Writing about Homer made me think: what's the art that doesn't just astonish us but actively heals us?
I don't mean comfort, I mean that it has a subconscious effect that you only notice later. These are almost religious rituals that bring you back into balance with the world: they remind you that life is about more than us and that whatever excitement we feel, we have to be brought back into proportion if we're going to exist in harmony with our worlds. If we're really listening or watching, our problems afterward seem only proportional to how bad they are.
Three categories:
Core Healers: Brings you back to balance.
Healing through Contemplation: Changes how we perceive reality so that experience becomes more meaningful.
Healing through Memory: Teaches that even if it seems that ehat we value disappears, reality has a way of retaining what's made our lives meaningful.
You all might consider this incredibly pretentious but... **** you!
Literature:
Core Healers:
Homer: Iliad, Odyssey
The Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Samuel, Isaiah, Ecclesiastes, Psalms, Proverbs, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Job, Jonah, Ruth, Luke, John,
Dante Divine Comedy
Shakespeare: The Tempest, King Lear, The Winter's Tale, Cymbeline
The Mahabharata
Aeschylus: the Oresteia
Virgil: Aeneid
War and Peace
Anna Karenina
Brothers Karamazov
Marilynne Robinson: Gilead
Wordsworth: The Prelude
Leaves of Grass
Augustine Confessions
One Thousand and One Nights
Chekhov: The Student
Eugene Onegin
Joyce: The Dead
IB Singer: Gimpel the Fool, The Slave,
Goethe: Wilhelm Meister
Thomas Mann: Joseph and His Brothers
Solzhenitsyn: Matryona's House
Maimonides: Eight Chapters
George Herbert: The Temple
Thomas Traherne: Perfect Days
Julian of Norwich: Revelations of Divine Love
E.M. Forster: Howard's End
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Teresa of Avila: Interior Castle
Tove Jansson: The Summer Book
Healing by Contemplation:
Eliot Four Quartets
Rumi
Gerard Manley Hopkins
John Keats
Emily Dickinson
Calvino: Invisible Cities, Why Read the Classics
Primo Levi: The Periodic Table
Shakespeare: Hamlet, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure
Simone Weil: Waiting for God, Gravity and Grace, War and the Iliad
MI Finley: The World of Odysseus
Gilbert Highet: Gilbert in a Landscape
John Berger: And Our Faces My Heart Brief as Photos
Czeslaw Milosz: late poems
Wislaw Szymborszka
Yehuda Amichai
IB Singer: The Spinoza of Market Street, The Little Shoemakers, The Son from America
Boris Pasternak: Poems
Robert Frost
Marcus Aurelius: Meditations
Seamus Heaney: Postscript
Montaigne Essays
Chekhov: Uncle Vanya, The Lady with the Dog, The Bishop, Gooseberries, In the Ravine,
Boethius: The Consolation of Philosophy
Tao Te Ching
Buber: I and Thou
Gitanjali by Rabirandath Tagore
Bible: Sermon on the Mount, James
John Donne: Holy Sonnets and Late Sermons
Charles Lamb: Essays of Elia
Izaak Walton: The Compleat Angler
William Hazlitt: Essays
Paz: Labyrinth of Solitude, late poems
Borges: The Aleph, The Library of Babel, The South, Tlon Uqbar Orbis Tertius, various essays
Clarice Lispector: The Passion According to G.H.
