My wife points out- correctly- that too many of my posts here are about bicycles. Quite true. So I thought maybe you'd like to hear about some of the other things I love.
The first thing that may surprise you as a reader of this blog is that I have read almost everything by C.S. Lewis. I'm enough of a fan that I've visited his grave and his home in Oxford, England. While there, I was able to chat with a neighbor that had lived there while he was alive. I also went for a walk in the small forest behind his house. Without agonizing over it, my favorite of his books would be the Space Trilogy, with Peralandra a quick choice for absolute favorite. Or the Great Divorce.
My favorite visual artists are a wide lot. Again, I could think about this for a long long time, but I really like Marc Chagall, for his colors and his odd subjects (chickens marrying people, etc.) I'm fascinated by Pollock, even though I don't much understand him. Conceptually, I love Jenny Holzer. And I like the texture of Van Gogh. Oh, and I like Piet Mondrian. Again, though, I don't really understand what's going on there. Photography-wise, I like Ansel Adams (of course) and Galen Rowell, Anton Corbijn, and Dorothea Lange. I guess textural black & white would define what I love in a picture. Also, my wife's photos are just wonderful.
I like guitars and I suppose I could say I play the guitar. "Play" is a bit of an overstatement. Or else I just know an awful lot of good guitarists personally, and not many bad ones. My feelings in this realm are a bit torn between the simplicity of playing an acoustic on the beach or on a nice wide, wooden porch, and the echo-machine-brilliance of The Edge or Johnny Greenwood (of Radiohead). The sound of OK Computer and Achtung Baby put together into a blender would be my ideal electric sound, I suppose. I'd give anything to play like that. Well, except for actual time practicing, of course. In reality, I can hack at most any set of chords, but I'm not sophisticated enough (or interested enough) to know about sharp and flat chords, etc. I have a Lotus that I bought in a Florida pawn shop and a Takamine that my friend Shannon sold me to make money for Haiti.
I won't bother to go into music, because I could talk forever, but I will tell you that I listened only to Christian rock music until just before college, when I bought Talking Heads "Stop Making Sense" (along with listening to U2 all through my teen years- since '85), and R.E.M. all through college. I think they started to go fast downhill after Automatic. (B&W cover.... you see?) I really love the pedal-steel banjo kinda thing on Son Volt's "Trace". Also, I deeply love Moog synthesizers and that sort of "first wave" analog sound from the 80's. If that doesn't make sense, give a listen to the synths and drum machines in "Always Something There To Remind Me" by Naked Eyes (I think).
Oh, and I love the novels of Mark Helprin. If you've not read Winter's Tale, you're depriving yourself.
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