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

I t has been 2 weeks and 2 days since my mother died. Such is the nature of mourning. Every day counts. Each days brings us farther from the incalculable mystery of when they were still alive, and able to communicate with us. There are few key messages to give to a parent, when there are few minutes left. I love you, or I am sorry - or maybe, I forgive you - but always, finally, I love you, and thank you. I want to write more about my mother, but she was very private. I will say, now, as Halloween nears - she was the kind of mother who would sew elaborate costumes for my brother and me. I once went as Kanga with Roo in my pocket (in fact of course my Roo was a Kanga doll). My mother was born in the Eastern Townships , Quebec, Canada, in a rural setting, though her parents were teachers. She had 3 sisters and one brother, and was the eldest sibling, which early on established her take charge approach. She spent some summers on the Gaspe peninsula, in Port Daniel, where her uncle and aun...

Imploding The Mirage , as critics and reviewers will quickly inform you, is a title that refers to the famous Las Vegas casino's demolition, which made way for something arguably even snazzier, or more empty. Born in Vegas, that most artificial and symbolic of American places (famous for gambling, glitz, misadventure, criminal origins, and mass murders), The Killers - named after a Hemingway-based film noir, but following in the footsteps of numerous rock acts that have signalled their outlaw claims with similar names ( Jerry Lee Lewis was called The Killer) - are a very American rock band. That their lead singer, Brandon Flowers , is famously a Mormon and allegedly a straight arrow, albeit flamboyant on stage, only adds to the resonant enigma - they are part of the myth of the American Dream, while in classic post-modern mode, nod to the artifice, albeit a non-nihilistic one with a God. Their inoffensive, hummable songs, mainly about broken hearts, yearning, broken lives, and ho...

I have come to think that, of all the moral, ethical, religious, spiritual, and philosophical precepts, none is more extraordinary, radical, or powerful, than forgiveness. Forget love - love comes, at least sometimes, naturally. To forgive is the most difficult thing we can ever do. I don't mean to forgive someone for stepping on our big toe (though that hurts) - but to forgive the unforgivable. To forgive murder, rape, incest, hate, racism, war, slaughter, torture, evil. In the past, only kings and mighty rulers could pardon the guilty - what would otherwise be called the unpardonable. Pardoning the innocent makes no sense. The true power is to unshackle and accept the criminal, the guilty. It's an almost impossible task. It disgusts every fibre of our being, the being that calls for punishment, to destroy our enemies. It is, of course, the central idea of Christ's vision for humanity, and the promise he claims he can make on behalf of his Father. But even if one is...

Anyone looking for an astringent corrective to the postmodern hypertrophies of the Tarantino style will find it in the beautiful and profoundly intelligent new film from Joanna Hogg, The Souvenir , executive produced by, among others, Martin Scorsese, and starring Tilda Swinton and her daughter, Honor Swinton Byrne, as a fictional mother and daughter in 80s London. Like Once Upon A Time In Hollywood ... The Souvenir is especially interested in framing a narrative around film, and directing film - in this instance, the hero is a young woman, from the English upper class, who has become a film student, and is seeking to make a film about working class life in a part of the country she barely knows. Hogg allows us to see how a film student (her in actuality looking back in memory) might film and tell the story of her own aesthetic awakening, through the medium she loves - through the story of her sentimental education, as it were, as a naïve lover, swept up by a Heathcliffian slight...

SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO BREAK AN EGG AT EASTER Several major religions are observing solemn, important festivals this month - holy days, holy weeks. Eyewear's team will be taking some time off, to be with their families and friends, and reflect, in their various ways, on this time of returning light. Meanwhile, we have seen, in the past few days, inhumanity at the heart of our capitalist system (where it has been, hidden, for too long) - the decision to drag a doctor, bloodied and beaten, from a United Airlines plane he had lawfully bought a ticket for is yet another instance of the total decline in compassion and empathy rooting itself in a business-led model that ignores the value of life beneath the numbers. Publishing, too, is not immune. Too often, authors, agents, and publishers, seek to profit from relationships that would be better off pursued for higher aims, of art, solidarity and creativity. Sharing is not much part of this dog-eat-dog Darwinian world, that pushes...

