Nature, literature and the marriage of the two. Especially long dense books that once belonged to a smoker. Orange chairs, dogs with big heads and my own two cats when they arent crying. Yoga. Small Mexican women missing teeth, Chinese vegans. Walking around with Audobon Guides. Reading National Geographic, art and thelonious monk.
Music:
Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell. The Be Good Tanyas, Feist, Susan Tedeschi, Cat Power, Elliott Smith, Belle and Sebastion and Hem. Jeff Magnum, Mates of State, Richard Buckner. The Rolling Stones. Astrude Giberto. Youssou N'Dour. The Zombies. The Stones. Rufus Wainwrite (Spelling?) Paco de Lucia and any Spanish Guitar. CHRIS THILE. The Dead. Diana Krall. Norah Jones. Jimmy Smith. Charles Mingus. Miles. John Scofield. Lou Reed. Mason Jennings. Richard Buckner. Fiona Apple. Bjork. Yann Tierson. Gustav Santaolalla. Broken Social Scene. Oops, forgot Built to Spill! and Cassandra Wilson. Lots o' music!
Movies:
Anything directed by Almodovar. But Bad Education was incredibly weird. I love the Science of Sleep and anything by Gondry actually. Thumbsucker was great too. Don't Tempt Me is fun. Brokeback Mountain was beautiful so was Motorcycle Diaries. All time fav-Bringing up Baby. Pretty good. Vera Drake is not one of my favorite movies. I think My Friend Totoro is probably the cutest thing on film. Foreign films, independent films and documentaries. Some concert films are great too, like Joni Mitchell's "Shadows and Light." I can never get over how weird Pat Metheney looks. Although he looks the same now, basically. And Concert for Bangladesh, the Last Waltz, Winterland. Those always make me feel like an old soul.
Television:
I am proud to say I don't really watch television. Instead, I tape Grey's Anatomy for later, and watch Sex and the City, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Arrested development on DVD. I love the Daily Show and the Colbert Report but I don't have tv at my house so I have to watch it ... To make up for the guilt I often watch the tapes while running on the treadmill or knitting something or other.
Books:
There are far too many. I have what one might consider an unhealthy obsession. I've read way too many books for my age. I love Coney Island of the Mind poems by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and once did a pilgrimage to his bookstore in North Beach, San Francisco. Sometimes a Great Notion is amazing and beautiful, too- that's Ken Kesey, my man who also wrote One Flew Over A Cukoo's nest, and Sailor's Song. Lawrence Durrell should be canonized for his Alexandria Quartet, possibly the most moving, beautiful writing I've ever read. The Brothers Karamazov was a chore for the first thirty seconds, a dream the last twelve hundred pages. Dostoyevsky is a genius. Wendell Berry is always inspiring, Jack Kerouac alway a trip, and my first big obsession along with Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Phillip Whalen, Frank O'Hara and all the Beat poets, the best minds of their generation, starving, hysterical, naked...Annie Dillard, the modern day Thoreau, Barbara Kingsolver, Dylan Thomas, Anne Sexton and Robinson Jeffers. Steinbeck is like comfort food, as is Hemingway. Haruki Murakami is more imaginative than any dreaming mind and just as twisted. I wish I had JRR Tolkein's spirit. Nabakov is just plain brilliant, writing Lolita in his second language. Billy Collins will always have my heart for "Serenade" from Flying Alone Around the Room. Tom Robbins is hilarious, Faulkner is confusing, but in a good way, N.Scott Momaday is pure compassion as are the writings of HH Dalai Lama. I love the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay, I feel I could have written it myself. Also Tennyson for writing, "now folds the lily all her sweetness up and slips into the bosom of the lake. Now fold thyself, my dearest, thou and slip into my bosom and be lost in me," lines I have recited drunk in a bar on a first date, unfortunately. David Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is just that and hilarious, as are all of David Sedaris's books, and I hope one day I can follow the path of Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson and of course, Edward Abbey. That's a lot but people go overboard in the music department so I can to.
Heroes:
John Muir, Annie Dillard, Jack Kerouac, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Ken Kesey, Teddy Roosevelt, Wendell Berry, Allan Ginsberg and all those beat boys, the Dalai Lama, Camus, Barbara Kingsolver, Marc Chagall and my dad
