Growing trees. And eating them. Meditation. Art.
In a fun way, Sarah Silverman, Jasmine St. Claire. In an inspriational way (of people still extant) Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama. Most of all, the true self, which has no limits or boundaries. SEE BELOW FOR MY MYSPACE GIRL OF THE WEEK VIDEO
John Lennon, Pink Floyd, Marilyn Manson, the Lunachicks, Sabbath, Slayer, Tool, Bach, Mozart, Tracy Chapman, Billie Holiday, Christina Aguilera, Mary J. Blige, Steely Dan, Broadway musicals, Bollywood, Me.
Gandhi, Sicko, The Secret, What the Bleep Do We Know (I & II), An Inconvenient Truth, The Corporation, The Future of Food, Peaceable Kingdom, The Witness, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Farenheit 911, Bowling for Columbine, Control Room: The Truth About the War in Iraq, U.S. v. John Lennon, SuperSize Me, Fast Food Nation, Raw for 30 Days, 30 Days Raw, assorted artsy films and documentaries. I adore anything by Tim Burton, claymations, cartoons and kids' movies. I salivate over Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie.
I don't own a TV (except the one I made an art piece out of by painting "MOM" on it with white out).
I find power in the Bhagavad Gita, the Bible (both Old and New Testaments, and Satanic), the Koran, and any sincere attempt to codify the essence of infinite spirit. I find the works of assorted philosophers such as Kant, Rousseau, Plato, Thoreau, Dworkin, Nietzsche, St. Augustine, Hume--and too many to mention--embody divine energy as well. Literature by authors such as Edgar Allen Poe, Shakespeare, Kafka, e.e. Cummings, Henry Miller, and Anais Nin have touched me deeply. But it is the art of Picasso, Dali, Miro, Alex Grey (with whom I have studied) and other visionaries that has helped me find that which goes beyond words, the Truth.
Article written by Anthony Zito for the Art Magazine July 2006. ----------------------------------------------------- I recently attended a dance and film performance called EyeWash at Monkey Town put on by a handful of young film-makers using a type of media that was new to me. Each team of video artists took turns creating their own vivid cinematic experiments on the four huge screens which faced each other in the square room. We lounged on couches and sipped our drinks as the different artists used a segment of 30 minutes or so to say their piece. It seems the nature of the medium allows for split-second fracturing of images - a rapid-fire barrage of color and form - abstracted and rich in its implications. The artists interspersed representational imagery with unrecognizable bits of broken imagery to create feelings and hint at narratives. One artist in particular stood out in his approach. The last to perform, VJ VisualFest, worked mainly with theartical footage of a beautiful Indian woman. A celebration of feminine power and the lure of beauty, we were taken in by her dark, colorfully clad figure spinning elegantly across the beach. But what made this performance far superior to the others we had seen was the incorporation of yet another art form. The very actress who appeared on the massive screens, Rani was there before us dancing through the projections. She carried candles and explored ritualistic movements, spontaneously reacting to the impulsive flow of images all around her. The imagery shifted from bright colorful scenes, quiet and sensual, to sepia-toned and grainy renditions of the same model, indicating a sense of memory and nostalgia counterbalanced by the present appearance of the dancer. As the performance progressed the images on the screen became more and more loaded - we saw dropping bombs and maps of Iraq - we saw mushroom clouds and explosions bringing us from the peace of a quiet dance to the horrific reality of war. The dancer, continuing to react to the imagery surrounding her, became more intense, her body falling to the floor and writhing theatrically. It was a brillaint conclusion to an incredible evening of eye candy. The inclusion of the dancer brought the room to life and gave the audience something to hold on to. It was less a series of fractured images than a vivid improvisational experience - and exploration of emotion through beauty, fear and the balance between pleasure and pain.