Seven sevens

Frank Turk has tagged me to play the “Seven sevens” game. I’m not sure that I really welcome this intrusion into my zone of privacy, but I’ll try to be a good sport about it.

I don’t like surveys. They don’t ask the questions I’d ask the way I’d ask them, so I’ve done what any self-respecting respondent would to: I’ve cheated by making some changes of my own. Made a few substitutions. Cut back on the hyperbole. Generated multiples of seven.

I. SEVEN THINGS TO DO BEFORE I DIE

1.Write a devotional

2.Revisit my old stomping-grounds

3.Attend a high school reunion.

4.See my remaining parent safely into glory

5.Compose more music

6.Explore crystallography

7.See Naples

II. SEVEN THINGS I CAN’T DO

1.Do nothing

2.Make small-talk

3.Paint

4.Whistle

5.Abide contemporary Christian music

6.Do computer graphics

7.Be a better person

III.SEVEN THINGS I LIKE IN A WOMAN

1.Godliness

2.A nice speaking voice (high-pitched nasal twangs need not apply!)

3.A nice singing voice (e.g., Caballé, Milanov, Ponselle, Price, Sutherland).

4.A capacity to beautify her surroundings by her prismatic personality.

5.A gentle spirit

6.An ability to write like Anne Bradstreet & Christina Rossetti

7.Botticellian locks

IV. SEVEN BOOKS I LIKE

1.The Bible

2.Pilgrim’s Progress

3.Four Quartets (Eliot)

4.Praeterita (Ruskin)

5.Perelandra/Voyage of Dawn Treader

6.Mithradates (Racine)

7.Norstrilla/Quest of the Three Worlds (Cordwainer Smith)

8.The Temple (Herbert)

9.Death Comes for the Archbishop (Cather)

10.The Song of Roland

11.The Tempest

12.Silex Scintillans (Vaughan)

13.The Waves (Woolf)

14. Diary of a Country Priest (Bernanos)

15.The Last Puritan (Santayana)

17.Letters of Samuel Rutherford

18.To Be Near Unto God (Kuyper)

19.Pensées (Pascal)

20.Three Dialogues between Hylas & Philonous (Berkeley)

21.The City of God

V. SEVEN MOVIES/TV SHOWS I LIKE

1.Garden of the Finzi-Continis

2.Twin Peaks

3.La Femme Nikita

4.Last of the Mohicans

5.Ship of Fools

6.The Third Man

7.Donkey Skin (Deneuve)

8.The Garden of Allah (Dietrich)

9.In this House of Brede

10.Monsignor Quixote

11.Our Man in Havana

12.The Avengers

13.Ladyhawke

14.Orpheus (Cocteau)

15.Touch of Evil

16.Dark City

17.To End All Wars

18.Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy/Smiley’s People

19.The Village

20.Hellboy

21.Due South

VI. SEVEN COMPOSERS I LIKE

1.Bach

2.Handel

3.Brahms

4.Buxtehude

5.Mendelssohn

7.Vivaldi

8. Albinoni

9.Correlli

10.Faure

11.Haydn

12.Schubert

13.Telemann

14.Poulenc

15.Vaughan-Williams

16.Ravel (songs)

17.Berlioz (songs)

18. Gilbert & Sullivan

19.S. S. Wesley

20.C.P.E. Bach

21. Hymnwriters (Watts, Wesley, Williams)

VII. SEVEN PAINTERS I LIKE

1.Da Vinci

2.Botticelli

3.El Greco

4.Rembrandt

5.Monet

6.Renoir

7.Turner