The Seven Things Meme

AVID Tagged me with this meme (thanks, David!). This one took some work.

1. Name a book that you want to share so much that you keep giving away copies:

Olivier Clement's Roots of Christian Mysticism

2. Name a piece of music that changed the way you listen to music:

I'm not sure what I should say to this. "Changed the way..." mmm. That's kinda hard to define, but, I stab with Dan Fogelberg's Leader of the Band (1981) which first clued me in to the spiritual and religious content of secular, pop music. It allowed me - an uptight, evangelical and closeted high school student - to hear more than just "secular humanist" horror in music. I started exploring outward from that.

3. Name a film you can watch again and again without fatigue:

I have about six of these. But we'll go with All About Eve.

4. Name a performer for whom you suspend all disbelief:

None really. Most all of my favourites are themselves when they act - Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, etc. That is why, in a sense, I watch them. Perhaps much to any actor's horror, I insist on seeing not only the actor in the performance but also that actor's previous roles. I love having a computer with IMDB handy.

5. Name a work of art you’d like to live with:

I live with that: the Blue Ridge Mountains. Yes, I know it's a cop out, but the longer I think about it, that's one of the biggest blessings in my life, seeing the mountains. There are many places where I just want to applaud and say, "You Go, God!" And, while I can think of a lot of human work that makes me gasp (the Golden Gate Bridge, the Thinker, the Frescos of Giotto) none of them *need* to be in my house the way the Mountains need to be outside my window.

6. Name a work of fiction which has penetrated your real life:

Lord of the Rings. Yes, I know: I'm a geek. But seriously, I read it many times in High School and then stopped reading it. When I picked it up again 20 years later, I discovered that whole lines had impressed themselves into my personal dialect. It was as if I had spent part of my adult life channelling the book I read, marked, learnt and inwardly digested in school.

7. Name a punch line that always makes you laugh:

I have to cop out here. Punch line... I don't know. But the entirety of George Carland's Class Clown can leave me rolling... one need only start any of the routines. I can do most of them verbatim and they make me laugh even when I just mildly remind myself. The first day we listened to it, Mom, Dad, my brother (RIP) and myself. We were falling off our seats laughing. Tater Tots never looked the same again.