You know how everyone describes Paolo Bacigalupi’s fiction as bleak, and darkly pessimistic about humanity in general? Well, take a look at his recent writing-music playlist – that explains a lot, I’m thinking^[1].

Personally, I can’t have music on when I’m writing fiction or poetry, because I’m still that unpracticed at it that I require complete sensory focus on what I’m doing. Then again, maybe that’s the problem I’ve been having all along…

While we’re on the subject of music, BoingBoingTV has a video of an interview and live performance by Cafe Tacvba, who Xeni describes quite accurately as “sort of like the Radiohead of Mexico” – though she refers to their approach to music rather than their actual sound.

I saw Cafe Tacvba play live on my travels in 2003; they performed in the baseball diamond at Guanajuato^[2], and I was dancing around like a loon with about five thousand cheerily grinning Mexicans, despite the savage wind that was quite literally tearing parts of the stage dressing off the scaffolds… but enough of my reminiscences. Spare five minutes and check this out, then hit YouTube for more Latino goodness.

[ ¹ - Note for Mr Bacigalupi and everyone else; this is snark, nothing more. Most people want to hang themselves after just reading the spines of my music collection, let alone hearing it. ]

[ ² - Still in my top-three list of places to flee to when this country finally drives me completely Hunter Thompson. ]