John of the Cross: Spiritual Canticle, Dark Night
Miguel de Unamuno: Tragic Sense of Life, Saint Manuel Bueno
Healing by Memory:
In Search of Lost Time--also known as Remembrances of Things Past by Marcel Proust
Doctor Zhivago
Vasily Grossman: Life and Fate, Everything Flows
Solzhenitsyn: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Thomas Mann: The Magic Mountain, Buddenbrooks
Virginia Woolf: The Waves, To The Lighthouse, Mrs. Dalloway
Thornton Wilder: Our Town
Giacomo di Lampedusa: The Leopard
Carlo Levi: Christ Stopped at Eboli
Herodotus Histories
Zora Neale Hurston: Their Eyes Were Watching God
Thornton Wilder: The Bridge of San Luis Rey
Andrei Platnov: The Return
Primo Levi: The Truce
Chekhov: The Cherry Orchard, Three Sisters
IB Singer: The Family Moskat, The Manor, The Estate, Yentl, The Last Demon, Short Friday, A Friend of Kafka
SY Agnon: A Guest for the Night, Only Yesterday, Tehillah,
Sholem Aleichem: Tevye Stories,
Der Nister: The Family Mashber
Moby Dick
Carol Shields: The Stone Diaries
WG Sebald: Austerlitz
Gerard Murnane: The Plains
Morrison: Beloved
Robinson: Housekeeping
Cather: Death Comes for the Archbishop, My Antonia
George Eliot: Middlemarch
Gibbon: Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
E.H. Gombrich: A Little History of the World
Schama: Landscape and Memory
Bible: Lamentations, Ezra and Nehamia, Acts
Shakespeare: Henry IV, Henry V
Yevgenia Ginzburg: Journey into the Whirlwind
Elizabeth Gaskell: Cranford
Charles Dickens: David Copperfield
Goncharov: Oblomov
Tolstoy: Childhood, Boyhood, Youth, Family Happiness
Pushkin: The Captain's Daughter,
Turgenev: A Sportsman's Sketches
Fuentes: The Death of Artemio Cruz, The Old Gringo
Allende: House of the Spirits
Mario Vargas Llosa: War at the End of the World, The Green House,
Eduardo Galeano: Memory of Fire
Gracilano Ramos: Barren Lives
Benito Perez Galdos: Fortunata and Jacinta
Miguel Delibes: The Heretic, The Path
Antonio Machado: Poems
Saramago: All the Names, The Cave
Alvaro Mutis: The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll
Walter Kempowski: All for Nothing
Gregor van Rezzoni: An Ermine in Czernopol
Jean Giorno: Hill
Magda Szabo: The Door
Friedrich Rech: Diary of a Man in Despair
The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard
Maybe?
Crime and Punishment, The Idiot (Dostoevsky)
Ulysses
Les Miserables
Friedrich Holderlin
Robert Burton: Anatomy of Melancholy
The Gospel According to Jesus Christ (Jose Saramago)
Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
The Ramayana
Zhuangzi
The Tale of Genji
Paradise Lost
Hart Crane: The Bridge
Goethe: Faust
Plutarch Lives
Alessandro Manzoni: The Betrothed
Pascal: Pensees
Chaim Grade: The Yeshiva
Amos Oz: A Tale of Love and Darkness
David Grossman: To the End of the Land
Leah Goldberg: Poems
Aharon Appelfeld: Badenheim 1939, The Story of a Life
Somerset Maugham: The Razor's Edge
Chekhov: The Seagull
Turgenev: Fathers and Sons
Leskov: The Enchanted Wanderer
Heschel: The Sabbath, God in Search of Man
Pierre Hadot: Philosophy as a Way of Life
Arendt: The Human Condition
Will Durant: The Story of Civilization
Johann Huizinga: The Autumn of the Middle Ages
CS Lewis: An Experiment in Criticism
George Steiner: Real Presences
John Ruskin: Modern Painters
Northrop Frye: The Great Code
Josef Pieper: Leisure: The Basis of Culture
Thucydides: the Peleponnesian War
Michelet: History of France
Barbara Tuchman: A Distant Mirror
Ferdinand Braudel: The Mediterranean World
Burckhardt: Civilization in Renaissance Italy
Thoreau: Walden
William James: Varieties of Religoius Experience
Virgil: The Bucolics, Georgics
Woolf: A Room of One's Own
The Fire Next Time
The Little Flowers of Saint-Francis
Persig: Zen and the Art of Motocrycle Maintenance
Shakespeare: Richard II, Much Ado About Nothing, Macbeth, Othello, Romeo and Juliet
Bible: Hebrews, Emmaus, 1 Corinthians 13, Song of Songs, Wisdom of Solomon, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Micah, Amos
Jane Eyre
Pride and Prejudice
John Bunyan: Pilgrim's Progress
Dickens: Bleak House
Anthony Trollope: Barchester Books
Philip Larkin: Poems
Geoffrey Hill: Poems
Coleridge: Biographia Literaria
Gogol: Dead Souls
Gilyarovsky: Moscow and Moscuvites
Alejo Carpentier: The Kingdom of This World
