Seven feels weird. Seven feels close to a decade.
It still feels like yesterday since we lost Mark, but it is also very apparent how much has change.
No Mark Fisher memorial lecture this year. A tweet marking the date gets a lot of engagement, but so much of it has a flippancy that indicates Mark’s removal from life — more a symbol than a person these days. It makes me sad to read all of it.
I go through the archive of photographs on my laptop and have that weird annual feeling of recollection and disconnection. 2017 was a terrible year, emotionally speaking. It was defined by self-harm, depression and a shocking amount of weight gain for me. But none of that is in the pictures. Just a lot of joy, dancing and friendship. Friends I’ve followed everywhere since.
I have a folder in my photo archive of pictures taken over the first few weeks after Mark died. There’s impromptu memorials, Hyperdub’s first Ø night at Corsica, numerous trips across town to Kodwo Eshun’s house, the wake we had there, Kodwo and Mark’s office, Kodwo’s seminar, the car park beneath my doctor’s office, and friends. This is everything inside it:
