While listening to a new song from a singer I like, I realised that though I didn’t like it at first, because it was from Alicia Keys, I gave the song a second and third chance and finally got hooked. I love it now. I call this “acquired taste” as in something you educate yourself to like in a conscious manner.
It got me thinking that we should do this more often – get “acquired tastes”. I believe that if we stick to only what we like by default (meaning mostly what society, school and family educated us to like) we cannot really grow.
I always say contemporary art is an “acquired taste”. You need to be educated to like it and have a very good art knowledge to understand it. More than I have, but I am curious.
And this applies to each and every work of contemporary art separately. There is no understanding of all contemporary art like there is for surrealism, for instance.
I like to at least try to understand what I don’t and I suspended judgment until I do. Or at least I would like to teach myself to suspend judgment until I do understand. It’s a process. We are judgmental. It is part of our culture. And we believe we have the right to speak aloud our opinion. We don’t. Ignorant opinions hurt. We do not have the right to hurt. Even if we don’t mean to. It is worst when we hurt someone without wanting to.
“I am sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you” is the worst thing you can tell me, right there with “I lied to protect you”. Silence is ok, though. Bien joué.
The second worst thing is “you have no reason to get upset”. If I got upset, I have a reason to. Fuck off. However, you are right, no opinion should upset anyone. It’s just an ignorant venting. Let them be. Move on. Only it’s not easy to do. Also a cultural and social issue coming from our education to be judgmental and think that opinions matter.
It may happen that once you understand something, you still cannot accept it. That is fine. However you can accept what you do not understand. Theoretically. In practice… Our wrong education makes us dismiss everything we do not understand or invent half-assed explanations. It is fine not to know and not to understand. It’s also fine not to have opinions about these issues. Ideal even.
Recently, someone told me she likes clarity, but she is anything but clear or consistent. It’s fine with me. I do not care for clarity. I live and flourish in the unknown and uncertainty.
*To get out of my mind is what I’m looking for when I say I want to cure myself from my recent obsessions and apparently boredom does that 😅
The joy of creating 