Cortazar: Short Stories
Juan Rulfo: Pedro Paramo
Ernesto Sabato: Of Heroes and Tombs
Alejo Carpentier: Explosion in the Cathedral
Joao Guimares Rosa: Devil to Pay in the Backlands
Jose Donoso: The Obscene Bird of Night
Fuentes: Terra Nostra
Machado de Asis: Dom Casmurro
Pessoa: Book of Disquiet
Saramago: Baltasar and Blimunda, The Stone Raft, The Year of the Death of Riccardo Reis, Death with Interruptions, The Elephant's Journey
Leonora Carrington: The Hearing Trumpet
Barbara Conyms: The Vet's Daughter
Dino Buzzati: The Tartar Steppe, The Stronghold
Maria Dermout: Ten-Thousand Things
John Williams: Stoner
Genre Canon:
Lord of the Rings
Le Guinn: Earthsea Cycle, The Left Hand of Darkness
The Little Prince
Lem: Solaris
A Canticle for Liebowitz
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
The Once and Future King
Watership Down
The Last Unicorn
The Wind in the Willows
The Dark is Rising Sequence
Winnie the Pooh
The Velveteen Rabbit
Charlotte's Web
The Secret Garden
Anne of Green Gables
A Christmas Carol
Maus
Peanuts
Calvin and Hobbes
Blankets
Persepolis
Nausicca of the Valley of the Wind
All-Star Superman
I hope to write about so many of these some day, but I need to fill in my gaps. My unfortunate literary habit (not with Homer) is that when I'm bored, I skip ahead twenty-one hundred pages (or more...). You are free to do the same until it's time to set your thoughts down on the thing in itself. Obviously, there are some that I've only skimmed through or read a chapter here and there....
Further Note: This got away from me, my OCD took over, and I started writing down all of ChatGPT's suggestions. At this point I'd estimate I've even started 60% of these books.
Core Healers:
Ordet
Tokyo Story,
Late Spring
Ikiru
Andrei Rublev
The Tree of Life
The Apu Trilogy
The Decalogue
Tender Mercies
The Rules of the Game
Au Hasard Balthazar
The Ballad of Narayama
La Strada
Umberto D.
The Gospel According to St. Matthew
The Tree of Wooden Clogs
Miracle in Milan
A Serious Man
Wings of Desire
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
Shoah
The Gleaners and I
Rivers and Tides
First Cow
To Live
Spring in a Small Town
Dust in the Wind
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring
Charulata
War and Peace (Bondarchuk)
Hamlet (Kozintsev)
Three Colors: Red
I Know Where I'm Going!
The Old Oak
Local Hero
The Truman Show
Babe: The Pig
Perfect Days
Happy as Cazzaro
Good Morning
Breaking Away
Nashville
Healing through Contemplation:
2001
Yi-Yi
Wild Strawberries
The Sacrifice
The Immortal Story
Ugetsu
Sansho the Bailiff
The New World
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
A.I. Artificial Intelligence
My Dinner with Andre
My Night at Maud's
A Summer's Tale
Claire's Knee
The Green Ray
The Spirit of the Beehive
A Man Escaped
An Autumn Afternoon
Early Summer
Floating Weeds
Woman in the Dunes
After Life
Still Walking
Maborosi
The Legend of the Holy Drinker
The Night of the Shooting Stars
Voyage to Italy
Bicycle Thieves
The Wild Child
The Gleaners and I
Cleo from 5 to 7
True Grit (Coen bros)
Alice in the Cities
Paris, Texas
Kings of the Road
Perfect Days
Cave of Forgotten Dreams
Into Great Silence
Manufactured Landscapes
Honeyland
The Salt of the Earth
Showing Up
The Green Knight
C'mon C'mon
Still Life
The Road Home
The Blue Kite
Poetry
Little Forest
The Way Home
The Music Room
Days and Nights in the Forests
The Big City
Home and the World
Mathilukal
Dweepa
Anand
Piku
Nostalghia
The Double Life of Veronique
The Constant Factor
Life is a Fatal Sexually Transmitted Disease
The Color of Pomegranates
Life is Sweet
Cavalry
Picnic at Hanging Rock
Witness
Life, Above All
The Piano
Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
Evil Does Not Exist
No Bears
Being There
Black Stallion
Healing through Memory:
Ikiru
The Last Picture Show
Fanny and Alexander
A Matter of Life and Death
The Searchers
Arrival
Before Sunrise
Before Sunset
Boyhood
The Age of Innocence
Roma
Children of Paris
Places in the Heart
Umbrellas of Cherbourg
The Human Condition
Twenty-Four Eyes
When a Woman Ascends the Stairs
Only Yesterday
Princess Kaguya
Cinema Paradiso
Il Posto
The Best of Youth
Paisan
The Leopard
Rocco and His Brothers
Amarcord
Letter from an Unknown Woman
Madame de...
