Forrest’s Reviews > Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures > Status Update

I never thought I'd say this, but Fisher's final essay in this volume is far too optimistic in its hope that the 2008 financial crisis might have turned our attitudes toward capital and climate change around. Not. A. Chance. I wonder if the loss of this hope was part of what drove him to suicide. It has to be more complicated than that, but I wonder if it was a contributing factor. We will never know.

The pendulum swings back and forth and Fisher argues for de-privatization in the wake of "Handsworth Songs and the English Riots". Meh.

At first, I was a bit taken aback by Fisher's assessment of Inception as a fairly banal film, but after watching him break it down and thinking about it myself, I'm convinced that he's right. The film could have been so much more . . . dreamlike, but it wasn't. It's like a "starbucks" idea of dream, more shott-em-up than oneiric and, therefore, quite disappointing when analyzed closely.

I have The Rings of Saturn on my bookshelf, waiting to be read when my yearning to get back to England will inevitably crash into my inability to get back there. I worry that Fisher's self-avowed skepticism of Sebald's work might subconsciously cause me to put my guard up, rather than taking in the book as it is. This is the danger of reading critical essays, I suppose.

I really like how the essay "Grey Area: Chris Petit's Content" celebrates the banal in the English landscape. I love the beauty of the Cotswolds, but there is some blase beauty in the flats of East Anglia (I lived on the edge of this area when I lived in England). I am reminded of the wonderful collection Est: Collected Reports from East Anglia, and that is a thoroughly good thing.

Fully half of the essay "Nomadalgia: The Junior Boys' So This is Goodbye" had nothing to do with anything else in this section. The last third of the essay gains traction, with some great insights into Nomadalgia, nostalgia for travellers. I wish the first 2/3 of the essay equaled the last 1/3, but the beginning drags things down - and I like the album being discussed. But it's not to the point.

Call it psychogeography, hauntology, or a baedeker of the London-haunted, Laura Oldfield Ford's Savage Messiah and Fisher's review of it here has piqued my curiousity to the utmost. I love finding the liminal spaces, urban and rural and suburban. I sought these transition zones as a child. I love those places, and so does Ford.

It's hard not to hear these records' demandsthat we enjoy ourselves as rhin attempts to distract from a depression that they can only mask, never dissipate.

And the last chapter of the hauntology section only gets more cynical and depressing. Insightful, but man, what a friggin' downer. I can see Fisher's sad demise on the horizon from here. Gut-wrenching.

"Electricity and Ghosts: Interview with John Foxx" was excellent and intriguing. It did little to bolster Fisher's standpoint in the previous essay, nor did it directly contradict it. I still feel that the previous essay felt contrived. This is much more genuine, but it's because Fisher lets Foxx carry the microphone to speak for himself and his work with his own voice.

In "Old Sunlight from Other Times and Other Lives: John Foxx's Tiny Colour Movies," I see where Fisher appreciates Foxx's music (which is, indeed, lovely), but it feels like he (Fisher) is mapping his own idea of symbol and representation onto Foxx's music. The next piece is an interview with Foxx, so I could be wrong - maybe Fisher's interpretations match Foxx's intent. But, if so, hasn't Fisher cheated?