Preferences

Ah very personal, yes, but no, it doesn't have to be talked about in personal terms.

Fabrice Luchini, one of my fav French actors, (who has, inter alia, read remarkably few novels for such a cultivated man, though the relatively few he has read he's done so hundreds of times, literally, and can recite them from memory, Flaubert & Céline among others--) says a writer of literature has to make up lies in order to be able to tell The Truth. I think that's not only true and accurate but very deeply so.

If one considers and accepts this premise, then, it is natural to say that some of the biggest and starkest truths are that found in Modern Art and Jazz.

Today I went to the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris and could feel this theory once more proving itself to me. In beautiful fabrication lies the truth, so to speak.

Then I came home and, with a head & heart full of what I saw, I set out to find it in music. I put on more than half a dozen CDs, looked things up on YouTube, checked the links ppl sent me over the past few weeks, especially those sent by ppl whose taste match mine...

...finally I had the same feeling listening to Coltrane. To a cliché. Ah, what is one to do when a cliché proves terribly efficient, beautiful, and self-updating.

Because when something is truly Good, it doesn't age like bodies do. Not that ageing bodies is necessarily a bad thing, but Art ages like nothing else does.

I shan't make the horrific mistake and demonstrate such lack of respect for whoever might be reading this and make an analogy with wine.

No... it isn't at all like wine ages. Art ages and becomes more true to itself according to how true to him/herself the viewer/listener/reader has managed to become; wine becomes whatever it damn well pleases. I've had €70-bottles of wine that tasted like I'd made it myself in a plastic bucket in my very own showerbox while bored one autumn day.

No, Art isn't like that.

Art takes one to one's favourite things at a given time, which is precisely why I think we grow into what's truly Good. I don't know anyone who can't name at least one piece of music, painting, or book that one knows to be good but doesn't like. One will grow into some of these, while other pieces of Art will remain indifferent to one. Taste? Perhaps. Des gustibus non est disputandum.

Sometimes one's so young one will even lovadore Monet, though. And young has nothing to do with age here.

Yes, it's complicated and chaotic, this taste and quality business. There will always be those who say it is entirely arbitrary and subjective. I'm not one of them; I think there are standards, landmarks, reference points.

Tonight, I think some of what I'm trying to say is encompassed in these two things:

Why did I couple these? Because I think one's Favorite Things often come in a dream-- Le Rêve (Chagall).