Choice. The problem is choice. - Neo, The Matrix Reloaded What gives you the right to move, the right to fall? Some acts are motivated, others are automatic. Do not presume that you can decide which is which for anyone but yourself or you will be . . . disappointed. - The Arilou, in Star Control II (Paul Reiche III and Fred Ford) There was a time when it was enough to be entertained by music, a story, a movie, a game, whatever.
Then I needed the pieces I consumed to be interesting in some way.
Now I need them to be useful in some way, and the best measure of this, I think, is how much a text has influenced me by making me think or act differently in some way.
Across all genres and types, I would say that the most influential works to me have been (in the order I consumed them):
Anyway, it's the choices we make that define us, and here are mine! Music. Apart from the whole David Bowie thing above, my favourite piece of music is "Allegro non Troppo", movement 1 of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto Number One. To me, this track defines epicness. Tchaikovsky has always carried more weight than any other classical composer in my mind, and I also love his Nutcracker suite and "Marche Slave". Other orchestral works I like are Bach's "Toccata and Fugue", other pieces from Fantasia and Delibes' Copella. There's a certain passage from Polovetsian Dances that I find priceless. I also listen to tracks from computer games. Games may not strike one as the best place to look for quality music, but along with some of them being great standalone pieces, they remind me of the experience of playing the games; which is great. My favourite game soundtrack is for my favourite game, Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters. The original mod tracks are the definitive and most wonderfully-eclectic collection of Star Control music, bur the fan-made remixes (all available free) are the most accessible for the uninitiated. Some of the remixes certainly surpassed the originals too. These pieces are so varied to match the variety of characters and moods from the game. Everything from the eerie majesty of "Under a Red Sky" to the wild twists of "Frungy Party". "Mystic Shadows" is my phone's ringtone. Other game music I like comes from other games I've played (duh). Dune carries a certain mystique and having read the novel, I can see why; this mystique is also reflected in the computer game based loosely upon it. The midi synths composed by Stephane Picq are pretty awesome, they really take me back to places within what was a very absorbing game; Dune: Spice Opera was faithful and totally worth a listen, especially "Sign of the Worm". Another influence is the monumental Doom! Bobby Prince's original music matched the various maps of the game beautifully, which they did with their coarse but always-listenable style. The Doom and Doom II remix albums, The Dark Side of Phobos and Delta-Q-Delta are both classy, with interesting variations on the originals. The Final Doom is the episode that I played the most of and it has great music even if not by Bobby Prince. A highlight is "Legion of the Lost". Non-Bowie vocal artists are mostly unknown to me, I've only heard their hits. I find Dream Theater and Four Tet very interesting - "And Then Patterns" sums up what my life is like. So here are my thirty favourite non-Bowie music pieces, in rough chronological order:
My favourite non-Bowie albums (or suites, soundtracks) are:
Movies. I've always been a fan of stories that mess with time, reality and similar devices. Memento is my favourite movie, I might not have amnesia but that all seemed so familiar (as I write above). It's a bit like a cross between two of my other favourites, The Matrix and Inception. Science fiction is a strong influence, me being me. It hasn't yet inspired me to do as much as what Bowie did with it, but 2001: A Space Odyssey goes well with its novel, which I've also read. Dinosaurs aren't quite as cool as space, but Jurassic Park is about perfect except that real-life experience with my pet dinosaur (a ringneck parrot) is an amusing counterpoint to it. If I was ever in a movie, I'd probably want to be some hopelessly-obsessed Bowie fan, of which there is one in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. So whenever I'm asked 'what movie are you from?', that's my answer! As for actual Bowie, who portrayed some awfully-interesting characters, of particular interest is The Man Who Fell To Earth, with that role's influence on his album Station To Station, one of my favourites. The scene from Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence that stands out to me is Bowie's character buried and left for dead, while a conflicted soldier saves a lock of his hair. His role as Nikola Tesla in The Prestige brings me to another influence: Christopher Nolan. Everything that guy does seems to be gold, gold that includes my favourite movie Memento and the best portrayal of my favourite superhero in The Dark Knight trilogy. 
