You don’t know why you like/dislike anything.

How to demonstrate this?

Bring something you love to mind.

Book/play/film/painting.

Make sure it’s something you consider the highest achievement in its genre.

Only the nonpareil need apply.

Now, jot down everything you love about it.

All that distinguishes it from every other member of its set.

If it helps, imagine you’re going to present this list to someone.

In an effort to help them understand why you love it as you do.

Convert them.

If you can do this –

Don’t worry if you can’t –

Professional critics have felled forests attempting as much and failed –

If you can, set the list aside.

Now, start another.

This time write down the titles of other works that meet some/all of the criteria on the first list.

Review this second list.

What do you notice?

There are items on it you dislike.

Dislike for possessing the qualities you regarded as integral to the work you love.

CHRISTMAS UNSPECIAL

There must be something that everyone likes/dislikes.

And for the same reasons.

The Star Wars Holiday Special, say.

I’m a fan of the films –

But there can’t be anyone on earth –

Off it –

Who can find anything to love in that, surely.

Apparently so.

Albeit ironically.

Given this, you’d think they love all other things similarly.

Everything equally.

No.

And it’s no better for we detractors.

I mean, I loathe it –

Know that much certainly –

But can’t say why precisely.

Not in a way that would satisfy, say, my mother.

A person immune to the charms of the films.

Help her see that they and the special aren’t identical.

It’s got all the actors from the films in it, she’d protest.

The aliens –

Robots –

All the stuff you love.

BOX, SET, MATCH

My wife and I both enjoyed Callan/The Wire/Treme/Narcos to their beautifully bitter ends.

She sat with me through the first seasons of Breaking Bad/Mad Men/The Marvellous Mrs Maisel.

Then, bailed.

I remained beside her through the opening episodes of The Killing/The Bridge/Wallander –

(Original scandi versions, of course.)

Then, I went my own way.

When asked, my wife claimed to have stopped marvelling at Mrs Maisel after it jumped the gefilte shark.

This from someone who can sit through Murder She Wrote/Poirot/Midsummer Murders not sporting a t-shirt bearing an irony-on transfer.

Before bidding a long goodbye to each of her noirs, I muttered something about squeamishness.

I am squeamish –

To the point of being screamish –

Sickish –

Still, my wife might have challenged me.

Slung Conan The Barbarian/Goodfellas/The Sopranos in my shameface.

BETTER THAN A DOG ANYHOW

The best testing ground for my claim would be our relationship itself.

Yours, rather.

Unless you’re Darwin, you’ve not genotyped the person you chose to spend your life with.

Or your evolving relationship.

If you do –

I dare you –

What you come up with will be trite.

Slight.

I love her intelligence, say.

Is she the most intelligent person you’ve ever met?

I love him because he’s kind.

The kindest person you know?

Ditto beauty –

Ambition –

Et cetera.

You’ll object I’m being obtuse.

That what appeals is an admixture.

Or, unromantically, it’s a question of the availability of a match possessing certain qualities.

That all I’ve demonstrated is that you lack the ability to winkle out what you admire.

The literary skills to persuade me to rubber-stamp your taste.

Nevertheless, you’ll fetch-up in a state of aporia.

That middle ground between light/shadow.

Science/superstition.

The pit of your fears/summit of your knowledge.

Worried that you never loved Harry Potter really –

Or your spouse –

You’ll suffer earthbound vertigo.

Be nauseated by cognitive dissonance.

Not knowing what happened, you’ll have no idea how to proceed.

I’m not suggesting you don’t love your love –

Or Game Of Thrones –

Only that you didn’t succumb to either via a trail of blackboardable logic.

Reason the way to your feelings formally.

That their true causes are more complex than you tell others are the case.

Tell yourself are the case.

ART WORKS/DOESN’T

Why do I believe this to be the case?

I’ve discovered I’m capable of citing a cause for liking/disliking a thing always.

One I’ll advance for disliking/liking something else.

Take Michelangelo’s drawings, say.

His nudes.

So well-observed.

True to life.

Example?

The seated male, twisting.

But, you object, the shoulder blades –

Surely they should be flat?

The arms are extended, after all.

Frustration twists my features.

The drawing emerged from Michelangelo’s imagination, I protest –

Not life.

(I don’t say mere life.

But emphasis supports the sentiment.)

He overextended the shoulder blades to convey dynamism.

Motion.

But, you counter, you said you found Fragonard frightful –

Watteau also –

Because the figures were contra biology?

HISTORY PAINTING/PAINTING HISTORY

If a canvas dramatises an historical event –

Delaroche’s The Execution of Lady Jane Grey –

I may praise its fidelity.

