E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG

ASH WEDNESDAY

It wasn't invented yesterday, Death,
it casts a long shadow.  I know
where we are going, partly
and it is to dust, ash, awful stuff.

Who hasn't been awake
and worried about our fragility?
My father, in his coffin, broke
any sense I'd had that life was good.

His stillness, in the midst
of things, was far too complete
to be much comfort.  God promises
some form of return, but not bodily,

not after the dust has dissipated.
When we walk the streets marked
out as fools in our desperate hope
of life everlasting, we are

performing an act of instability.
We are throwing our living forward
into death, and by dying while alive
are making death and life a mixture

like the paste used to heal wounds.
The flimsy cross of coal on my skull
blows off in the wind, smudged
like newsprint.  But it is a story

made of a paper that burns up
each year, and each year reappears,
to be burnt again.  Seasonal, despair
turning like the sun to faith,

as flowers have to press again
to scatter the earth, to invade the l…

Readers of Eyewear will likely know that I think albums by Depeche Mode, PJ Harvey, Echo & The Bunnymen, Eyeless in Gaza, The Passage, Felt, Simple Minds, David Sylvian, Mazzy Star, Beck, The The, The Smiths, Pixies, The Cars, Split Enz, Blondie, B-52s, David Bowie, Iggy Pop, ABC, Nirvana, Metallica, Smashing Pumpkins, Radiohead, The Replacements, and U2 could easily form a list of the top ten best indie/ alternative albums since 1980.  A very strong argument could be made for the entire Smiths catalogue of albums forming the top of said list, followed by perhaps Pixies, without much critical damage being done.

However, every spring I return to a perennial of such amazing quality, I have decided to name it Eyewear's Greatest Indie/Alternative album of the past 35 year period (1980-2014).  The Colour of Spring by Talk Talk is simply put a miracle.  Nothing in their backstory would have prepared us for this.  The album's 8 tracks are on one level jazzy, catchy pop songs of gr…

Eyewear has been watching developments closely in Crimea, and as we predicted in earlier posts, the Russians have taken a hard line, and today it is reported they have effectively taken control of Crimea with their troops.  This is huge.  This is war in Europe - Russia has invaded a sovereign nation.  Consider Germany (in 2014) occupying a part of Austria - unthinkable.  Uncivilised.  Unwelcome.  And, unlikely to be stopped.  The West seems powerless to do more than threaten to cancel meetings (though Obama sounds tough).  Ukraine may fight back.  They have an army of one million reservists and a rusty but large air force, with a lot of their own tanks.  If Crimea becomes a firefight, it will be all about containment - keeping the conflict local, if possible.  We have begun a new cold war, as many papers report today - but if the Russia-Ukraine war spreads to the main part of Ukraine, then all bets are off, and NATO would be expected to threaten to intervene.  Given one of these natio…

The USSR has a history of crushing dissent, in the spring.  One need only think of Prague.  And, tanks sent from Moscow rolled into Budapest too.  In both cities, in both countries, proud rebels opposed the moves.  But the tanks crushed in the end.  Russia is not the USSR, as I have been arguing, but since its Winter Games it has been playing a very aggressive sort of game with geo-politics.  I think the reason is the Black Sea Fleet, and the emotive, and real, linguistic and ethnic ties between Russia proper and Crimea.  President Putin, playing to the home crowd, would become a great iron man if he took back the Crimea.  I fear he may just try.  I am not sure what could or would stop him, short of thermo-nuclear threat, or severe economic sanctions.  This is the closest the world has been on the brink of world war since before 1989 - in a quarter century.  I don't think it is time to duck and dive just yet.  But this is serious.

The Oscars feels increasingly like a waste of moral time, even for a pop culture fiend like Eyewear.  What with the Ukraine-Russia standoff, Syrian refugees suffering, and even the rise of UKIP, let alone ecological crisis and capitalist misfiring, not to mention the Nazi-style regime in North Korea, the lie that Hollywood saves the world is now a bit stale.  Still, a good film is a work of art, as well as entertainment, and even entertainment is welcome now and then in tough times; and a great film can be both great art and a serious moral act.  It is for this reason that Eyewear hopes that 12 Years A Slave wins for best film, director, actor and supporting actress.  It probably won't, though it is the finest moral Hollywood film since Schindler's List, and perhaps in some ways the greatest film ever made (despite Brad Pitt's hirsute performance as a too-modern Quaker), if only for how it combines art and a vision of a crime almost too vast to fathom without breaking.  In…