It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.
The human eye has long fascinated lovers, artists and physicians. The ancient Greeks dissected eyes, but struggled to understand how they worked, unclear as to whether they received or emanated light.
Evolution was far more thrilling to me than the biblical account. Who would not rather be a rising ape than a falling angel? To my juvenile eyes, Darwin was proved true every day. It doesn't take much to make us flip back into monkeys again.
More than 30 years ago, in Washington, D.C., I secured a copy of a single by a Los Angeles band called The Bags. The two-song 7-inch, released on Dangerhouse, had a girl on the cover who looked right at you with huge eyes. The songs, 'Survive' and 'Babylonian Gorgon,' were great and made many of my mix tapes.
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are ridiculous-looking - especially her. They're so strange and charismatic and weird. It's pretty hard to take your eyes off them.
You can't have eyes on the wall, or the angels won't come in. That's what we believe.
I suppose I'm a cultural Anglican, and I see evensong in a country church through much the same eyes as I see a village cricket match on the village green. I have a certain love for it.
I'm a mixture of Anglo-Saxon, a bit of Spanish and one-eighth American. I've often wondered if I have an Asiatic ancestor from the East as well because I have deep-set eyes. Make-up artists are constantly trying to shade my eyelids, and I have to point out that I don't have any!
Ethnically, Tuareg describe themselves as white. And they don't look Arab or black. Many Tuareg have light skin, light eyes and sharp angular noses and cheekbones. They are cousins of the Berbers of North Africa. Some legends say the Tuareg are the decedents of an ancient Roman legion that disappeared into the desert two millennia ago.
When eyes were first developed in animals, suddenly animal life becomes proactive.
I do enjoy a bit of the fantasy world that anime provides, but at the same time, I need the reality in it. I'm very much a stickler about the actual animation. I'm not into the cutesy, stereotypical animation with big eyes and a small chin. That annoys the hell out of me.
My eyes are too big, my nose is too flat, my ears stick out, my mouth is too big and my face is too small... my body is thin as a clarinet and my ankles are so skinny that I wear two pairs of bobby socks because I don't want people to see how thin they are.
When employees feel anonymous in the eyes of their managers, they simply cannot love their work, no matter how much money they make or how wonderful their jobs seem to be.
I mean, I come from a hippie mentality where I just think to know someone, you need to look into their eyes. Eyes are so important. Until they start melon-balling eyes out, I won't be able to get to know someone another way.
Consider the fellow. He never spends his time telling you about his previous night's date. You get the idea he has eyes only for you and wouldn't think of looking at another woman.
I would say laughter is the best medicine. But it's more than that. It's an entire regime of antibiotics and steroids. Laughter brings the swelling down on our national psyche and then applies an antibiotic cream. You gotta keep it away from your eyes.
Oddly enough, my favorite genre is not fiction. I'm attracted by primary sources that are relevant to historical questions of interest to me, by famous old books on philosophy or theology that I want to see with my own eyes, by essays on contemporary science, by the literatures of antiquity.
The individualists stare into each other's eyes and yet deny each other's existence. We walk in circles, so limited by our own anxieties that we can no longer distinguish between true and false, between the gangster's whim and the purest ideal.
The French want no-one to be their superior. The English want inferiors. The Frenchman constantly raises his eyes above him with anxiety. The Englishman lowers his beneath him with satisfaction.
I can close my eyes and start walking through 'Hamilton' at any given time, and I'll tear up because I remember day in and day out, eight shows a week, walking on stage, seeing everybody that I love.