Or reject it for lacking imagination.

Purpose, even.

Life?

Ha! Anyone can replicate that.

If it diverges from history/nature –

Picasso’s Guernica –

I enthuse over it’s expressiveness.

Or dismiss it as unnatural.

Phony.

THE ANTINOMY AT THE GATES

I gush over one drama:

I loved that they didn’t explain anything.

Rubbish another with an exasperated:

Why didn’t they explain anything?!

Praise this with:

I liked that not a lot happened.

Denounce that with:

Nothing happened!

Enthuse:

It was great that they didn’t feel the need to have anyone say very much.

Damn with:

Why isn’t anyone saying anything?!

ILLITERATURE

When it comes to fiction, I’m as reactionary as a Hollywood script reader.

Require every beat to justify its inclusion.

Except when it comes to Kafka.

Then I don’t feel it trying to be kept in the dark as to why Gregor Samsa was transformed into a monstrous bug.

Or how.

Consider it a mark of the author’s sophistication.

My own.

Similarly, I demand that plots observe moral logic.

Villains are reproved.

Heroes rewarded.

Except when it comes to Hardy’s saddest antagonist.

Jude Fawley had to be admonished for harbouring ambitions beyond his station.

A ghostly version of this prescription echoes through MR James’ stories.

A Warning To The Curious is the title of one.

But the mission statement of all.

His protagonists must be punished for the unpardonable sin of wanting knowledge.

I’ve never been able to swallow late James.

Find the nested clauses clumsy.

Dislocated referents reprehensible.

But always find time for Proust.

Not least for having the balzac to pen an 800 word plus sentence.

Foster Wallace remains impenetrable.

A pale, watery imitation of our greatest novelist.

Most accessible modernist:

Joyce.

I love most things Japanese.

Literature.

Film.

Art.

Design.

Cuisine.

History.

Martial arts.

Everything except manga, in fact.

And anime.

When asked why by my granddaughter, I wittered on about the oversized eyes.

All the while hoping that my wife didn’t reanimate my love of classic Disney.

I feel guilty for not enjoying Moebius.

The comic book artist’s comic book artist.

I’ve listened to the arguments –

From those who know what they’re drawing about –

But remain unmoved.

Regard the art as flat.

Diagrammatic.

Reminiscent of the Usborne Puzzle Adventure books my children loved.

And I thought delightful.

I’M SPORTICUS, AND SO’S MY WIFE!

I’ve never been pinfelled by WWF.

Cannot help noticing the kayfabe poking through its trunks.

It’s not sport if the result is determined –

It’s a sting.

However, I love classic drama.

Plays I have by heart particularly.

Films I’ve rock ‘n’ rolled a hundred times.

And I’m a settee supporter of Premiership football.

Though the scorelines of most matches may as well be fixed.

MUSIC TO MY FEARS

‘Why don’t you like Heavy Metal?’, my eldest daughter asked.

I didn’t know, honestly.

But hazarded a guess, nevertheless.

Stuttered something along the lines of:

‘It’s like the singers are shouting at me.

Shrieking.’

‘But the stuff you love’s all shouting and shrieking?’ she said.

What?

‘Opera?’

Ah –

‘That’s different,’ I said.

‘How?’

‘They’re trained, for one thing.’

Shriek in key, she didn’t say.

Instead:

‘So, it can’t be that then?’

I shrugged.

‘The instrumentals,’ I said.

‘They’re aggressive.’

‘Loud?’

Not sure this was reason enough, I nodded.

‘Like Wagner,’ my daughter said.

What?

‘The audience was scared it would bring the roof down.’

Audience?

‘That’s what you said,’ she said.

Oh.

The first performance of Die Walküre –

When the prelude to Act III started.

Or was that a concert performance?

Not that it matters.

The account’s almost certainly apocryphal.

So, why had I given it out?

I’d attempted to thrill her into needing to see it.

Does the association my daughter alleged stand?

Slayer –

Wagner –

Devotees of both cite sheer energy as a clincher.

GAME BOY

I was defeated similarly last time I succumbed to a computer game.

My youngest daughter rented Ultimate Spiderman from Blockbuster after I’d enthused over the trailer.

(‘You mean I could websling through New York?’)

I lasted fifteen minutes.

And only that long because she swung to my rescue.

Exasperated, I claimed my Spidey senselessness was due to boredom.

That it had set in the second I saw the webhead repeat a gesture/phrase.

(A perennial noob, the only gaming badges I accrue are for reiteration.)

‘But you love opera?’ my daughter said.

What did she mean?

