I first sat in a room full of Rothkos at MoMA in late 2006 or early 2007. I had come to New York to visit my family that was residing there at the time and ended up in that room full of giant rectangles of color somehow. I had no idea what I was looking at or who Mark Rothko was at the time. I just sat there for what felt like eternity, staring at life-size fields of color that evoked a strong feeling, drawing me in for reasons I could not name. I just know it mattered because I have never stopped chasing that feeling since.

Most people encounter Apollo and Dionysus through Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy, where they serve as shorthand for the duality between order and chaos, logic and feeling, the Apollonian dream and the Dionysian frenzy. Nietzsche argued that great art, and by extension great living, holds both without letting either win.

Note: This post is republished with the latest date following any major revision.

The following is a selective and personal collection of media recommendations that I have found worth revisiting in my lifetime. List items appear in no particular order other than that in which they were recalled from memory.