Michelsen Foy, Zero Decibels, 496
• Deep silence can feel like a sensory presence rather than mere absence #expands (0.72) — George Michelsen Foy, Zero Decibels, 35
• Total abandonment and isolation can register as pleasure rather than dread #corroborates (0.70) — Julien Gracq, Balcony in the Forest, 506
• Silence is a positive presence rather than mere absence #corroborates (0.70) — Gordon Hempton, John Grossmann, One Square Inch of Silence- One Man’s…, 1294