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
Nolan's film Oppenheimer when at its best, is as good as cinema has ever been. I admit to writing this on the anniversarary of the dropping of the first bomb on Japan, which I consider a war crime and a human tragedy of the largest kind, as was the second bomb. I write this post with great respect for those who died or suffered then, and I know that the film itself seeks to expose, somehow, the sheer magnitude and moral toxicity of this invention - one which, as the film shows, could have burnt the whole world, not just Japan. Art can perhaps speak to the atrocities at Nagasaki and Hiroshima, or avoid them. Nolan's film obliquely references the horror - the inventor and the president both speak of guilt or innocence, neither seems to inhabit the space to fully comprehend their crimes. So why make a film about nuclear bombs, if the material is so powerful, so painful, so irradiated with historic guilt and shame? I suppose because of ambition, a desire to take on the largest th