SOME WERE MURDERED ON THE BEACH WHERE THEY READ AND SUNBATHED, BY EVIL MEN President Obama is a great orator, and he more than rose to the occasion of his eulogy for the nine killed in their bible class in Charleston by a racist youth. He went beyond the call of duty, and gave a speech that is the equal to some of Lincoln 's. It touched on issues of morality, and decency, and in some ways, reminds us that though life can feel meaningless, those who feel touched by God's grace can find healing purpose even in tragedy. Ending with the song 'Amazing Grace,' which he sang, President Obama fittingly, and movingly, brought his eloquence into the form of address most suited to the occasion, a song that all in the great African-American church could sing along with as well.  He exemplified the power of words to move into song, into community, and to spread ideas of communion, and goodness. It is a matter of record that, meanwhile, the world is being ravaged by a religi...

LOVE They say love comes in threes. Such trilogies extend Times into books four to seven. Erupt into eight in dreams. I’ve seen love compared   To what was once Heaven And now belongs to lies. Also, love appears in songs At intervals so regular It must be true.   Always, the argument goes, Love is the first, second, third And final thing of value In the singer’s world. Mountains, friend   Are nothing When the sea comes Yet love will climb Far above such lower levels. Love is even, it has been said,   Delivered by the devil, Or some equivalent minion, From fat boy to lolling tart. They hate love so much They tend to kill it   With a dart Drawn straight through The designated heart. I have seen dissection tables In labs where trained   Belie...

she is in love As poets and lovers know, music and and love go together like a tenor and vehicle.  Here are Eyewear's top 14 love songs, or songs about 'love', in no order - and, I should add, some classic break-up songs like 'Wicked Game' or 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' are not included, though they too are about love's wounding force - however, in the spirit of the occasion, I am erring on the side of romance and eros. 1. Bob Dylan - 'Lay, Lady, Lay' - the most improbably delightful Dylan song, for me, this rich cowpoke tune is also seriously sexy. 2. Ella Fitzgerald - 'My Funny Valentine' - well, this is the classic, really, the heart of the matter, and pure wit at that. 3. Bob Marley & The Wailers - 'Could You Be Loved' - the answer is, with this going on, yes. 4. Madonna - 'Dress You Up' - one of the great cross-dressing songs, and exuberantly wackily boy-crazy pop. 5. Simple Minds - 'Don't...

September 9th, tomorrow, is the 6th anniversary of my father's death, from a blood-clot in hospital, while recovering from surgery on his brain for cancer.  He was a kind, gentle, witty man, very shy, insecure, nervous.  But he was proud of his rise from a working-class Irish-Canadian background to become the youngest director of admissions at a North American university, in the late 60s, after leaving behind a promising music career as a recording artist with Decca and London records.  He did an excellent job at Sir George Williams, later Concordia, university.  He put students first.  He had a great voice, loved to sing, play baseball, swim, and was good with animals.  He was very loyal to his friends, compassionate with students, and protective of his family.  Sadly, he suffered from anxiety and depression, which he tried to deal with by drinking too much.  However, after a difficult period in his Forties, and after a mild stroke, he sorted out...

Ivo, Marianopolis, 1984 Like rain, desiring, the Cocteau Twins return, bringing that cold sadness again: sweet as a bare shoulder, lost pain, an ice flavoured as your skin, which was, summertime, the toast of my tongue, trying to barely possess your black boy-cut bangs as they ran like water in mythic April showers – you and your cherry Docs, alley-dancing, your lips as untouched as the Rhodes I forfeited for high style, laughing gas; A. Alvarez mourns that no one reads I.A. Richard s anymore, but I do, and we did – shivering, music like kisses: recollection. 

There are many great love stories in literature - among my favourites are The Wind in The Willows, The Great Gatsby, Burmese Days , and The Idiot .  However, perhaps the most troubling, doomed (and realistic?) evocation of unrequited love that I have enjoyed is Maughm's Of Human Bondage .  It was also a great film in the 1930s.

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...".

Great love songs are also, often, great heart-broken songs - and my favourite, from the 80s, is the Simple Minds classic, 'Don't You Forget About Me'.

Sadly, the fugitive Raoul Moat has killed himself rather than go peacefully into police custody, on the bank of a river in an area he loved as a child.  He was heard to say "I don't have a dad"... and that no one cared for him.  Poignant words, that remind us how often the roots of crime and violence are a wounded heart, a lonely soul.  May he rest in peace.  May his victims, also, find peace.

