Other writers who are roughly in the same stage of their career as I am that I can trade drafts, ideas, and frustrations with.
And damn, all those people I've lost touch with over the years. If there's one thing I regret in life (so far), it's that I didn't work like a maniac to keep tabs on people.
Tom Waits, Fugazi, Neutral Milk Hotel, The Roots, Radiohead, Flamming Lips, The Pixies, Sonic Youth, Massive Attack, Tricky, Portishead, The Lights, Soul Coughing, Mike Doughty, My Bloody Valentine, cloudDEAD, Themselves, Faithless, Dialated Peoples, Ani DiFranco, Beth Gibbons, Billy Holiday, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bjork, Blonde Redhead, Cake, Cat Power, Chet Baker, Erykah Badu, Life Without Buildings, Leonard Cohen, Mercury Rev, Modest Mouse, PJ Harvey, Quasimoto, Sarah Vaughan, Smoke City, Stevie Wonder, They Might Be Giants, Crescent and Frost, & etc
City of Lost Children, Delicatessen, Amilee, Brazil, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Alien Quadrilogy, Dead Man, Ghost Dog, Down By Law, Spirited Away, Mirror Mask, Nightmare Before Christmas, Edward Scissorhands, Big Fish, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Blade Runner, Fifth Element, Ian McKellen's Richard III, Chronos, Pulp Fiction
The Scar by China Mieville, Sandman by Neil Gaiman, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke, Light by M John Harrison, Veniss Underground by Jeff Vandermeer, Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thakeray, Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson, Last Call by Tim Powers, Magic For Beginners by Kelly Link, The Kiss and Other Stories by Anton Chekov, Identity by Milan Kundera, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Murakami Haruki, The Plague by Albert Camus, Love In the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Phillip K Dick, From Hell by Allen Moore, Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis, The Invisibles by Grant Morrison, Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, Cages by Dave McKean, Waiting For Godot by Samuel Beckett, Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins, Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon, T-Zero by Italo Calvino.