John Fahey

There's a photo of John Fahey that shows him behind the wheel of a car, his gaze lost in thought, hidden behind a pair of dark glasses in which part of the road is reflected; on the back seat, a jumble of stuff piled up haphazardly; on top of that pile, his guitar. Through the windows, a blinding light that completely "obscures" the landscape. That, right there, is what John could do with his guitar, with his "American primitive guitar": "obscure" the landscape, all the landscapes of his America, in order to give them a new light, the light of the symbol that penetrates reality and condenses it into a whirlwind of indecipherable alchemies. Alchemies that can only be glimpsed, by immersing oneself in a space-time that, rather than defining reality, populates it with ancestral visions, parallel worlds where the chasing of the seasons finds exile, the anguished whistling of the wind, the "pictorial" magic of summer storms, and anything else capable of making the heart's untamable journey stumble, if only for a moment.

Fahey's fingerpicking oozes symmetries and contradictions, fears and hopes, sickness and health, fidelity to the land and its buried splendors. Fahey's fingerpicking ventures into unexplored territories, sketches out imaginative trajectories, sifts silences and noises, drawing from them emotion, ecstasy, inner contemplation, pagan sensuality. His vantage point is that of an inaccessible hill: at its foot, humans and the earth, under the watchful gaze of the gods.

The theme of "Jesus Is A Dying Bedmaker" is crossed by faint glimmers of light, which only for a moment give the impression that melancholy has gone away, following its own path into the dark. "Amazing Grace" is a repeated spark of sound, a solemn sketch, the announcement of unreachable promised lands, whose praises are woven into the "country" carefreeness of "Song # 3" and the sincere, unfathomable calm of "Special Rider Blues". A lullaby for flowers caressed by the summer breeze: that's "Dvorak". Just as "Finale" is a thin thread linking the spirit to the presences of the night, when the birds rest among the leaves, invisible.

In "America", Fahey distills drops of dew from the 12-string, before plunging the notes into the ocean and letting them slowly drown. A necessary sacrifice, without which it would be impossible to summon their rebirth in a continuous, ineffable process of breaking apart and diminishing: like one great dance of joy slipping away amid indulgences and whims, toward the black, mysterious night. Perhaps the same night that enveloped Dalhart, Texas in those far-off days of 1967 ("Dalhart, Texas, 1967"), or the one that conjured ghosts with fireflies over Knoxville ("Knoxville Blues"). Certainly, the one that, formless and scattered, spoke an ancient language, made of jagged, dangerous words; words that, rather than "telling" things, let them "appear", but in a new light, one that, indeed, obscures the landscape, all landscapes. ("Mark 1:15"; "The Waltz That Carried Us Away…"). The abyss has opened wide, so much so that there are no more half measures or lies: the earth is free in its virginal nakedness. Bare as Fahey's heart in its ultimate "vision": "Voice Of The Turtle", over fifteen minutes of lyrical-narrative apotheosis, capable of reaching toward the stars and, in an instant, brushing against oblivion. At 6'22" the guitar screeches, screams, pointing toward dissolution and ecstasy. Then it resumes its uninterrupted flow. The chords grow ever more laden with dreams; with valleys that spill over into the impossibility of ever again capturing their balance, their meaning and their beauty; with men walking toward other paths; with long, endless caravans; with streams, with butterflies, with cicadas, with blades of grass, down to the meaning of the earth, down to its highest truth.

Fahey's is a celebration of the collective imagination, made up of ever more “sublime” attempts to narrate the unknown, in which everything seems to converge, like a river in flood sliding inexorably toward the shimmering immensity of the oceans. And within it, the notes become fluorescent lamellae, purest diamonds that can only reflect — without being stained by — the blinding light of a deeper language, one so close to things that it remains, unfortunately, unknown and almost unknowable. Yet this doesn't stop it from bursting into everyday life through the joy of creation, the same joy that pervades “America” from beginning to end. In Fahey's music, in short, “otherness” and “appearance” coincide, while “sound” is transfigured, becoming pure transcendence, universal language, poetry. Just a moment before chaos turns it into a useless symbol of ruin and death.

To John Fahey (1939-2001)

Ride the wave of great music

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29/10/2006