The question resurfaced next time I attended bargain-bucket Bayreuth –

An armchair festival comprised of old youtube videos –

And noticed how often plot pointing reiterated in each opera.

Each act.

Not least when I reached the climax.

Twain’s critique made its mark:

‘… a hermit… stands on the stage in one spot and practices by the hour, while first one and then another of the cast endures what he can of it and then retires to die.’

WILT BY ASSOCIATION

Sometimes, I’m guilted into disassociating by association.

When I first saw Alex Ross’ cover art for Marvel and DC I was captivated.

Rockwell had been resurrected.

To draw comic book characters, moreover.

Decades earlier, I’d seen HJ Ward’s canvas Man Of Steel.

And, frankly, had considered it creepy.

But Ross’ portraits were the accurate representations I’d dreamed of as a boy.

When I learned he’d drawn inside art for a full series, I had to have it.

Something peculiar occurred after I turned the splash page.

What had seemed right for cover proved wrong for the other.

Why I wasn’t sure.

But it reminded me of something.

What had to wait till I next visited a parish church.

Searching for the introductory leaflet, my gaze fell to a flyer.

The painting of Christ on it.

Accomplished in its own way.

Faithful figuratively.

Photo-realistic.

But irredeemably naff.

Why this should be, I don’t know.

Or why representationally imperfect depictions of Christ –

Painted by Renaissance artists –

Should inspire.

Nevertheless, an association was forced.

Ever since I’ve been unable to see Ross’ art without imaging it transferred to a cushion cover.

Tea towel.

So, now regard it as less real than the cartoonish renderings of Ditko/Kirby.

But I still revere Rockwell.

EXCUSE ME

What’s going on here?

It seems as if I choose to like/dislike a thing before unpacking its particulars.

Grade it as gestalt before assessing individual attributes.

As if in thrall to sentiment.

Responding to the work of a relation.

You’ll object:

This is your problem.

MILLER’S TALE

It’s not only we amateurs who prove to be inconsistent when advancing cause for appreciating/denigrating a thing.

Jonathan Miller is someone I’ve respected for as long as I’ve lived.

As long as he lived.

However, when he dismissed Wagner on account of his ‘Harry Potter plots’, I was brought up short.

Not being on book with JK Rowling’s hero –

(Was Miller less in the dark?)

I concluded that he had to be alluding to the fantastical nature of both artists’ most famous works.

This was puzzling.

Miller had directed television productions of Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.

James’ Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad.

Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida.

On the boards, he’d directed Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen.

Mozart’s The Magic Flute.

And Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo.

All these works incorporate mythological elements.

Are concerned with the fantastical.

Later, I overheard John Mortimer express similar sentiments.

Here, I was forearmed, at least.

My wife and I are guilty of being Rumpole Of The Bailey groupies.

Books/television shows.

Claude Erskine-Brown is a Wagnerite foil to the hero.

But, stay the execution!

Wasn’t Mortimer a devotee of Shakespeare, too?

How, then, did he accommodate the fairies/magic in A Midsummer Night’s Dream?

Ghost in Hamlet?

Ghosts/witches in Macbeth?

Fairies/gods/monsters in The Tempest?

If Wagner is insupportable on account of his fantastical plots, Miller/Mortimer ought to have renounced Shakespeare and all his works.

All others incorporating mythological/magical/supernatural elements.

So, goodbye to Homer.

The efforts of most Ancient Greek dramatists.

Virgil/Ovid.

Most Roman playwrights too.

De Troyes/Malory/Sidney.

All Arthurians in fact.

Marlowe’s greatest play.

Goethe’s revision of same.

And –

Given that Miller wasn’t a believer –

Dante/Milton.

All Christian art.

(How he came to direct a performance of St. Matthew’s Passion is a mystery.)

POLITICAL LEANING

Perhaps it’s a question of politics?

Some claim to be unable to listen to Wagner due to his political affiliations.

Putative political affiliations, rather.

Before he denounced the struggle as worthless because impracticable, he was a

socialist.

No – Not a National Socialist.

A revolutionary one.

One sickle swing from being a communist.

A more likely reason he’s rejected, then, is that he was beloved of a National Socialist.

The National Socialist.

No – It can’t be that either because anti-Wagnerians variably revere Richard Strauss.

The Nazi Party’s court composer.

Who expressed as many anti-Semitic sentiments as the Master of Bayreuth.

Without maintaining numerous lifelong friendships with Jews.

Associations that intimate that Richard I knew whereof he spoke was rot.

Odder still are those anti-Wagnerians who rave over Strauss’ music.

So in thrall to his idol’s that the Four Last Songs sound like the fourth act of Tristan.

