peter

Stuff I like
This is here for me so that when I get old and lose my mind I can look at this and know what to read, watch and listen to, and where to go.

Books and films and music might mean a lot to someone for all sorts of reasons. Perhaps it's just familiarity, perhaps association with a time, or place or person. May be you just like it! These are some of my favourites thus far, for a variety of different reasons. Whether they influence, or whether they reflect, I am not sure. Presumably both.

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Poems I like Too many to list them all, but here are some top favourites... The Axion Esti, by Odysseus Elytis. "The trees, starry with goodwill / The musical notation of another world / The ancient belief that their always exists / The very near and yet unseen./..." ".../ Praised be the unmotivated tear / rising slowly in the lovely eyes / of children standing hand in hand / ..." The vastest things are those we may not learn, by Mervyn Peake. "The vastest things are those we may not learn. / We are not taught to die nor to be born, / nor how to burn / with love / How pitiful is our enforced return / To those small things we are the masters of." Marina, by T.S. Eliot. "... / Living to live in a world of time beyond me; let me / Resign my life for this life, my speech for that unspoken, / The awakened, lips parted, the hope, the new ships. / ..." Lay your sleeping head..., by W.H.Auden. "Lay your sleeping head, my love, / Human on my faithless arm; / ..." Too many names, by Pablo Neruda. "... / They have spoken to me of Venezuelas, / of Chiles and Paraguays; / I have no idea what they are saying. / I know only the skin of the earth / and I know it has no name. and yes, of course, that one by Christina Rosetti
Books I like The Little Prince by Antoine de St.Exupery Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de St.Exupery Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake The Outlaw Josey Wales by Forrest Carter The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse Death in Venice by Thomas Mann Arabian Sands by Wilfrid Thesiger The Lost Continent by Bill Bryson Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson God of a Hundred Names by Barbara Greene and Victor Gollancz If this is a Man / The Truce / Moments of Reprieve by Primo Levi I, Tom Horn by Will Henry The Shootist by Glendon Swarthout Winnie the Pooh by A.A.Milne The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen Donaldson The Axion Esti by Odysseus Elytis The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam by Edward Fitzgerald Selected Poems of Pablo Neruda Selected Poems by Mervyn Peake Selected Poems by T.S.Eliot Selected Poems by S.T.Coleridge Selected Poems of W.H.Auden The collected Poems of Alfred Tennyson The Book of My Enemy by Clive James The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust These last two are yours Jenny by Now I should be happy to return them if I could find you!
Music I like Composers / singers Gustav Mahler, Frank Sinatra, Kathryn Tickell, Sinead O'Connor, Oscar Peterson, Pete Atkin, Bjork, some of Antony and the Johnsons, Dire Straits, Annie Lennox, Dean Martin, REM, Bach, Wagner, some Elgar and Mozart, most of Brahms, some Verdi, Suzanne Vega, some Elton John, some Aerosmith, Sade, Marina V, Avril Lavigne, Linkin Park, Evanescence, Gorillaz, T'Pau, No Doubt, Radiohead, Bruce Springsteen, Dead can Dance, Paul Simon, Meatloaf ... Individual songs / tracks / albums Long-time favourites... Troy (Sinead O'Connor) Romeo and Juliet (Dire Straits) The Anchor Song (Bjork) Will You (Hazel O'Connor) It Happened in Monterey (Sinatra) Sunrise (Pete Atkin) The last bit of Elgar's Symphony 1. Night Vision (Suzanne Vega) Objects in the Rearview Mirror (Meatloaf) Don't Speak (No Doubt) Missing (Everything but the Girl) The weakness in me (Joan Armatrading) Joga (Bjork) Graceland album (Paul Simon) Beware of the Beautiful Stranger album (Pete Atkin) Private Dancer album (Tina Turner) I'm on fire (Bruce Springsteen) The Best of album (Everything but the Girl) Recent favourites include "The Trophies of my Lovers Gone" by Pete Atkin/Clive James, from their new album: A Dream of Fair Women. (see peteatkin.com) "The turns of speech that I can't quite erase from how I talk, The songs that I might sometimes hum a phrase from when I walk, And all the times I can't afford to let my thoughts run on, These are the trophies of my lovers gone..." and also "Thought of you" from their Winter Spring cd.
Places I like The edge of the Greenland ice sheet near Kangerlussuaq In front of Pissarro's "Tuilerie Gardens in the Rain", Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Solheimajokull, Iceland: especially the bit round the back. The Isles of Scilly Wyoming Oxford By the ocean In the hills Beside the ice Home The middle of nowhere with good company The middle of nowhere alone... for a while On the way there. With a group of friends at the table, by candlelight. Wilderness, leaning into the wind. The tent, late evening, cosy at minus-10 degrees. Helicopters, especially up front with the pilot, giving directions. With Debbie, watching TV with the dogs and stuffing our faces!
Some of the films I like Once Upon a Time in the West Unforgiven Rio Bravo The Shootist How to Steal a Million Roman Holiday French Kiss The Fifth Element The Searchers While You Were Sleeping The Philadelphia Story The Outlaw Josey Wales The Maltese Falcon Leon Amelie and yes, Mandy's Dad: I do still like Burt Lancaster! Who wouldn't?
What (I ?) see through the window To begin with, buildings, people, trees, cars, fields and the sky. Then the inside edge of everything that is outside. My own reflection in the glass.. Your reflection. The things that you tell me that you see. Pieces of a puzzle, but only some of them. Now the outside edge of everything that is inside. The future. The past. The works of man and the work of God. Other people's lives. Meaning and intent. What I see depends very little on what is actually there. I see more with my eyes closed and my heart open. I see everything that I imagine, everything that I want, and nothing that I didn't already know, because my eyes are still closed and only my mind is open. I see what I believe that I see, whether it is true or not. I see what I expect to see. I see what I think I ought to see. Everything I see is transparent, so I see nothing. I see time falling past like water. Sometimes I see the ripples in the sky from where you touched it.

this page is always under construction....!