They vary, from the obscure to the occult. Among the things I enjoy: cooking, soaking in the bathtub, looking at trees, trying to write poetry, looking at and trying to participate in photography, altered states of consciousness, starting crossword puzzles but not jigsaw puzzles, Emily Flake, reading everything from books to magazines to the back of cereal boxes, vegetarian sushi with sake, all sorts of art in various forms, watching my cat play with things, astronomy, going to planetariums, being in the mountains, eating dark chocolate (sometimes with cherries or strawberries, or just by itself), sitting on my front porch in the summer, people who know when to be quiet, drinking good coffee and tea, the Beat writers, editing things except myself, perusing bookstores, learning about Buddhism, reading about Eastern thought, girls in glasses, researching cults, indie music, indie film, bluegrass, documentaries, trying to play the harmonica, good, old school horror movies, Asian horror movies, herb gardening, organic farming, hanging out in Greenwich Village, being alone sometimes, soaking up history, analyzing things, pondering ideas, jazz, wit, humanists, making modern art, visiting museums, sitting in libraries, making mixes, nature, writing letters to people who deserve them and actually write back, painting, looking at plants, people watching, reading and discussing (arguing) politics and religion, ethnic restaurants, psychology, sociology, anthropology, theories, drinking in old bars, wandering through old houses, understanding transcendentalism, trying to travel, looking at antiques and wishing, buying things at thrift stores, experiencing extreme weather, drinking good wine and cheap beer, different accents, thinking about and doing weird stuff, and just words in general.
Her Space Holiday, Elliot Smith, Devendra Banhart, Wilco, Jose Gonzalez, The Album Leaf, American Analog Set, Vetiver, Andy Cabic, Six Organs of Admittance, Espers, Talking Heads, Microphones, Taj Mahal, Sebadoh, Bright Eyes, Beth Orton, Galactic, Revel, Andrew Bird, East River Pipe, AC Newman, Medeski, Martin & Wood, John Lennon, Yo La Tengo, Cake, Silver Jews, Steve Earle, The Cars, The Doors, Kate Nash, Miles Davis, Will Oldham, Fruit Bats, Michael Jackson, Belle & Sebastian, Azure Ray, The Winter Blanket, Broken Social Scene, Bill Withers, Whiskeytown, Figurine, Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, The Pixies, Lusine, Jeff Buckley, Stravinsky, Okerrvil River, John Coltrane, Granddaddy, Mazzy Star, Magnetic Fields, Alison Krauss, Lucero, Kings of Convenience, M. Ward, Sparklehorse, Simon & Garfunkel, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Air, Modest Mouse, Rachmanioff, Bela Fleck, Uncle Tupelo, Loudon Wainwright III, New Order, Ola Podridra, Phoenix, Crowded House, Nina Simone, Songs: Ohia, Magnolia Electric Company, Easy Anthems, Beat Radio, Prince, Richard Buckner, Neva Dinova, Be Good Tanyas, Ryan Adams, Velvet Underground, Takka Takka, Bruce Hornsby, Low, Sigur Ros, Sade, Radiohead, 60s soul, early 90s rap, 70s classic rock, 80s new wave, and so on and so forth.
