The Nazar
Who watches the watchers?
Olga wears the MojoFascination “Nazar” Pride design
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
This question is posed at the front of the graphic novel Watchmen, which rocked my world when I was in ninth grade. I’d never seen or read anything like it before—so gritty, so depressively real. I still appreciate it, but man, I don’t have time for gritty or depressive any more!
The concept of watching the watchers, though—that’s compelling. It’s one of those things that’s woven itself through my life and my experience of reality without me even paying attention to it, which is ironic, since it’s all about paying attention.
I hear a lot of laments from my fellow Gen X about the amount of surveillance today, and a lot of smugness about how we got away with an incredible amount of crazy shit before everyone had a cellphone camera. I feel…unmoved by this. It is just how things are now, and I’m not going to rail against it. I am, however, interested in paying attention to the fact that we are all under the attention of everyone, everywhere, all at once…and I’m interested in paying attention to the fact that I pay attention to it.
Enter the nazar—the classic Greek/Turkish/Middle Eastern/Indian blue “staring eye” that turns aside evil attention. The first time I saw one, it commanded MY attention! I’ve paid attention to where I’ve found them, and I’m finding them in more and more locations these days. I’m not the only one who’s noticing how much we’re noticed all the time. There used to be one hanging on the wall at the back of the corridor facing the front desk at the Sugar House post office, which I found lowkey hilarious.
In 2014 after my stepmother-in-law Pattie died, I snagged the chain of cubic nazar glass beads that she’d bought in Mykonos and then hung around the knobs of the stormproof French doors at her home in the northern Bahamas. She credited them with keeping the hurricanes away. If my relocation of those beads to Utah has had anything to do with the uptick in hurricane activity down there, I’m sorry guys…
Gold Nazar hoodie—I feel like it needs another couple of eyes before it’s done…
In any case, when it came to apotropaic devices, making my own nazar designs was a given. I wanted to wear them on my chest or on my back—am I deflecting ill attention, or attracting good attention? Perhaps a little of both. When we built Xanadu Studio, I originally wanted to put one on the roof so it could be seen from space. I ran out of both ADHD focus and disposable cash before that happened, but perhaps one day…
The eyes are everywhere, but they don’t have to be evil eyes. Step one in undoing the fear is to look back at them with curiosity.