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Re: Most Influential
On Mon, 4 Feb 2002 Kendrickjd at aol_com wrote:
> So what is your most influential CD, book, and/or movie?
>
> For me it was
>
> CD: Counting Crows - August and Everything After
> Book: Maya Angelou - I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
> Movie: Waiting for Guffman
I've listened to so many albums over the past 20 years that I'm not really
sure which one disc I could single out as "most influential". But if I
had to single out one, my first guess is I would pick DA's _Darn Floor -
Big Bite_. I remember it came out in the late '80s right after I'd
experienced one of my first major crises of faith and doubt, and to hear
one of my favorite Christian bands grapple with these same issues while
pushing through them to some greater openness to the mystery of God was a
comfort to me (e.g. "Everyone seems to think you're on their side, but I
don't think you're that small..."). The album also dealt pretty
profoundly with the nature of communication, the way language brings us
closer yet also keeps us at a distance from each other, the way we coat
the world in symbols in order to come to terms with it *and* in order to
protect ourselves from it (e.g. "If I were to give you an animal's name,
could I keep you locked in a cage in my brain ... I try to describe it but
never succeed / Moving around in a big make-believe / I say you are this,
I say this is you / But you're one strange animal / I am one too").
Book? I haven't read it in ages, but I think I'd have to say C.S. Lewis's
_The Screwtape Letters_ -- it not only gives you quite a bit of
theological meat to chew on (even if I think Lewis was a tad misguided in
his comments on, say, the historical Jesus), but it's hilariously funny.
This may be the only book I've read more than two or three times -- there
was a time in my youth when I seemed to read it every other year. In more
recent years, I find my thoughts on film and life and theology and just
about everything else have been profoundly influenced by Robert Jewett's
_Saint Paul Returns to the Movies: Triumph over Shame_.
Movie? Oy, where to start. I guess I'm of that generation that *has* to
say it was influenced by _Star Wars_, but there have been so many *other*
films since then, too. My sense of humour was definitely influenced by
the Bob Hope and Danny Kaye movies I watched when I was a kid (my dad got
a VCR in the late '70s and started taping things right away), especially
(on the Hope side) _Son of Paleface_ and _Caught in the Draft_ and (on the
Kaye side) _The Court Jester_ and _The Kid from Brooklyn_. I still quote
lines from these films all the time -- and if you get me together in a
room with any or all of three siblings, it won't be long before we're
quoting entire scenes at each other. But I'm sure there have been many
other films that have influenced me too -- so many, in fact, that I can't
really take the time to jog my memory and sort through them all.
--- Peter T. Chattaway --------------------------- peter at chattaway_com ---
"I detected one misprint, but to torture you I will not tell you where."
Winston Churchill to T.E. Lawrence, re Seven Pillars of Wisdom
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