Seu Jorge portraying the Bowie-obsessed Pele from The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, performing "Space Oddity" (in Portuguese) instead of watching for pirates who are about to board behind him. If I'm from a movie, I'm this guy. My favourite thirty movies in chronological order are:
The written word. I don't really read anymore. Reading of the sort that I used to do served its purpose, and what I read now serves a more focused purpose, aligned with what I'm here to do. Even when I had the time to read, I didn't read very widely, as the list below shows. But my favourite novel is The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson. I liked a lot about that novel, but I guess what stood out for me was the interconnectedness of all things, the transience of the world we know, and the ever-present possibility of other worlds, both in space and, how can I put this, *time*: how things could have been, and the many ways they could go. The gorgeous imagery helped, too, and it kept reminding me of Memento; really the two texts are the same, just on different scales. From alternative histories to actual history. It's always fascinated me, those other places in the past and how different they were, how unforgettable figures were forged by the choices they had to make, forced upon them by their desperate times. It's like this: often I have to value statistics of large samples, etc, but at the same time, case studies - the individuals - never lose their importance. Two narrative accounts I've read are Jung Chang's Wild Swans and Antony Beevor's Stalingrad. When I've decided which Bowie biography I like best I'll add that. When speculating about history like this my mind wanders over to Isaac Asimov's Foundation novels. I know he didn't plan it, but the way they were tied up with his Robot works, particularly by Robots and Empire, was pretty inspiring. Daneel Olivaw is perhaps my favourite literary hero. The End of Eternity was a fun time-mashing story. Apart from wondering about time, reality and suchlike, I often find myself playing with numbers in my head, studying the geometries presented to me by everyday objects and so on. Ideas about information itself, and how it means, have arguably dominated my thoughts for many years. A novel that dealt with some of that was The Memory of Whiteness, probably the most elegant novel I've ever read. If we are all floating worlds, what are the metaphorical whitelines of that novel? Dostoyevsky's Notes From Underground I suppose is one of the few true classics I've read, it's a tortuous read, but well worth it. Polemic or didactic? I can't decide. There was a time when I thought I would read all the literary classics, but have conceded it'll never happen. Maybe in another life I'll be that uber-geeky arts student who mixes cerebral commentaries on ancient Greek literature with insights on parallels in far-Eastern modes of thought. Or something. From my younger days, I've always had a soft spot for Theodore Taylor's The Cay. My favourite short story is Jonathan Nolan's "Memento Mori", which happens to be the basis for my favourite movie Memento. There are some great lines from it, like about the effects of time on memory, and every person being a chain gang of idiots. Once, I liked to imagine I was changeless, like Earl, but I've certainly grown up over the years, and the me of the future will probably decry my current self to no end. It isn't like I'm judging from a vast sample of evocative literary pearls, but my favourite poem is "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and some lines of "Kubla Khan" form the epigraph of my MSc thesis. Bowie is an influence here as well, of course. Chris O'Leary's blog Pushing Ahead of the Dame added so much depth to Bowie's music for me, and sets a standard that will difficult to meet in my own writing about the man and his music. The books based on the blog entries, Rebel Rebel and Ashes to Ashes, are excellent. The musical that Bowie wrote with Enda Walsh in his last years, Lazarus, is very interesting. The show doesn't seem to be coming to Sydney so all I can do at this point (until some kind of film version materialises?) is read it. It seems to achieve an ambiguity of meaning without excessive randomness; its nonlinear quality is reminiscent of Memento. In Memento we are as clueless as Leonard about what did or didn't happen, while in Lazarus we are as clueless as Newton about what's real and what's not. The eternal struggle, no? So, the list: the thirty, in rough chronological order:
Games. I've never been much of a gamer, and even when I played them at all, I wasn't playing them for fun - more so that I could analyse them. An exception to this was Star Control II, which kept me engaged with its powerful plot. I hear Star Control II will finally get its sequel, which I am happy about. Don't know what I'm talking about? Better get the game, then! Dune was an absorbing game for its day, with a brilliant and distinctive soundtrack by Stephane Picq. Doom is probably the game I enjoyed the most for the sake of enjoyment, while playing with others in particular. It was also useful to me when I created a Martian terrain map for a uni assessment, which could be explored with the Doom engine (described earlier on this page). I got a HD for that. I found StarCraft very interesting for its strategic complexity. Perhaps the last noteworthy game I'll ever play is Omikron: The Nomad Soul. And why? Its soundtrack is my favourite Bowie album, 'hours . . .'. Bowie stopped performing before I became a fan, so I was never able to attend a Bowie concert . . . until I saw him perform "Survive" at Harvey's Bar: 
Give me wings. Give me space. Give me money for a change of face. Back |