Forget roses for the big day - why not a tree? That's what this company does. And they're running a poetry competition. Love is, after all, along with death, and political resistance, and nature, and language, and desire, and - well, along with a few other things - one of the central concerns of poetry, and life.

As an anthologist I enjoy the bittersweet experience of reading forgotten anthologies of yesteryear - those charming time-tombs. No point in observing that most art is futile and ends in oblivion for most artists; we are mostly not Horace . Save our souls, but forget our names. Chad Walsh that great Champion of CS Lewis from Beloit College edited thanklessly a long unused Scribners anthology from 1964, Today's Poets . 45 years later it mainly holds up well though we no longer speak of wild man poets. Ginsberg is absent. Walsh predicts great things for Walcott but doesn't particularly enthuse about Larkin . The great Eberhart is given his due. Carl Bode we don't much read now. Nor Gil Orlovitz . Good to have them here. Vassar Miller is an intriguing poet. However I most enjoyed encountering Walsh's Beloit friend, Princeton man, the poet Bink Noll . Noll, born in 1927, has the best poet name, no? I love the name Bink Noll. Anyway, he is too obscure now, but wrote w...

Sad news. My friend Dr. Richard Berkowitz , beloved partner of Letty Dahme , has died, yesterday, in America. I met Richard on Hydra, Greece, an island we all loved. He was a witty, compassionate, deeply thoughtful, rational, and fine person. He was the light of Letty's life, and together with her - though he was already well into his 70s - he travelled the world, sailed, and otherwise acted like a person half his age. His dancing at my wedding, back in 2003, was spry and impressive and full of vim. I liked him immensely. I loved him. He'd been a talented doctor before retiring. He retained dignity and concern from that career. In Letty, he found a brilliant and literate interlocutor, and friend, and they sparked off each other, adding years of renewal and love and hope. Letty and Richard inspired all who knew them. They made one know that life and love are far less limited than some might claim. They opened doors to people, made unexpected links, and experienced ...

Sight and Sound's latest issue features a wild bunch of out-there auteurs. Also, a fawning interview with director Quentin Tarantino . I haven't been to Cannes or seen his latest Nazi hunter film, though I know his production company once expressed interest, about ten years ago, in a Nazi hunter screenplay I'd co-written. I'll be interested in seeing his movie. I actually think Tarantino has done some expressive, stylish and startling work of importance, especially in Kill Bill 1 , and he seems a key cultural figure of the 1990s. I also think it is a sad reflection on the decline of the arts, and the auteur, that, in 2009, as significant an arthouse journal as S&S should be hanging on this indie maverick's every word. The problem, it seems to me, is that QT's ideas - if translated into a literary or literate medium (and he often speaks in terms of novelistic devices, like chapters) - would be sub-par, or even old-hat. Apart from his explorations of g...

I finally saw Twilight - and haven't read the novels. Let me wear my heart on my sleeve - I loved it. Most reviews patronise "the girls" in the audience who swoon. However, I feel everyone deserves a slice of the Teen Gothic Sublime, and rarely has a film delivered so well on the genre ( Titanic perhaps). There are dozens of art-house reasons to sneer at this sort of sentimental portentous product - and one to cheer: because they did it without irony. Irony, the bane of modernism (and its spice) has rendered many a Hollywood project DOA - so this one's undead and undying romanticism was blessedly true to the material, and the vein being mined. No one tried to be hip or knowing. They just played it straight. Star-crossed lovers, vampires, deep woods that David Lynch could sink his teeth into, and high school hormones and angst, even baseball - what more could a North American kid marooned in London want? Well, one thing - a Carter Burwell score, his best since Farg...

This is Eyewear 's 1, 111th post. It therefore seemed appropriate to discuss what Eyewear believes to be the best Anglo-American feature film of the last 50 years - Vertigo (1958) - which, in fact, is also exactly 50-years-old. Citizen Kane would have to be considered the best pre-1958 film of its kind. Kane and Vertigo have much in common - they both feature scores by Bernard Hermann , and both present stories of thwarted love, and deeply tragic lives. However, their differences are acute - Kane is American, various, lively, and overtly stylish, and in black and white - Vertigo , though stylish as well, is in profound colour, is actually very European, in tone and depths of Freudian and Nietzschean influences. Roughly, the dualities at the core of Vertigo , between the real world and the apparent world, correspond with the worlds of repressed and conscious desire; and life is aestheticised, in order to try to cope with tragedy - though in the process, Scottie loses both Madel...