Art. Music. Traveling. Social and Evolutionary Psychology. Physics. Books. Tree-huggers. Belly-dancing. Accordions. Activism. Graffiti. Home-made Electronics. Antiques. Men. etc etc etc
"What is a poet? An unhappy man who in his heart harbors a deep anguish, but whose lips are so fashioned that the moans and cries which pass over them are transformed into ravishing music. His fate is like that of the unfortunate victims whom the tyrant Phalaris imprisoned in a brazen bull, and slowly tortured over a steady fire; their cries could not reach the tyrant's ears so as to strike terror into his heart; when they reached his ears they sounded like sweet music. And men crowd around the poet and say to him, "
"Sing for us soon again" —which is as much as to say, "May new sufferings torment your soul, but may your lips be fashioned as before; for the cries would only distress us, but the music, the music, is delightful."-Soren Kierkegaard
Fellow artists, writers, musicians, science geeks, real hippies, and anyone else who can expand the reach of my brainwaves. I will need some help to take over the world...
Ribbons, Foreign Born, Aqueduct, The Grey Race, Centipede Eest, VCR, Bob Dylan, Beirut, Tv On The Radio, Grizzly Bear, Man Man, Klaxons, Air, Mirah, Nick Cave, Modey Lemon, Radiohead, Daft Punk, 16 Horsepower, Deftones, Liars, Deadboy & the Elephantmen, Johnossi, Dax Riggs, Menomena, Juana Molina, Dave Thomas, Battles, Dirty Projectors, Bernadette Seacrest, Devendra Banhart, Animal Collective, Sparks, Xiu Xiu, Billie Holiday, The Faint, The Presets, Cat Power, Au Revoir Simone, Danielson, Junior Kimbrough, Fiona Apple, Etta James, David Bowie, Brightblack Morning Light, Jay Reatard, Das Llamas, Aesop Rock, Yacht, Mass Movement of the Moth!, The Clash, Primal Scream, Figurines, Mugison, Aphex Twin, Tiny Vipers, Band Of Horses, Yann Tiersen, Interpol, Deer Tick, aKido, Son House, Zenith Foundation, Beck, The Knife, Nine Inch Nails, RJD2, Rage Against The Machine, KMFDM, Fischerspooner, PJ Harvey, Scarling, Coyote, The Deathray Davies, Bjork, Claude Chalhoub, Ella Fitzgerald, Neil Young, Camera Obscura, Fleetwood Mac, The Black Keys, Robert Johnson, Elvis Perkins, Arcade Fire, Muse, Brian Jonestown Massacre, Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip, Vetiver, Winds, Leaves Eyes, A Perfect Circle, Tool, The Dresden Dolls, Amon Tobin, BIG A little a, Gogol Bordello, Sleater-Kinney, Annuals, Low, The Postal Service, Robots In Disguise, Kenna, Syd Barrett, DeVotchka, Isan, LCD Soundsystem, Guillemots, Bill Withers, The Beatles, T Rex, Icy Demons, Peter Bjorn and John, Tin Hat Trio, Patsy Cline, The Olivia Tremor Control, Death Cab for Cutie, Built To Spill, Billy Idol, Gorillaz, Rasputina, HEALTH, Atmosphere, Cake, Depeche Mode, Pink Floyd, Nirvana, Jason Webley, Pavement, Deerhoof, Spoon, Broken Social Scene, Mike Doughty, Kasabian, Biomecca, Sage Francis, Midlake, Agalloch, Leonard Cohen, Mazzy Star, Owen Pallett, Jelly Roll Morton, Skip James, The illiterati, Holy Fuck, Talking Heads, The Cure... this list could go on forever...
I'm also learning to play a 90 year old Hohner melodeon, and I LOVE it.
The Science of Sleep, Legend, Amelie, The Fountain, Dark City, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Flight From Death, Freaks, Pulp Fiction, Fight Club, Holy Smoke, Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas, Harold and Maude, Little Miss Sunshine, Edward Scissorhands, Dandelion, A Clockwork Orange, Sin City, Princess Mononoke, Baraka, Garden State, A Scanner Darkly, Paris Texas, In the Mouth of Madness, Nightmare Before Christmas, Kill Bill, cheesy 80's teen movies, Nosferatu, Clerks, mobster movies, Memento, Dawn of the Dead, horror movies with plentiful blood and gore, Chocolat, Requiem For A Dream, Donnie Darko, Gregg Araki's Teenage Apocalypse Trilogy, Hitchcock movies, Delicatessen, The City of Lost Children, The Fifth Element, The Big Lebowski, Waking Life...
I have a tv, but no cable.
"Once I thought that to be human was the highest aim a man could have, but I see now that it was meant to destroy me. Today I am proud to say I am INHUMAN, that I belong not to men and governments, that I have nothing to do with creeds and principles. I have nothing to do with the creaking machinery of humanity- I belong to the earth!
I say that lying on my pillow and I can feel the horns sprouting from my temples. I can see about me all those cracked forbears of mine dancing around the bed, consoling me, egging me on, lashing me with their serpent tongues, grinning and leering at me with their skulking skulls. I am inhuman! I say it with a mad, hallucinated grin, and I will keep on saying it though it rains crocodiles. Behind my words are all those grinning, leering, skulking skulls, some dead and grinning a long time, some grinning as if they had lock-jaw, some grinning with the grimace of a grin, the foretaste and aftermath of what is going on.
Clearer than all I see my own grinning skull, see the skeleton dancing in the wind, serpents issuing from the rotted tongue and the bloated pages of ecstacy slimed with excrement. And I join my slime, my excrement, madness, my ecstasy to the great circuit which flows the subterranean vaults of the flesh. All this unbidden, unwanted, drunken vomit will flow on endlessly through the minds of those to come in the inexhaustible vessel that contains the history of the race.
Side by side with the human race there runs another race of beings, the inhuman ones, the race of artists who, goaded by unknown impulses, take the lifeless mass of humanity and by the fever and ferment with which they imbue it turn this soggy dough into bread and the bread into wine and the wine into song. Out of the dead compost and the inert slag they breed a song that contaminates. I see this other race of individuals ransacking the universe, turning everything upside down, their feet always moving in blood and tears, their hands always empty, always clutching and grasping for the beyond, for the god out of reach: slaying everything within reach in order to quiet the monster that gnaws at their vitals.
I see that when they tear hair with the effort to comprehend, to seize this, forever unattainable, I see that when they bellow like crazed beasts and rip and gore, I see that this is right, that there is no other path to pursue. A man who belongs to this race must stand on the high place with gibberish in his mouth and rip out his entrails. It is right and just, because he must! And anything that falls short of this frightening spectacle, anything less shuddering, less terrifying, less mad, less intoxicated, less contaminating, is not art. The rest is counterfeit. The rest is human. The rest belongs to life and lifelessness."
-Henry Miller (from Tropic of Cancer)
Not really heroes, but people that have my unconditional respect:
...Lori Earley, Dali, Cezanne, Ernest Becker, Sheldon Solomon, a couple who tuned me in, and this one girl who lives in Staples.