CURRENT MISSION

whistling

ABOUT ME

"Be a peasant — be, if that were fitting at the present time, a village clergyman or schoolmaster — be, and given the present time that’s the form that seems to me to be the most fitting, be a Painter — and in so doing as a person you will, after that spell of years of outdoor life and manual work, as a person you will, in the end and in the passage of years, gradually become something better and deeper." Theo van Gogh to his brother

Interests

Taraxacum

• outdoor activities

Music, Movies, and Books

I enjoy reading. I have recently begun a number of histories of reading, including Jonathan Rose's great book. As far as literature is concerned, I enjoy the Russian novelists (among them: Chekhov, Dostoevski; Tolstoi); Kurt Vonnegut; Melville; Mark Twain; Kafka; Goethe. One of my favorite philosophers is Ludwig Wittgeinstein. I have recently come to admire Michel de Montaigne whom I discovered through Gore Vidal. I am also a fan of the theater: Brecht & Shakespeare, of course, and I am starting back on the Greeks: Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles.

Music: Schubert, Berlioz, Bach, Telemann, Mendelssohn, Debussy, Gershwin, Mahler, Wagner. I am also a big fan of Pete Seeger and the Nueva Musica movement of Latin America (Victor Jara, Soledad Bravo, etc.).

I am not a big fan of cinema, although I enjoy the films of Ingmar Bergman tremendously. I am just not patient enough for the cinema.