"Some things we plan, we sit and we invent and we plot and cook up; others are works of inspiration, of poetry ...
Tom Waits, Nick Cave (God), Leonard Cohen, Jacques Brel, Léo Ferré, Georges Brassens, Edith Piaf (I really love French music)
Mahler, J.S. Bach, Wagner.
I love the sacred works of Mozart.
Lately I have been listening mainly to Brahms. Sometimes I just lay down on my back listening to his Requiem, and as I close my eyes, I feel catastrophic and have to tell myself "It's only music!". Goddammit. :)Jacques Brel is one of the best poets of all time. I love his song "Je suis un soir d'Eté". Watch the video...
I am not too much into movies. I love cinema, but don't like going to the movie theater. The crowds, and sharing the tiny rooms with strangers, and their cell phones. I still remember the old movie theaters, with private boxes for 6, grand tier, dress circle and 3 story balconies. That was grandiose, to watch movies like Wuthering Heights, or Lawrence of Arabia, in a movie theater like this. Well, they were all converted into self seated general tiny studio rooms, so that the movie theater can show 10 movies all at once. No fun.
Some of the movies that I love are "Pulp Fiction", "Paris, Texas" and "Wings of Desire", "Blue Velvet", "Lost Highway", "Repulsion", "Rosemary's Baby", "Dr Strangelove".
David Lynch is a twisted mad genius.
I don't possess the patience to sit down looking at it for too long.
However, years ago, I used to watch "Twin Peaks", religiously.
I was absolutely hooked on this series, and I could not miss one episode. It didn't matter if God invited me to write the ten commandments, he would have had to wait, because I was not to be disturbed before the episode was over. Crazy, right? I realize now it was maybe a little too obsessive and absurd of me to worship a TV series! but there you go. I was young and passionate then :)
My favorite book of all times is "Our Lady of the Flowers" (Notre Dame des Fleurs), by Jean Genet. People usually talk about the capacity to bear pain, but the capacity to bear beauty is not that much different. Genet has this ability that I had never encountered in any other writer, of converting the most grotesque, the most ordinary events, feelings, places, people, into pure beauty. What seemed ugly to my judgmental and narrow mind, is sublimated by Genet so beautifully, that I changed my concept of evil and ugly after I read this book... and hopefully it broadened my mind too.
I also love Yukio Mishima, Peter Handke, Hesse, Goethe, Jean-Paul Sartre, Baudelaire, Gorky, Tolstoy, Dostoievski, Victor Hugo (especially his novel "Han d'Islande"... breathtakingly beautiful), Stephan Zweig ("Amok", "Angst"), J.P. Lovecraft, Alan Poe... so many others. I love to read, but nowadays I am very selective in what I read. There are so many books being published every day, that belong in the garbage. I realize there is not enough time left for me to read all the classics that I really wish I could read, so I wont waste my time with novelties.
My father. He was a gifted musician.