Small Change
Day for Night
Licorice Pizza
Inside Llewyn Davis
Grand Budapest Hotel
Fantastic Mr. Fox
The Darjeeling Limited
The Holdovers
About Schmidt
Nebraska
Y Tu Mama Tambien
Pinocchio (del Toro)
The Marriage of Maria Braun
Heimat
The Lives of Others
The Sorrow and the Pity
The Up Series
Stories We Tell
The Beaches of Agnes
Nostalgia for the Light
News from Home
Past Lives
Aftersun
A Ghost Story
Platform
The Story of Qiu Ju
Farewell, My Concubine
In the Heat of the Sun
A City of Sadness
The Time to Live and the Time to Die
In the Mood for Love
Peppermint Candy
A Taxi Driver
Ode to My Father
The Cloud Capped Star
Subarnekha
Piravi
Thaayi Shahepa
Massoom
Lunchbox
Mirror
Ivan's Childhood
Wings
Three Colors: Blue
Korczak
Mephisto
Illumination
Diary for My Children
Closely Watched Trains
Repentance
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
Brief Encounter
Hobson's Choice
Kes
Secrets & Lies
Another. Year
The Long Day Closes
Defiant Voices, Still Lives
Comfort and Joy
In America
My Left Foot
Away From Her
Gallipoli
Angel At My Table
Drive My Car
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Memoria
All the Beauty and Bloodshed
La Chimera
Close Your Eyes
Late Autumn
Atlantic City
The Last Waltz
American Graffiti
Maybe?
Ran
Seven Samurai
Winter Light
The Thin Red Line (sigh)
The Straight Story
Diary of a Country Priest
The Flowers of St. Francis
The River
Days of Heaven
25th Hour
Moonlight
Schindler's List
Do The Right Thing
The Holdovers
The Miracle Worker
The 400 Blows
The Grand Illusion
L'Atalante
The Passion of Joan of Arc
Nights of Cabiria
Bicycle Thieves
Padre Padrone
L'Avventura
The Passenger
8 1/2
Le Plaisir
Lola Montes
Punch-Drunk Love
Phantom Thread
Silver Linings Playbook
The Elephant Man
Aguirre, The Wrath of God
Nosferatu the Vampyre
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
Into the Abyss
Cave of Forgotten Dreams
Hoop Dreams
Harlan County, USA
Microcosmos
Winged Migration
Le Purple Migrateur
River and Tides
From Mao to Mozart
Young at Heart
If Beale Street Could Talk
The Florida Project
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Raise the Red Lantern
Ash is Purest White
Days of Being Wild
Oasis
The President's Last Bang
The Chess Players
Ashani Sanket
Mrinal Sen
Elipatthayam
King Lear (Kozintsev)
Welcome, or No Trespassing
The Ascent
Ashes and Diamonds
Sunshine
The Turin Horse
My Sweet Little Village
Marketa Lazarova
The Wishing Tree
The Gods Must Be Crazy
Decision to Leave
NOTE: This list obviously got SOOOOOOO far away from me and my control over my OCD. I've probably seen less than 40% of this, maybe still less. It's become aspirational, and, obviously, at this point more reflective of ChatGPT's opinions than mine...
...my friends tell me I have a problem.
A More Popular List...:
It's A Wonderful Life
The Wizard of Oz
Groundhog Day
Field of Dreams
ET
My Neighbor Totoro
Spirited Away
Kiki's Delivery Service (also Miyazaki)
Babette's Feast
The Best Years of Our Lives
WALL-E
Soul
...I'm not going to pretend I think these movies are as good, but they have the same effect.
