After Peter Doig’s “Music of the Future”

Joseph Mulholland 
University of Toronto
Centre for Comparative Literature

The poem is loosely inspired by 
Peter Doig’s painting “Music of 
the Future” and reimagines the 
night scene that is depicted in the 
painting. The poetic voice is 
rooted in a deep sense of place 
while simultaneously speaking 
from the outer edges of that place, 
creating a liminal space through 
poetic images and narrative. 

A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Poetry, Poems 
about Painting, Contempo-

rary Painting, Peter Doig

B I O

Joseph Mulholland is a poet and visual artist from Albuquerque, New Mexico. He holds 
a BA and MA from the University of Puerto in comparative literature and is currently a 
PhD candidate at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Comparative Literature. He is 
the author of the poetry chapbook Phantom Ride (Baseline Press, 2017).

© 2021 Joseph Mulholland
Caribbean Studies Students’ Union, Canada - https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/

                       This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- ShareAlike 4.0 International License. 
                       To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

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(January 20, 2022 / 09:38:52)

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 The town’s only survivor has taken to painting nightscapes.
A body of water that aches ungrammatically, 
or a man holding a candle under a bridge, 
waiting for hard edges to feather out, swelling, 
the stars learn to count backwards,
attempting to recreate an un-narratable origin story.
Is every instance of déjà vu a doorway to the infinite?  
Or is the infinite what holds the sky from falling 
in the most quotidian of ways? This is the music 
of the future—colors only recognizable as sound.
Sound on the threshold between worlds,
deteriorating at the slightest disturbance,
a fallen palm branch or a hummingbird’s death.
The curtains of this house move with the sea’s breath.
In future iterations, this beach will be a desert valley 
and this night will not turn from the hurricane’s arrival.

By Joseph Mulholland

(January 20, 2022 / 09:38:52)

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