Standing still while everything changes produces powerful dignified feeling

Evidence

JF: Yes, it’s quite a complex thing, a compound. There are states where there’s a sensation of time passing, things changing, knowing the world is changing, falling in on itself, and reforming. And you may even be in the process of doing just that yourself. … But there are moments where you just stand by and watch it all, where you’re aware of it, in a moment that seems to go on forever. So it’s something of standing in a still place and watching the patterns in passing crowds and even in your own life. It can be a very powerful experience. … That stillness, and the maintenance of a quiet dignity in the face of insurmountable circumstances can be immensely moving to witness. — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 440

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: This is the phenomenological core of Foxx’s aesthetic — stillness as perception mode rather than absence. Constitutes the emotional grammar behind hauntology’s ‘lost futures’.
• BMF: The ‘standing in a still place watching patterns pass’ state resonates with the detached, weather-like narrative stance in Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad — watching lives fall in on themselves and reform without intervening.