fahey

Fail to remember the fingers clasped onto the steel-stringed wooded block encapsulating your physical presence. Let the soul take control and ascend to a higher plane of reality, and while your spirit rises to heaven, an angel will form within the music.

In the 19th-century German play Faust, written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, there sits a moment where Doctor Faust, the protagonist of the play, summons a spirit within his room. Unfortunately, Faust fails to control the presence of the otherworldly substance that stood before him, and amidst his bewilderment, the phantom disappears in front of him. The unadulterated vivacity of this scene imitates the mystification that Faust himself felt in that moment, and the power this scene simulates transcends the medium of literature to an altitude of the highest degree.



This immaculate aesthetic power manifests itself out of Fahey's guitar, and when I listen to Fahey, I find he is blessed with the power to control and morph the spirit that manifests out of his instrument. Just like Faust, I can only sit back in disbelief- utterly perplexed at the substance that forms out of his guitar.