Unresolved music can express longing detached from any remembered object of faith
Evidence
The oddly indeterminate — irresolute and unresolved — character of Blake’s music gives it the quality of gospel music for those who have lost their faith so completely that they have forgotten they ever had it. What survives is only a quavering longing, without object or context, Blake coming off like an amnesiac holding on to images from a life and a narrative that he cannot recover. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1303
Categorization
- XREF: Fisher’s ongoing ‘lost futures’/hauntology frame — music expressing longing for an unrecoverable past — runs throughout his sonic writing. — connects to: Hauntological pop music can express unresolved doubt through an aesthetic of greyness — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 447; Formal incompleteness in music can convey longing more deeply than resolved expression — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 460; Some music conveys feeling through unresolved ambiguity rather than certainty — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1303 (+3 more)
- FICTION: The amnesiac with images from an unrecoverable life is a vivid narrative kernel for a character defined by forgotten longing.
Broader Connections
- Blake’s unresolved music evokes faith without an object of belief
#exemplifies(0.95) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1303 - Faith is the longing for faith, not perception of God’s presence.
#corroborates(0.85) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 235 - Adorno defined the new music as structured longing for vanished meaning
#corroborates(0.80) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 285 - Some music conveys feeling through unresolved ambiguity rather than certainty
#expands(0.75) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1303