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

If you were listening this year, you will know that Beyonce, Sabrina Carpenter, Charli xcx, Taylor Swift, Dua Lipa, Halsey, SZA, WILLOW, Olivia Rodrigo, Gigi Perez, RAYE, Mavis Staples, Ariana Grande, Lady Gaga, Kacey Musgraves, Billie Eilish, Miley Cyrus, Tate McRae, Ava Max, Katy Perry, Loreen, Maggie Rogers, Kim Deal , and a few other great women musicians, each had songs that could easily make any Top 50 list of the best tracks of 2024, as could The Cure and Nick Cave, Kendrick Lamar, Benson Boone , Fontaines D.C. ., English Teacher , and The Weekend . I am about to name 15 others, aside from the artists above, that also stood out for me this year. 1. 'Good Luck, Babe!' - Chappell Roan Utterly haunting, strange, beautiful, and anthemic, this was the song that broke Roan to a wider audience, and it already feels like an evergreen classic - as weirdly poppy and uncannily original as Buddy Holly once was. Given the many great women performers doing top work this year, to come...

Christmas Violence Viewers of the streaming film Mary (2024) starring Anthony Hopkins as Herod may be surprised to discover how sadistic Herod was, or that Mary was once a startlingly beautiful young woman who looks very much like Israeli model Noa Cohen , a fine young actor. But those familiar with the Biblical story of "Christmas" - the birth of Jesus - will know that, along with the myrrh, frankincense and gold, and the bright star, comes the most violent and cruel moment (arguably) of the entire Bible, when Herod orders the slaughter of hundreds, maybe thousands, of young children, to try and destroy the risk of a new king entering the world to topple his earthly dominion. The horrible irony, we know, is that Baby Jesus is not coming to take over in that way, and the murders are not only evil, but not even politically required. They simply typify Herod's monstrous wickedness. The Virgin Mary depicted in Christmas Drama It is therefore a curious thing to reflect on th...

  POEM FOR MY MOTHER   I have not done justice to my mother, The sweep of her life, How when young, she was young, In a country, on a farm, and other children, And I will never know their names, I have forgotten to ask so much, How lazy have I been! Now that she is going, Out of this room, where we can see her, Where she can be talked with, now that she is Leaving the scene of all our disputations, All the tomfoolery of this world, and the music She listened to, her cooking, her reading, Her studies at McGill, those meticulously marked Textbooks, the kisses, the childbirth, the sons, Jordan, the colds, the flying to China, The mourning, lovemaking, waking to make instant Coffee, the long discussions about serial killers, About our ancestors, about Uncle Sandy and Port Daniel, the summers, the winters, the cross-country Skiing, the wedding photos, the modelling career, The rages, the laughing, sometimes, the criticism Of certain TV ...

110 years ago, the Futurists of 1914 began to splinter into factions - but they had already made their biggest impact, and now, 115 years since they basically started in 1909, their vision has won. Forget simply "fascism" to describe what the age of Trump/Musk  is about to look like - it's more complex, radical, dangerous and at times visionary than that - 2025-2030 is going to be New Futurist - or to be blunt, just Futurism Redux. The main interests and aims of Futurism's manifestos were to celebrate a new age of the Machine - an age of speed, violence, money, power, nihilism, war, global travel, and disruption. It was not to be an age of peace, stability, good government or democracy - it was about a radical and total overturning of the values of the world order up to that stage in history. Now, 2025 is set to fulfil this hope and programme - The richest man in the world, a tech visionary businessperson who fetishes rockets and cars, and instant messaging, is ...

Others will say it better - but, here goes my small part in this - I stayed up last night, as the horror dawned on me, literally and otherwise, that VP Harris was losing. I was wrong, thinking she'd win in a landslide possibly, see the other post. Separate from the deep concern for the world, especially with regards to Ukraine, and global warming, and American democracy (which is robust but about to be dismantled) is the deeper wounding realisation that a majority of humans would choose such a person, rather than actually vote for a woman.   It feels like misogyny and racism was on display. Concern for the economy should not mean exemption from moral or ethical concerns.   The digital online world has clearly contributed to a new unreality in America and beyond, where so many millions could not see the truth of the man they elevated, and bestowed such triumph and power onto.   And, what makes it worse, we are all now in this with him, because we have to live in his terri...

A few weeks back this blog predicted Trump was likely to win the US Presidential Election 2024, which is underway today. We now think that was incorrect. In the past few weeks, Trump alienated, needlessly of course, and without apology, of course, Americans with Puerto Rican connections; made unveiled sinister comments about being "nasty" when elected; and hinted he would protect women even if they didn't want him to; he also made "jokes" about journalists that sounded odd to put it politely. The list of reasons is long, but if he loses it will clearly be because more people voted for VP Kamala Harris , which makes sense in a less madhouse world. Trump poses such a danger to America and the world, and has such a history, that it is extraordinarily sad and off-putting that almost half of American voters seem to prefer him to a sane, intelligent, hard-working and successful woman leader, without a criminal record, who, yes, sometimes smiles and laughs. We shall s...

Probably the most dull thing to do is to discuss a movie that critics have already consigned to the dustheap of critical disapproval, where all the ladders start. Here goes nothing... The whole Francis Ford Coppola story of Megalopolis has been done to dust by now - we know he spent his own oodles of vineyard cash, to make a movie that all on set felt was lunatics running the asylum level batshit bad, and that the 40-year-gestating rough beast slithered out like a viscous grotesque from The Substance , to near-total disappointment, that worst of all responses, as if a Gladiator's codpiece slipped to reveal a tiny rubber duck. This man, we were reminded, was a Genius with the same capital G as for Godfather (1 and 2), and he also made The Conversation , and Apocalypse Now ; then loads of mediocre films, except some were zany and brilliant, like his Dracula . It is hard to think of any other filmmakers from America, other than say Spielberg, Scorsese, Kubrick, Ford, Welles, Wilder...