The Price of Music

The news that most people who downloaded the new Radiohead album, In Rainbows (which Eyewear selected as the best of 2007), paid nothing for it, is a disappointment for all those hoping for a new alignment between artists, writers, musicians, and those who frequent cyberspace. I am not too worried for the Oxford band, since they will soon release the album as a physical item, on a label, and it well sell well - and they would have still made over £2 million digitally, as well. Still, it seems like a somewhat cynical, and short-sighted vote by the overall community of web-users who decided that clicking to pay nothing was a gesture of either goodwill, or even generosity.

Instead, that 2/3s click to download for free was freeloading. Freeloading is, as all flatmates who have had a freeloader know, parasitical - it ultimately kills the host. The net is a space well-suited to free material (I believe poets should share as copyleft more of their work) but it also, if it is to ever develop into the main portal of cultural dialogue which in some ways it already is, should keep in mind that in the term social networking is also the word social. Too often, anti-social networking is done, instead. One hopes this experiment on the part of Radiohead will not turn out to, ironically, discourage other bands from trying something similar (even as the pint-sized Prince seeks to penalise those online who seek to form his fanbase).

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IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart? A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional. Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were. For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ? Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets. But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ? How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular. John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se....

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and Silence of the Lambs . I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".

THE SWIFT REPORT 2023

I am writing this post without much enthusiasm, but with a sense of duty. This blog will be 20 years old soon, and though I rarely post here anymore, I owe it some attention. Of course in 2023, "Swift" now means one thing only, Taylor Swift, the billionaire musician. Gone are the days when I was asked if I was related to Jonathan Swift. The pre-eminent cultural Swift is now alive and TIME PERSON OF THE YEAR. There is no point in belabouring the obvious with delay: 2023 was a low-point in the low annals of human history - war, invasion, murder, in too many nations. Hate, division, the collapse of what truth is, exacerbated by advances in AI that may or may not prove apocalyptic, while global warming still seems to threaten the near-future safety of humanity. It's been deeply depressing. The world lost some wonderful poets, actors, musicians, and writers this year, as it often does. Two people I knew and admired greatly, Ian Ferrier and Kevin Higgins, poets and organise...

E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

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