"Storm"
What is History?
Laurie Anderson answered this many years ago.
Lyrics for some of the video below.
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"History is an Angel being blown backwards into the future."
History is a pile of debris
And the Angel wants to go back, and fix things
To repair the things that have been broken
But there's a storm blowing from Paradise
And the storm keeps blowing the Angel backwards into the future
"And this storm this storm is called Progress"
Fantastic!
ReplyDeleteShe's always had a unique vision on matters.
ReplyDeleteIn 1940 Walter Benjamom wrote the essay "Theses on the Philosophy of History".
ReplyDeleteTherein is the following passage:
"A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned towards the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress
In that same year Benjamin died a suicide near the Spanish border while atempting to flee Vichy France.
Padraig
Anderson was making use of Benjamin's essay. This seems a valid use of the man's thought.
ReplyDeletePadraig