Art:
Core Healers:
Michelangelo: Sistine Chapel, Last Judgement, Pieta, Rondanini Pieta
Piero della Francesca: The Resurrection, The Legend of the True Cross, Madonna del Parto
Rembrandt: Return of the Prodigal Son, late self-portraits
Andrei Rublev: Trinity
Hagia Sophia (Istanbul)
Chartres Cathedral
Ise Grand Shrine (still never been)
The Parthenon
Donatello: Mary Magdalene
Buddhist Temples like Borobudur and Sanchi Stupa
Todai-ji Temple
Angkor Wat
Grunewald: Isenheim Altarpiece
through contemplation
Turner: The Fighting Temeraire, Rain Steam & Speed, Light and Colour, Angel Standing in the Son
van Gogh: Olive Trees, The Sower, Wheatfield series, Cypresses
Vermeer: Woman Holding a Balance, The Milkmaid
Caspar David Friedrich: Monk by the Sea, Abbey in the Oakwood
Cezanne: Monte Saint-Victoire, the late bather paintings, late still lifes
Jean Simeon Chardin: The Ray, Soap Bubbles, The House of Cards, The Kitchen Maid
Zen gardens
Gothic cloisters
Islamic courtyards
Buddhist Sculpture
Gandharan Buddhas
Greek Classical Sculpture
Monet: Water Lillies, the Grand Decorations
Cezanne: Mont Sainte-Victoire Watercolors
Andrew Wyeth: Christina's World, Wind from the Sea
Alhambra
Mont Saint-Michel Abbey
Brancusi: Endless Column, Bird in Space
Fra Angelico: San Marco Frescoes
through memory:
Bruegel: The Harvesters, The Census at Bethlehem, Tower of Babel
Titian: Pieta, Flaying of Marayus
El Greco: Burial of the Count of Orgaz
Momoya Folding Screens
Giotto: Arena Chapel
Piazza San Marco
Medieval Tomb Sculpture
Funerary Monuments
Maybe?:
Leonardo Notebooks
Rothko Chapel
Chinese landscape painting
Anselm Kieffer
Ansel Adams: Landscapes
And then there's music....
core healers:
Bach: St. Matthew Passion, B-Minor Mass, The Art of the Fugue
Beethoven: Symphony #9, Missa Solemnis, late quartets, Piano Sonata op. 110
Mozart: The Magic Flute
Wagner: Parsifal
Mahler: Symphony #3
Sibelius: Symphony #7
Brahms: Clarinet Quintet, Violin Sonata #1, String Quintet op. 111
Haydn: The Creation, Seven Last Words on the Cross,
Poulenc: Dialogue of the Carmelites
Ives: Symphony #4
Ravel: L'enfant et les sortileges
Elgar: The Kingdom
Rachmaninov: Vespers
Janacek: Cunning Little Vixen
Rautavaara: Vigilia
Golijov: La Pasion Segun San Marcos
Tan Dun: Water Passion
James MacMillan: St. John Passion, Seven Last Words on the Cross,
through contemplation:
Bruckner: Symphonies #8 and 9
Debussy: La Mer, Nocturnes, Images,
Ravel: Daphnis et Chloe, Mother Goose
Vaughan Williams: The Pilgrim's Progress
Beethoven: Piano Concerto # 4
Mozart: Piano Concertos #22, 23 and 27, Gran Partita, Symphony #39, Divertimento K.563, Great Mass in C-minor,
Schubert: String Quintet
Bach: Goldberg Variations, Well-Tempered Clavier, Violin Sonatas and Partitas, Cello Suites
Schumann: Kinderszenen, Waldszenen, Gesange der Fruhe,
Faure: Late Chamber Music
Brahms: Symphony #2, Piano Concerto #2, String Sextet #2, Piano Trio #1, Clarinet Sonatas,
Haydn: Symphony #104, op. 76 quartets
Smetana: Ma Vlast
Dvorak: Piano Quintet #2
Elgar: Introduction and Allegro, Symphony #2
Janacek: Mladi
Verdi: Falstaff
Chopin: Barcarolle, Berceuse,
Hindemith: Harmonies of the World
Richard Strauss: Four Last Songs
Vaughan Williams: Symphony #5, Phantasy Quintet
Ives: Symphony #4
Rautavaara: Angel of Light, Cantus Arcticus
Ligeti: Lux Aeterna
Stravinsky: Apollo
Martinu: Frescoes of Piero Della Francesca
Takemitsu: A Flock Descends in the Pentagonal Garden, Dream/Window
Bartok: The Wooden Prince, Mikrokosmos, 44 Violin Duets, For Children, Hungarian Peasant Songs,
though memory:
Beethoven: Pastoral Symphony
Sibelius: Symphony #5, Tapiola
Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde, Ninth Symphony
Schubert: Piano Sonatas D. 894, 959, 960, Octet, Both Piano Trios, Songs: Nacht und Traume, Im Abendrot, An die Musik,
Brahms: Clarinet Quintet, Clarinet Trio, Intermezzi for Piano op. 117, Violin Sonata #1, Double Concerto, Cello Sonata #2
Elgar: The Dream of Gerontius
Bach: Lutheran Chorales
Chopin: Your favorite nocturnes and mazurkas
Golijov: The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind
Tchaikovsky: Sleeping Beauty
Tan Dun: The Map,
Mozart: Sinfonia Concertante, Quintet for Piano and Winds, String Quintet in C,
Dvorak: String Quintet op. 97
Richard Strauss: Metamorphosen
Nielsen: Wind Quintet
Bartok: Piano Concerto #3
Shostakovich: Viola Sonata
Stravinsky: Orpheus
Rachmaninov: Symphonic Dances
Janacek: On an Overgrown Path
Hindemith: Mathis der Maler (symphony or opera), When Lilacs Last in Dooryard Bloom'd
Martinu: Field Mass
Copland: Appalachian Spring, The Tender Land
James MacMillan: The Confession of Isabel Gowdie
Vaughan Williams: Mass in G, Symphony #3,
Maybe?
