Perelandra!
I read Out Of The Silent Planet and Perelandra as a boy, enjoyed them.
But I couldn't make it through That Hideous Strength, I put it down baffled and bored one day, and never picked it up again. Now I'm thinking I was too young for it, particularly growing up so far away from the novel's setting in England.
The first two novels take place in Mars and Venus, so there's a sense of adventure. But in That Hideous Strength, the mannerisms and situations and dialogue styles are akin to something like Brideshead Revisited in Oxford and/or Cambridge.
While a British boy might get the whole thing intuitively, I grew up in Mexico, so had no mental compass of that world at that age. It was all as confusing to me then as God Emperor Of Dune was later.
Meditation is better advice. By which I mean doing the exercises to approach grounding oneself in the present, sensing and feeling things from that perspective, instead of the YESTERDAY and TOMORROW clashing storms inside our minds.
But one can't just start meditating one day - "from zero to sixty", so to speak - and expect immediate results. It's a discipline, like brushing your teeth every day.
You know... I've never really thought about it that way, but my three favorites may be the same most watched. 2001: A Space Odyssey The Empire Strikes Back Miller's Crossing
Sometimes I'll watch Miller's Crossing with English subtitles/captions, just to take in all that insane and masterful dialogue, it truly is as if William Shakespeare had written a 1920s mob tragicomedy.
You ain't got a license to kill bookies and today I ain't sellin'. So take your flunky and dangle!
Isn't Grosse Pointe Blank from around '98 or '99?
That's when VHS was on its' very last legs. I think my first DVD player was from around 2001, by that time the graph line of DVD rising and VHS falling had already intersected, and this was in Mexico, I'm not sure when other parts of the world made the transition, say in the US, Europe or Japan it happened earlier.
That mid-Almodovar peak was incredible, now that you mention it. My personal favorite from that time has to be Habla Con Ella (Talk To Her), in parallel Woody Allen filmography terms I would equate it with Hannah & Her Sisters, in artistic achievement.
Barry Lyndon is currently a rising "underrated masterpiece" topic with most of the best film critic podcasters. My personal favorite film has nearly always been 2001: A Space Odyssey, but I just recently rewatched Barry Lyndon and man... in any other filmography this would have stood alone at the top.
And we still have the rest of Kubrick's work to contend with... Dr. Strangelove, The Shining, Paths Of Glory, Eyes Wide Shut... it's just ridiculous.
For a long time now, I've regarded two people as my artistic heroes of the 20th century: Stanley Kubrick and John Coltrane. Mark Rothko could be up there, too, I cannot imagine my day-to-day life without his work to stop and look at, or to simply have as a presence in my surroundings.
But now if I want to feel the spiritual and connectedness, I much prefer something like Van Morrison's Astral Weeks (I see your username and salute!), or John Coltrane's A Love Supreme. Stuff that challenges as it illuminates.
Musically, I've always been an enthusiastic searcher and have yet to stop delving, decades later.
One album that was tagged as New Age in the 80s that I still listen to every day - I use it for stretching before meditation - is Brian Eno's Music For Airports.
In the 80s, Ambient and New Age were clumped together uneasily but we didn't know better, until Techno came along and Ambient instantly found its' proper, logical home.
For a taste of some of the sound of groups like Wyndham Hill or Mannheim Steamroller - every element of rock n roll completely absent, a bit of medieval vibe wafting throughout - I now prefer a band like Pentangle.
There's one song I'd like to recommend to you at this moment - I can't get it out of my mind right now as I write - I discovered it about a year ago thanks to fantastic UK music monthly Uncut Magazine, it is closer in spirit to Brian Eno and it may have shot all the way to my #1 favorite piece of music ever. Listen to it in a quiet place, or with headphones. Often. This piece has a way of unfurling differently every time you hear it.
"Live on, survive, for the Earth gives forth wonders. It may swallow your heart, but the wonders keep on coming. You stand before them bareheaded, shriven. What is expected of you is attention."
Salman Rushdie, from The Ground Beneath Her Feet.
A more recent one, meditation-related, short and simple and I have no idea who said it, I just happened to catch it a couple of years ago on a website-that-shall-not-be-named:
Here's one out of my many "what was I thinking?" moments, this one from the eighties: A friend had this album that I taped and often listened to for at least a few months.
Andreas Vollenweider... "New Age" music with a harp at the front and center.
And here's the other thing I try to visualize:
Matter - both dark and "normal" - falling like water into these gravitational canyons that we see as giant strings, while the empty spaces in between expand and accelerate. The dynamics of this thing are mind-breaking.