Painting in arcylic and mixed media; bellydancing; good food; Afro-Haitian dance; jewelry making; friends; photography; poetry; sailing; wine; beer; writing; travelling; yoga; studying the human mind (with special interest in consciousness, creativity, and meaning-making); ancient societies; adventure and exploration; art and aesthetics, appreciating interesting old buildings; grafitti and other ephemeral forms of art; Dale Chihuly's work in glass; cigars; coffee; comparative religion; dreams; long walks or drives; philosophy; the ocean, the beach and the stars; good films; freedom; irony and scarcasm; working with my hands; mysticism; novelty; palm trees; music; psychology; scotch; sculpture; roaming around suburbia in the middle of the night; swimming; gardening; home improvement; motorcylces; Venice and Florence, Italy; growing herbs
My taste in music, is, you guessed it, incredibly ecclectic. Here are a few favorites: Shakira, Andreas Vollenwieder, Gang of Four, Buzzcocks, Cocteau Twins, Crowded House, Splitz Endz, Peter Gabriel, the Doors, Fleetwood Mac, Govinda, Skunkweed, Sublime, Loreena McKennitt, Throwing Muses, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Transglobal Underground, Kristin Hersh, Jai Uttal, Oingo Boingo, Muddy Waters, Wire, B.B. King, The Clash, Dead Can Dance, Depeche Mode, Love and Rockets, A Certain Ratio, Curve, Enya, XTC, Dukes of the Stratosphere, the Beatles, the Waterboys, Golfrapp, Sting, Dave Mathews, the Highwaymen, Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, Toledo, Soul Coughing, Billie Holiday, Tori Amos, the Strokes, U2, the Cure, Nine Inch Nails, David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Josh Alan the Glengarry Boys, Zap Mamas, and Yma Sumac. Oh, and I like opera too!
I'm a bit of a film junky, here are some of my favorites: Bladerunner; The Saragossa Manuscript; Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle; The Sheltering Sky; Fellini's Satyricon and Juliet of the Spirits; Wings of Desire; Romeo and Juliet (both the old & new versions); Caligula; Brazil; Shallow Grave; Titus; Pitch Black; The Chronicles of Riddick; Pretty much anything directed by Peter Greenway - Prospero's Books, The Pillowbook, Murder by Numbers, 8.5 Women, The Cook the Thief the Wife and her Lover; The Eel; Full Metal Jacket; Apocalypse Now; Catch 22; Croupier; Barton Fink; Blood Simple; Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colors Trilogy; Lost in Translation; Resident Evil; Naked Lunch; Paris, Texas; Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas; Where the Buffalo Roam; Wild at Heart: Catch 22; The Haunting; Sirens; Wallace and Grommet; Eric Rohmer's Full Moon in Paris & A Good Marriage; Mirrormask; The Wickerman; The Mummy; Pirates of the Caribbean; Master and Commander; Monsoon Wedding; The Swimming Pool; XXX; Bram Stoker's Dracula; Vampire Princess Miyu; Dance of the Damned; The Hunger; Snatch; Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels; Sexy Beast; the Limey; The Salton Sea; Memento; Legend; Warlock; The Story of O; Wild Palms; Volver
I don't really seem to watch much regular T.V., but I do have a soft spot for Battlestar Galactica.
Okay, so I'm a book junky too. One day, any one of the stacks of books around my house could topple over and burry me alive. It's a precarious balance. I would say my favorite authors, in no particular order, are: Yasunari Kawabata, Jorge Luis Borges, Erika Lopez, Herman Hesse, Mohammed Mrabet, Naguib Mahfouz, Albert Camus, Rumi, Paul Bowles, Salman Rushdie, Marco Vassi, Dorthea Benton Frank, Mircea Eliade, Yukio Mishima, Arthur Rimbaud, Frederick Nietzsche, Charles Baudlaire, Phillip K. Dick, Milan Kundera, Christina Garcia, Idries Shah, William Burroughs, Hunter S. Thompson, Walt Whitman, Dione Fortune, Aleister Crowley, Catullus, Rainer Maria Rilke, Parmenides, Sappho, Jean Baudrillard, George Bataille, Michel Foucault. Some particularly influential tomes were Robert Irwin's The Limits of Vision, The Egyptian Book of the Dead, J.G. Ballard's Super-Cannes, Marco Vassi's The Erotic Commedies, Dante's Infero, and Lee Siegel's City of Dreadful Night: A Tale of Horror and the Macabre in India. I'm a sucker for anything on ancient history (especially Mayan, Egyptian, Mesopotemian, Greek or Pan-Asian), religious studies, mythology, philiosphy, philosophy of science, current anthropological studies of Latin America or Asia, or studies on human sexuality, erotica, or art history. For balance, I can occasionally be caught reading cheap tawdry romance books, self -help, ooks on sailing, or I've enjoyed Kathleen O'Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear's native american mysteries, random Sci-Fi books, and comic books like Transmetropolitan or Hellblazer. Growing up, I had a small obession with J.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and the Dragon Lance fantasy series. Oh, and I almost forgot (and I am sure I have forgotten many others) - H.P. Lovecraft!
My hereos? Hmm..., maybe Socrates and Leonardo DaVinci? Prince Sidhartha? My favorite anti-hereo: Athrur Rimbaud - who else could write poetry like he did, only to quit at 19, wind up being an arms dealer and die of syphillis. What a brat! ;-)