Beethoven: Sonata op. 111, Symphony #4,
Arvo Part: Tabula Rasa, Te Deum, Passio, Fratres
Mozart: The Marriage of Figaro, Piano Concerto #24, Jupiter Symphony, Cosi fan tutte, La Clemenza di Tito,
Schubert: Fantasie for Four-Hand Piano, Rosamunde Quartet, Arpeggione Sonata, Songs: Litanie auf das Fest Aller Seelen,
Olivier Messiaen: Eclairs sur l'au Dela, La Transfiguration de Notre Segnieur Jesus Christ, Des canyons aux etoiles
Bruckner: Symphony #5,
Palestrina: Missa Papae Marcelli
Stravinsky: Les Noces
Tomas Luis de Victoria: Officium Defunctorum
Thomas Tallis: Spem in Allium
Josquin: Missa Pange Lingua
Janacek: Cunning Little Vixen
Haydn: Symphony #102
Schumann: Fantasie,
Brahms: Symphony #3, Clarinet Trio, Haydn Variations, Handel Variation, String Quartet #3,
Nielsen: Symphony #3
Shostakovich: Symphony #15, String Quartet #15
Bach: Christmas Oratorio
Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker
Vaughan Williams: Symphonies #3, 6, 9, Dona Nobis Pacem, Five Mystical Songs,
Wagner: Die Meistersinger
Debussy: String Quartet, Preludes--Book II,
Poulenc: Gloria
Honorable Mentions for religious music:
Black Spirituals
Jewish Cantillation
Haftarah Trope
Gregorian Chant
Byzantine Chant
Renaissance Polyphony
Georgian Sacred Polyphony
Qur'anic Recitation
Persian Sufi Music
Vedic Chant
Dhrupad
Tibetan Chant
Shomyo
African-American Spirituals
Gospel
Palestrina
Orthodox Chant
Quranic Recitation
Sufi Singing
Whirling Dervish Music
Vedic Chant
Pop Candidates.... MMMMMMaaaaaayyyyyybe?
Louis Armstrong Hot Five and Seven
Abbey Road (side 2)
Astral Weeks (Van Morrison)
Pet Sounds
Hijira (Joni Mitchell)
Spirit of Eden (Talk Talk)
Aerial (Kate Bush)
America IV (Johnny Cash)
You Want It Darker (Leonard Cohen)
A Love Supreme (John Coltrane)
Sacred Concerts, Black Brown and Beige, New World A-Comin' (Duke Ellington)
Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground (Blind Willie Johnson)
Mahalia Jackson (all of it...)
Aretha Franklin (only gospel)
The Stanley Brothers (most of it...)
Carousel
The King and I
Fiddler on the Roof
Porgy and Bess
The Carter Family
Into the Woods
Sidney Bechet
Treemonisha (Scott Joplin)
Astor Piazzola: Adios Ninono, Las Cuatro Estaciones Portenas
Um Kulthum
Ravi Shankar
Mohammed Reza Shajarian (so ChatGPT tells me)
Komitas Vardapet (ditto)
Guo Wenjing (ditto)
Toumani Diabte (ditto)
Graceland and America (also Paul Simon)
Come On Feel the Illinoise (Sufjan Stevens)
...I don't know shit about dance....
what it means:
Again, all three categories are the kind of ritual experiences that approach what you get from spirituality or religion. They're more than exciting, they're more than moving, they bring you into balance. They reorder your soul and make your inner monologue quieter.
You don't have to like all of these. I don't, but they are the kind of spiritual experiences that change lives.
...I'm going to drag all my friends to art kicking and screaming even if it k*lls them....
