In deliberately shuffled order, as if to emphasise the helter-skelter and wide-ranging nature of my interests, I am interested in--but do not necessarily endorse all of--the following: reading; writing; theology; hagiography; asceticism; the Philokalia; the Corpus Dionysiacum; coffee; ales, stouts and porters; neckties (no cartoon characters); downloading fonts; interior decorating; book collecting; visiting monasteries; drawing crude caricatures of temps at work; hermeneutics; iconography; Eastern European culture; lengthy rock songs with enigmatic lyrics; classic Russian literature; English poetry; Pythagoreanism; monastic history; Renaissance hermeticism; Plato and his followers; the music of the spheres; Byzantium; the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood; William Morris and Arts and Crafts; John Ruskin; the Beuronese art school; monarchy; trees; the epic; languages; Mikhail Bakhtin; cultural criticism; alchemy and pre-Copernican astronomy; mediaeval literature; Anglo-Saxon culture; woodcuts and engravings; tradition; the Romantic movement; the Slavophiles; Dracula; acoustic music; Homer and Virgil; the Inklings; Nikita Mikhalkov; Emir Kusturica; fauns and satyrs, and of course, Pan; libraries; Romanesque art and architecture; semiotics; the Trivium; Arthurian legend; Dante; Confucius and Lao-Tzu; the Lord of the Rings; Chasidus, Chabad and the Tanya; the Celts; Balkan history; printing; woodcuts; chanting; illuminated manuscripts; the 14th-century hesychastic movement; Ss Cyril and Methodius and the mission to the Slavs; Mount Athos; St Benedict and Benedictinism; erudite novels of the arcane; Sherlock Holmes; classical culture; existentialism; the Beats; William Gibson; the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn; pastoral cultures and pastoral poetry; John Dee; Norse mythology and Asatru; W. B. Yeats; postmodernity; irony; Stoicism; Kabbalah; Haroun al-Rashid; Radical Orthodoxy; the art of memory; German expressionist film; vampires; H. P. Lovecraft; steampunk; Harry Potter and its symbolism; the Warburg Institute; Paideia; church architecture; Ricky Jay; old books; the British Isles; alphabets; the celestial hierarchy; the Desert Fathers; incunabula; simulacra; probably a few other things too
People who hate ballcaps, t-shirts, commercials, cars, video games, celebrities and their cult, tv, sports or nihilism. Also, old friends who I fear may be dead or in prison. By the way, my profile background is a detail from a fresco by iconographer Aidan Hart. I might like to meet him too.ctl00_Main_ctl00_UserBasicInformation1_ctrlViewMorePics: hover{}.contactTable A IMG{}
Byzantine chant, Valaam/znamenny chant, Gregorian chant, Russian choral music, Baroque (esp. Bach), Romantic/Classical orchestral music, European folk music of pretty much every sort, Russian shanson/blatnyak, Arvo Part, Matisyahu, Emir Kusturica and the No Smoking Orchestra, Gogol Bordello, Terem Quartet, Golem, the Pogues, Iron Maiden (pre-No Prayer for the Dying), old Metallica, ska (The Toasters, Leningrad), industrial (esp FLA, Skinny Puppy and Mentallo and the Fixer), Soulfly, Skyclad, old King's X, Voivod, Tom Waits, bluegrass, klezmer, Robert Johnson, Johnny Cash, anything involving HIP (historically informed performance, if you haven't read John Butt, and hey, who has?), film score music (esp. Danny Elfman, Howard Shore, Wojciech Kilar, and John Williams), Russian bards (Okudzhava and Vysotsky), Vince Dicola, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Squirrel Nut Zippers, Faith No More, Mr Bungle, Secret Chiefs 3, Goran Bregovic, Taraf de Haidouks, Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares, Anuna, Ziyia, Scorn, some punk, jazz, goth, trip-hop, etc., anything with an accordion or a shawm/zurna
Lord of the Rings, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Last Crusade (no Temple, please), Amadeus, Dead Poets Society, Ghostbusters, Young Frankenstein, Star Wars (original trilogy), Dracula (Browning's), Bram Stoker's Dracula (yes, Coppola), Nosferatu, Andrei Rublev (I'm the only person I know who didn't find it boring), The Salton Sea, Rushmore, Mystery Men, The Mission, Transformers the Movie (the animated one), Shawshank Redemption, The Burbs, Christopher Guest movies, Coen brothers movies, Road to Perdition, Burnt by the Sun, Black Cat White Cat, Snatch, Ostrov, Everything is Illuminated
Television sucks, but I have been known to watch a few shows on dvd. For instance, I just re-watched a few 'Jeeves and Wooster' episodes last night. (I say 'television' because 'tv' is a nickname, and nicknames are for friends, and television is no friend of mine!)
The Rule of St Benedict; St Cassian's Conferences; St Damascene's Lives of Ss Barlaam and Ioasaph; The Philokalia; anything by Plato; Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy; Epictetus's Handbook and any Stoic ethical writings; Beowulf; Fr Justin Popovich's Orthodox Faith and Life in Christ; The Venerable Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People; H. Middleton's Precious Vessels of the Holy Spirit; The Fall of Interpretation by James K.A. Smith; George Herbert and any 16th- or 17th-century English poetry; Tennyson; The Pre-Raphaelites (esp. Christina Rossetti); The Corpus Dionysiacum; anything by Chesterton, Lewis (esp. Till We Have Faces and The Discarded Image), Tolkien, Charles Williams, or Dostoevsky; The Optina Pustyn Monastery in the Russian Literary Imagination; The Hellenic-Christian Philosophical Tradition by Constantine Cavarnos; anything by Dame Frances Yates or Seneca; The Iliad; Life's Little Deconstruction Book; The Club Dumas; The Name of the Rose; Travels in Hyperreality; Dracula; The Bridge on the Drina; The Historian; Confederacy of Dunces The Divine Comedy The Aeneid Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell Boris Akunin books
King Alfred the Great. New Hieromartyr Veniamin, Metropolitan of Petrograd. Patriarch Kiril of Bulgaria.