I should mention I am not the Christopher Drew who wrote Blind Man's Bluff, though strangely we lived in the same town for many years, and even worked at the same place briefly. What are the chances?

I tend to operate in obessive phases, or “kicks”. For months at a time I'll do, think about, and speak of nothing but my cortex's flavor-of-the-moment. My interests range from photography to counterpoint; poetry to circuit bending; cello to drawing; Norway to digital video. It's my aim with this site to touch on a bit of everything, but I doubt I'll have the time. I'll probably become obsessed with hummingbirds or pancakes before I finish this paragr...

Ooo, look! A hummingbird!

Music: As mentioned, music is one of the most important aspects of my life. I sing and play guitar for pointfive (www.pointfive.com). The band has existed for a long time but it wasn't until recently that I found people to play with. The News section of the site has a lot of my various ruminations on this and that, if you're interested, and there's a picture gallery that is updated much more regularly than the one here. I've also recently started working on a side project called food for stupid wonder. It's less a band and more a collaborative endeavor. (The site should be implemented within a few weeks.)

I collect musical instruments. Here's a list of what I have.

It's hard to say who my biggest influences are, but the people I admire the most musically are definitely Eric Bachmann (Archers of Loaf), Luke Sutherland (Long Fin Killie, Bows) and Chopin. I had the great honor of meeting Luke Sutherland in 1996. I sent him a letter recently, 9 years later.

Some of my favorite bands/artists are:

I'm also quite a fan of classical music. My favorite composers are: Chopin (his etudes and preludes), Beethoven (Symphony #6: "Pastorale", and the Pathetique sonata), Dufay, Richard Einhorn (Voices of Light), Bizet (L'Arlesienne suite), Liszt (his Hungarian rhapsodies), Saint-Saëns (Le Danse Macabre), and the cello works of Elgar and Samuel Barber. I also like the Kronos Quartet quite a bit.

Additionally, I used to run a small "record label": Rotary-Dial Records. It consisted of my and my friends' bands: .pointfive, Jesse Kates and Whitford. It was really more a thing of principal than an actual business undertaking. Hence the high-minded, long-winded brainspill you'll find on the Ethic page.

Books/Literature: My favorite author by far is C.S. Lewis. His book Till We Have Faces—which is a retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche—is one I've read no fewer than fifteen times. And I'll doubtlessly read it fifteen more. It is packed with wisdom; I find something new every time, and I know there are things I don't fully understand yet. It's a strange book... the casual reader would find in it just an interesting story, but there's a current flowing beneath it and through it—it contains something very strong. Lewis himself said of it: “An author doesn't necessarily understand the meaning of his own book better than anyone else...”, which I find very interesting. This book was one of the first times I encountered something which I understood but could not explain. There is a place that is beyond words, and this, for me, was a doorway to that place. What I also find interesting about the book is that Lewis considered it his best book, but also his biggest flop. The public and critics found it to be too obscure when it was first published, and as a result it never achieved the popularity of his other works. A shame.

     Also, his works The Great Divorce, The Screwtape Letters, The World's Last Night and Other Essays and The Problem of Pain are very good.

     Lately I've been reading a lot of books by Scottish authors. This is partly—though by no means entirely—what prompted my planning a vacation there. Luke Sutherland's novels have been chief among these, but there are others too. My night table has most recently been clutterred with:

     Also I've been reading a lot of scientific, philosophical, and various religious books, because I realize my knowledge of such things is really superficial, yet so many of my deepest beliefs are based on these things. And since it's foolish to build upon an uncertain foundation, I've been searching the truth out more earnestly than when I was younger and would merely compile facts that agreed with what I already believed. Now I'm looking for even the truth I don't want to hear. "The unexamined life is not worth living." Yeah.

Poetry: I used to write poetry—a lot of it, in fact——but that was years ago and now I find my old work to be pretty embarassing. I'm still an avid reader of poetry, though I haven't stumbled upon much of anything worthwhile of late. At any rate, my favorite poets include: Walter de la Mare, Laurence Hope, A.E. Housman, P.B. Shelley, Rumi, Lord Byron.