When asked, what the greatest influence on my life has been (which is a rather telling question isn’t it?), I usually pause and try and gauge the person asking this. Do they mean who has been influential in my life, and if so, do expect to hear stories of families or idols cut from magazines? Or do they wonder about aesthetic pleasures and wish to carve my colors from me with palettes from J.W Waterhouse and the bone structures of Guadí? Maybe they mean world events, geo-political and regional… or to delve into recent poli-sci tensions with fervor. Music, perhaps? Film and cinema? Internet memes and obsessions?

So many routes to go, it’s almost as if that questions could be too broad to answer.

To make it simple though,(and if the answer really warrant’s an honest response ) I usually say, Lord of the Rings and Alice in Wonderland. Books or movies, you might ask? Both, why not both. It’s the foundations of these worlds that I love,the passion for escape and world building, a concise and yearning love for a good story told. I could spend hours, days, weeks analyzing and falling into either world and indeed, for most of my teenage years nothing came as close to ruining my grades as these obsessions of mine. Aragorn, Merry, Samwise, Elrond, The White Rabbit, the Red Queen, Knave of Hearts, Bill the Lizard not to mention the Cheshire cat and Gandalf, I would follow them day after day, adventure after adventure and to this day I still spend hours out of my day pouring over fantasy illustrations that bear remarkable resemblance to the world of Middle Earth in their fantastical scope or fashion spreads that pay silent homage to the Looking Glass realm in the colors of their gems and fabrics.

Aesthetically, philosophically, morally and ever always, my life will be influenced by Lord of the Rings and Alice in Wonderland and if that sounds utterly strange and slightly nutty, well, I mean, what can you say?

Songs on repeat this past week:

Earned it- The Weeknd
Radar Detector- Darwin Deez
Shut Up and Dance- Walk the Moon
Thunder Clatter- Wild Club
Azure- Paul Kalkbrenner
Yellow Flicker Beat- Lorde
Infinity- Marek Hemmann
Come With Me Now- KONGOS

So who else is planning the most epic of epic marathons when the final Hobbit movie comes out and you can watch all three PLUS the extended editions of the Lord of the Rings in one sitting? My butt will probably meld with the couch but it’ll be worth it i’m sure.

~m