Matt Colqhoun a.k.a Xenogothic reminds us that it is five years since Mark Fisher left us.
I don't have much to say apart from the fairly selfish thought that I'd love to know what Mark would have had to say about things.
Things in the specific sense - cultural products. Like the Dry Cleaning album, or SOPHIE's music. Feted television series or films - which ones would have excited him or seemed indicative of a condensation of popular desire, a shift in consciousness, an ideological glitch, worth taking the measure of? What things would have stirred his delicious scorn? And how would he have reacted to The Caretaker becoming a TikTok meme?
But I'd also love to know what Mark would have had to say about "things" in a general sense - where we are. This sense of paralysis and helpless sliding towards catastrophe on multiple levels. It would be a chilling thrill to read Mark on the subject of the awful people who govern us, or, in America, the awful people trying to make government impossible. How would he have processed the pandemic and lockdown?
It would have been exciting to see where Mark went next with his ideas, that ambitious system he was always renovating and adding extensions to.... to watch his outlook adapt under the pressure of the changes in his own self with the passage of time and the pressure of changing challenges out there. Could he have come up with a whole new intellectual adventure for himself?
The thought of Mark missing out on these five years of living - the good things and bad things that we've all gone through, the purely personal experiences he would have had with those closest to him - is supremely sad.
But I mourn also the thoughts Mark would have shared, and the thoughts he would have sparked in us.