Good music; great literature; philosophy; smartassed banter; gin (especially when it fuels the smartassed banter); danciing (especially when it's fueled by gin); you (if you're bright enough to notice there's a pattern forming here....)
People who aren't afraid to ask "why," who think for themselves, who don't complain unless they're prepared to take action toward effecting change. I'd like to meet the Invisible people; the ones we walk past everyday; the ones we sometimes become; the ones in books who live in someone's mind's eye; the destined to go through life and not around it - those that are sure the shortest path to heaven is straight through hell.
LeRoy Bell, King Konga, Patty Griffin, Ari Hest, Beth Hart, Damien Rice, Amos Lee, Ray Lamontagne, early Lucinda Williams, Anna Nalick, David Gray, Stevie Wonder, Donavon Frankenreiter, the Pretenders, Kate Nash, Iron and Wine, Jack Johnson, The John Butler Trio, Ryan Adams, Raul Midon, Jeff Buckley, Van Morrison, Bee Gees, Barry Manilow, Joss Stone, Diana Krall, Gerald Veasely, Warren Hill, Norah Jones, Keane, Billy Joel, Dan Fogelberg, Josh Kelley, Tori Amos, Wilco, Beth Orton, Sarah McLachlan, Garbage, Shawn Mullins, Maroon 5, Amy Winehouse, Harry Connick, Jr., Marc Broussard, DMB, Gomez, John Cairns, Edwin McCain, The Cure, Paula Cole, Wallflowers, Herbie Hancock, The Police, Sting, Peter Gabriel, Annie Lennox, Gavin DeGraw, Feist, Lizz Wright, KT Tunstall, many others. I miss horns. You would think, with all the hot air in this world, there would be more wind instruments. **************************************** Art: Renoir, Picasso (Blue & Rose), Whistler, Monet, Degas (not just the ballerinas), Manet, Van Gogh.
The Power of Myth; Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus; Keeping Mum; Running With Scissors; Upside of Anger; Dangerous Beauty; The Remains of the Day; Much Ado About Nothing; The Life of David Gale; The Motorcycle Diaries; Lost in Translation; The Constant Gardener; The Ice Harvest; Derrida (yes, the movie); Overboard; The Money Pit; The Red Violin; Bloom; Snow Falling On Cedars; Leo; Oscar and Lucinda; Waking Life; Chocolat; Love Song for Bobby Long; Finding Neverland; Merchant of Venice; Imaginary Heroes....
Why, when you can do anything else?
The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky; Atlas Shrugged, Rand; Their Eyes Were Watching God, Neale-Hurston; The Plague, Camus; The Sound and the Fury, Faulkner; Brave New World, Huxley; A Separate Peace, Knowles; Vanity Fair, Thackeray; Silas Marner, Eliot; Jude the Obscure, Hardy; My Name is Asher Lev, Potok; Sentimental Education, Flaubert; Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck; Far From the Madding Crowd, Hardy; Swann's Way, Proust, soooo many more.
Christ, Derrida, Kierkegaard, Sartre, Dostoevsky, Rand, C.S. Lewis.... I'm taking applications.