Have I mentioned drawing and painting? Mexican Colonial Art of the Viceregal Period; the Kronos Quartet; 19th century photography (particularly Magic Lantern Glass Slides); Brian Eno from all the way back and up unto the present; Gustavo Santaolalla; Southern California history of the 18th and 19th centuries; todos los santos y santas del cielo, in particular Mary of Egypt; illuminated manuscripts; Romare Bearden; Gerard David;
Sigur Ros; Joseph Arthur; Philip Glass; la Sierra Tarahumara and the way the light there speaks of Rembrandt; el Valle de Oaxaca - San Bartolo Coyotepec, San Martin Tilcajete, and Teotitlan del Valle; "One Red Rose that I Mean" by Captain Beefheart; Baaba Maal's first album; my studio, particularly in the late afternoon sun; driving at night, no traffic; Joni Mitchell, early and late; Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Wallace Roney; meeting Sun Ra and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, but not - unfortunately - the same night; fifteenth century art of northern Europe; la Virgen de Guadalupe, particularly in popular devotion; Angela Correa; Portuguese translations of haiku translated by Babelfish into English;
the first Bach violin concerto I ever heard; Beck's Sea Change; mashups; ukiyo-e woodblock prints; chardonnay and good coffee; 19th century lithography, particularly the illustrations accompanying the 1850's USPRR and US-Mexico border surveys; Jacobo and Mimi, the two most wonderful people I've ever had the pleasure of sharing a home with.
Creative people, thoughtful people, and a few more good ideas while I'm still around.
So, I think we covered music already, right? But then: Nils Petter Molvaer, Wagon Christ, Sidsel Endresen, Petracovich, Sibylle Baier, Chris Whitley, Daniel Johnston,
Pedro Infante, Jorge Negrete, Maria Dolores Pradera, Caetano Veloso, Holger Czukay, Leela James, Jorge Drexler, Robert Fripp, Cafe Tacuba, Robbie Robertson, Joseph Arthur, Electric PResidents, Gilbert Isbin, Osvaldo Golijov, and so on
I am one of those people who says they never watch television who actually never watches television.
The Travels of John Mandeville; Explorations and Surveys to Ascertain the Most Economical Railroad Route from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, volume 1-12, 1853; Explorations of the Valley of the Amazon, 1856; The White Men, by Julia Blackburn; and a thousand other books in my studio library....
Jacobo and Mimi