No one’s suggesting that these critics do love Wagner, despite themselves.

Or that they have no right to dislike him.

Merely that they don’t do so for the reasons cited.

Couldn’t without simultaneously dismissing other art they claim to love.

So, what’s going on here?

Potions and politics have nothing to do with it.

Denigrators experience aversion –

Indifference –

Then scrabble about for an improbable cause for same.

Why do they feel compelled to justify their indifference?

Turbocharge it with a prefix?

(Alone among composers, Wagner inspires haters to assume unsecret identities.)

Discovering that they don’t like what is regarded as a supreme intellectual achievement, they must mask what they fear is a betrayal of shallowness.

Are they alone in this?

No.

We all do as much when moved by experience.

Attempt to diagnose why we like/dislike it.

Our best efforts prove unsatisfactory.

Nevertheless, we double-down.

Even after it makes those about us double-up.

MAKE ROOM FOR HUME

Hume’s rejection of the conventional notion of self suggests a way to entice the fly into the bottle.

And keep it there.

‘…when I enter … into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception.’

Something similar occurs when we inquire into the grounds for our amity/antipathy.

We find no cause for our feeling.

Only isolatable attributes of the thing that occasioned it.

Consequently, we reason –

Not unreasonably –

That one of them must be responsible.

Often, the first that comes to mind.

Far-fetched?

Crude approximating satisfies our justice system.

Though all the forces of the state are brought to bear on the problem of identifying the guilty.

Detectives trample the ground.

Police make suspect arrests.

Lawyers represent evidence.

Spin arguments.

Judges/juries overreach for verdicts.

Nevertheless, the wrong person is incarcerated often.

Why should the organ of justification in our heads prove more scrupulous?

PROCESSING THE PROCESS

We experience a change in mood.

Thrilling/dispiriting.

Feel emotion.

A betrayal of instinct.

Panic!

Our rationale takes over.

Scrambles to identify the cause of the alteration in state.

Puts out an APB.

Rounds up a culprit/gang of culprits that fit the frame.

If we took the trouble, we’d discover that the evidence that lead us to them is inadmissible.

Could be easily dismissed by applying it to other incidents.

Recognising that, once, we were charmed/alarmed on account of, say, the noise accused.

Can recall a similar sound not swerving/unnerving us.

Being conducive to calm/alarm, rather.

So, of course, we don’t trouble to do as much.

Instead, immure our culprits in a cell marked:

Don’t Open Till Doomsday.

And return to the state of equanimity enjoyed previously.

As society at large is placated by imprisonment of a suspect.

Though the evidence that fitted them up was suspect.

Who knows, our stitch-up may succeed as well.

How?

Citing congruous culprits, we may hit upon the true complex of reasons.

As a police officer investigating a fracas in a pub will arrest the guilty if he takes every punter into custody.

EXECUTION OF SUMMARY

We respond to experience instinctively.

Conclude:

I like/loathe it.

Nothing else.

Interviewed, we feel compelled to expand on this.

This induces perspiration.

And perspiration inspiration.

Fortunately, the mind is as much mythmaker as mapmaker.

Homer as Aristotle.

To demonstrate that our feeling has an identifiable –

I.e. rational –

Cause, we highlight attributes.

Isolatable features.

As often virtues as faults.

Suspecting, all the while, that this doesn’t account for the case at all/entirely.

Nonetheless, we persevere.

To mask our self-betrayal.

Submission to impulse.

Assert the dominance of intellect over instinct.

Hairy ape over animal.

The process is best represented by an ouroboros.

Self-reinforcing/consuming.

Tail-eating occasions nourishment/diminishment.

The suspicion that the accused is innocent inspires dread.

Curiously, this makes the original diagnosis grip tighter.

Seem righter.

The argument so compelling that the interviewer believes it.

The interviewed too.

Though the truth may be banal, then –

A consequence, say, of the actor in the play having worn a suit similar to one father owned –

Or the causes number in the billions –

Our intellect is satisfied to present something simple.

Defensible.

Overcome the beast inside by simulating understanding.

COLD CODA

All we know for certain is that we like/don’t like/are indifferent to a thing.

Everything else is speculation.

An attempt to make the sensation substantive for being diagnosable.

Ourselves important for diagnosing.

Rational for rationalising.

More ennervating than fear is ignorance of the cause of same.

Ditto elation.

So, we must always brainwave a reason to like/not like something.

One reason.

Though ninety-nine oppose it.

Clearly, then, it’s not a question of commensurables.

Of weights and measures.

The reasons we believe we like/dislike a thing aren’t the true explanation.

At best, not a full one.

A complete account would incorporate everything we’ve experienced.