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

Richard Dawkins must be pleased with the emerging revelations that Michael Jackson appears to have been a cocktail-drunk drug addict, hopped up on numerous meds to keep the anxiety and despair at bay. After all - that's another myth gone - a genuine hero that people could love. Or maybe, Jackson was tarnished as long ago as 1995, anyway, and had no more to lose. Still, it rankles that Britain's top atheist has set up a summer camp for kids, where - I kid you not - there will be a prize for the best proof of the non-existence of unicorns. No doubt, they will also be taught (incorrectly) that there is no Father Christmas, too. Now, it may be okay for Dawkins to peddle his sad and empty sophistry to adults, but surely he should resist the urge to hang with the kids, and steal what little wonder and innocence they have left. When adults do that to children, we have a name for it. Now, some may think taking a child's imagination is not a sin, so long as their parents hav...

I thought I'd stop blogging so much, but the world keeps turning. A few quick things - I hear Tom Chivers has a book of poems out. I'd like to know more about this - can someone send me a review copy? He's such an active presence on the London scene, but I don't know his poems as well as I'd like. Want to see what he's put out there. Also, was in Selfridges the other day for their 50% off sale, and spotted Ben Wilkinson's poem on the ceiling by the Blink counter. There are poems which I selected by young poets all over the store, hope some of you spot some of them. I also wanted to say that Amazon's just delivered the two new Penguin modern classic reissues of those first two key Susan Sontag books of essays, Against Interpretation and Styles of Radical Will . They look great, and readers of Eyewear who don't know these books should get them - Sontag was, of course, one of the first to think seriously about popular culture in English - m...

Sad news. As everyone in the world must now know, Michael Jackson has died. In a spontaneous act as moving as the lights dimming on Broadway, the web slowed worldwide at the news. I don't have much to say. I woke up, got out of bed, turned on the radio, and was met by the news, which stunned me. This is the greatest loss to pop culture since the death of Elvis . As many commentators have been saying, Jackson was a sort of Elvis and Beatles in one - a triple-threat singer, songwriter and liver performer of extraordinary ability. He was the Mozart of the age - and the major figure of the 1980s, surely, in terms of cultural impact and influence. I don't happen to like the song "Thriller" but the album is a masterwork of its kind. Jackson was stranger than fiction - and curiously disliked in later years, when many other less brilliant, and less strange, entertainers were less sinned against. It is, for example, unlikely his excesses match those of The Stones . He was ...

Sad news. Farrah Fawcett has died. She may have gone on to do other things, but her status as a major pop cultural icon of the 1970s is secure - she was the televisual Marilyn Monroe of her time, as an actor in Charlie's Angels , perhaps the quintessential cheesecake 70s TV show; and, she married Lee Majors , the Six Million Dollar Man . Her life was variously rewarding and tragic, but she was greatly loved (and desired) - often imitated, never bettered. She will be missed.

Eyewear attended the Eric Gregory readings last night at the cool Farringdon-area pub Betsy Trotwood - Ms. Baroque was also there. This annual event was created 9 years ago by a former Gregory winner, Scottish poet Roddy Lumsden , an indispensable force on the UK scene (few do more for young emerging poets). Lumsden hosted with an informal, informative style, and the readings were in three sets, spaced by 15 minute breaks, that seemed to go on forever; they were needed though, the venue became stifling at times, and a no open-windows rule was enforced. There was a good crowd - maybe sixty or so, mainly younger people, with a few parents and older types like me. The little stage is ideally placed, and the sound system was crisp and clear. It was an immensely positive vibe - everyone seemed glad to be there, and generally happy for the winners. It felt like an ideal situation - new poets being welcomed to the pack - not with envy, but admiration and support. This sort of event should b...

Sad news. I just read the obituary for the great music producer Jonny Dollar . I confess I didn't know his name before now, but I knew the music he helped to create: trip-hop. It seems like the distant paleolithic, but was really only a generation ago, in the 1990s, when the trip-hop style was the most exciting and fresh around - it really felt like the sountrack to the lifestyle of my friends and peers on the streets and clubs and cafes of Montreal, in the summers that made up the mid-90s on St. Laurent Boulevard (once Grunge had died). Nothing was stranger, sexier, or more of the moment. Of the songs that came from this period, Unfinished Sympathy by Massive Attack , was the masterpiece, and Dollar co-wrote that. It was the music that played on the first date with my (now) wife. Dollar's part of my life, and his genius, unknown to me then, is now plain. What a loss, he was only 45.

Curious news. Schools in England have been told to no longer teach the catchy mnemonic "i before e except after c" because it is "irrelevant". I may be thick, but I still use the rule several times a day - it's one of the only things I do remember from school, along with "seven eights are fifty-six" (sung to a particular tune). Hope they reconsider.