Marina and I had fun trading favorites, even as we both struggled with the ways in which the exercise felt a little… juvenile… to both of us. Marina was a little embarrassed, at least for a moment. I wasn’t, at all. I fucking love juvenile. It’s fun.
Anyway – she suggested that I come up with my own versions for us to explore, having now finished hers, and so, now, for the next stretch of time, you’ll learn a bit more about me….
First up – desert island discs. I’m American, but I fucking loved listening to this radio show as a kid. I don’t even know how I got access to it, other than just listening when I was in the UK, which I was a little, but not a lot. But listen I did, and enjoy, I did. And so….
Eight discs:
- The Kinks: One for the Road
- The Beatles (a.k.a., “The White Album”)
- The Beatles: 1962-1966 (a.k.a., “The Red Album”)
- The Beatles: 1967-1970 (a.k.a., “The Blue Album”)
- Krishna Das: All One
- The Doors: The Soft Parade
- Frank Sinatra: In the Wee Small Hours
- Miles David: Kind of Blue
I’ve listed the eight in no particular order. A life without any one of these discs would feel… incomplete.
Book:
How impossible to try to imagine just one book to spend the remainder of my time with! I’m tempted to say something like Ulysses, or Moby-Dick or Anna Karenina or War and Peace – some really long, really tough novel that I could spend years sinking my teeth into. But I think, honestly, my answer would be Jack Kornfield’s A Path With Heart. That book is so rich, and features so much wisdom, and so much work, that I could happily spend the rest of my days in it.
Luxury good:
This is, for me, impossible. I live a life that’s not even slightly spartan, and yet, it’s almost entirely bereft of anything like a “luxury good.” Maybe a bottomless bottle of scotch? Is that possible? Failing that, I suppose – and assuming that “a computer with receive-only internet connection” is out (because that would give me all the books and music in the world) – I think I would choose a write-only solar-powered computer with a terabyte of storage, one on which I could write for that portion of my days in which I wasn’t engaged in physical activity, or listening to my music (see above), or reading my book and meditating (see above).