David Lynch, Wes Anderson, Stanley Kubrick, Todd Solondz, Paul Thomas Anderson, Ken Burns, John Cameron Mitchell, Spike Lee, Quentin Tarantinto, Ang Lee, Darren Aronofsky, Atom Egoyan, Martin Scorcese, Werner Herzog, Errol Morris, Spike Jonze, Gus Van Sant, David Gordon Green, John Carpenter, Alfred Hitchock, David Cronenberg, the Cohen Brothers; indie film, documentaries, old horror films, Asian horror films; Loose Change, The Last Time I Committed Suidice, The Station Agent, George Washington, Zoo, Audition, Notes on a Scandal, Capote, Shortbus, Confederate States of America, Tarnation, Kill Bill, Texas Chainsaw Massacre (original), E.T., Halloween, Taxi Driver, Some Kind of Wonderful, Pi, Bad Education, Million Dollar Baby, Gangs of New York, Brothers Keeper, History of Violence, Snow Angels, Capturing the Friedmans, A Perfect World, Crooklyn, Fried Green Tomatoes, Party Girl, The Truman Show, Casablanca, The Godfather, A Clockwork Orange, The Exorcist (original), High Art, No Country for Old Men, The Shining, The Doors, Chrystal, Last Tango in Paris, National Lampoons Vacation (original), Caddyshack, Training Day, The Breakfast Club, St. Elmos Fire, Less Than Zero, Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Blue Velvet, Mullholland Drive, The Elephant Man, Lost Highway, Eraserhead, Full Metal Jacket, Dead Poet's Society, The Pianist, Silence of the Lambs, In the Company of Men, Ghostworld, Pulp Fiction, Kids, Secretary, Napolean Dynamite, There Will Be Blood, Welcome to the Dollhouse, Happiness, Boogie Nights, Best in Show, Punchdrunk Love, Magnolia, The Sweethereafter, Gods and Monsters, American History X, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Rushmore, Mr. Death, The Thin Blue Line, Lost in Translation, The Matrix, Billy Elliot, Trainspotting, Requiem for a Dream, The Sixth Sense, Psycho, Memento, Monster's Ball, House of 1,000 Corpses, The Devil's Rejects, The Royal Tenenbaums, Slingblade, Basquiat, The Hours, Apollo 13, American Beauty, Monster, Bowling for Columbine, Roger and Me, Brokeback Mountain, Nosferatu, Good Will Hunting, Spun, Election, Crash, Elephant, Being John Malkovich, The Squid & the Whale, Shortcuts, Dazed and Confused, Far From Heaven, Born Into Brothels, The Piano
Strangers with Candy, Twin Peaks, Antique Roadshow, No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain, Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern (the show, not the host), Saturday Night Live, Seinfeld reruns, Top Chef, Family Guy, Project Runway, anything with Gordon Ramsay, PBS, random cooking shows that do not include anyone from the TV FoodNetwork (except for Alton Brown.
Encyclopedias, the dictionary, other reference books, Middlesex, The Namesake, American Psycho, Siddhartha, Function of the Orgasm, Franny and Zooey, The New Pearl Harbor, Fast Food Nation, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, The Hours, Kitchen Confidential, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainance, Gulliver's Travels, A Modest Proposal, The Natural Mind, James and the Giant Peach, The Dharma Bums, On the Road, My Life as a Boy, White Shroud, History of God, From Chocolate to Morphine, Little House on the Prairie series, Contact, Forever, A Natural History of the Senses, People's History of the United States ... non-fiction, short stories, early and modern American writers, poetry in general, Carson McCullers, Dorothy Parker, Mark Twain, Bret Easton Ellis, Raymond Carver, Henry David Thoreau, Charles Bukowski, Al Franken, Walt Whitman, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Andrew Weil, Jonathan Swift, Moliere, Hermann Hesse, Thich Nhat Hanh, Nikki Giovanni, Mary Gaitskill, Wilhelm Reich, Carl Sagan, Dave Sedaris, J.D. Salinger, Noam Chomsky, Anais Nin, Carl Jung, Roald Dahl, Laura Ingalls Wilder
1.31.07 I prefer the term "inspirations." Heroes are for cartoons: My family, people who continue to be who they are and dont give a shit what others think; trailblazers; feminists; visionaries; mystics; Galileo, Copernicus, Newton, The Dalai Lama, the Buddha, Ghandi, Thoreau, Chomsky, Ben Franklin, Thomas Paine, Carl Jung, Stephen Hawkins, Thich Nhat Hahn, and that guy who works 15-hour shifts at the snack shop at the Davis Square T station.