Recently I have been talking to J a lot about content we like — her strong dislike of long, characterization heavy books made me realize how much I enjoyed that, and how much of our sense of aesthetics could be realize when in comparison with someone who disagrees.

When I talk about some of my favorite books: they’re books like A Little Life or A Gentleman in Moscow or The Adventures of Kavaliar and Clay. I love stories where we truly learn someone inside and out, where we answer every little possible question about them and their personhood and their story. I enjoyed Invisible Cities for the craft of it, even though there is basically no "plot", the patient painting of the worlds and the beautiful language was enough for me.

I’ve always found it unsatisfying when when we have side characters whose stories are left unresolved—which is partially why I love Russian literature norms so much. Story lines are tied up and side characters are so obvious in their function we no longer wonder about them.

“Nobody is an extra” - Synedoche, New York.

We’re not all extra’s in your show.

This is the obvious truth that hits me over the head again and again, that I fear I’m doomed to learn and forget and re-learn in perpetuity: that nearly every person you’ll ever encounter, in love or in passing and anywhere in between, has suffered unfathomable pain; that you will rarely be able to understand or even recognize a fraction of it; that they all keep on living anyway; and that we spend most of our time, all of us, engaged in a grand collective charade to ignore the enormity of our monstrous, communal pain in the interest of continuing to live.

— against narrative, rayne fisher-quane

And I never really realized maybe the types of aesthetics I personally appreciate until I met someone who fundamentally disagreed. Someone who wanted just the PLOT; the what’s HAPPENING. Leading to also thoughts about duality—you don’t know yourself until there is a contrast. Do you truly exist is there isn’t another person perceiving you (tree falling, no on hearing?).

How do we figure out what it is we aesthetically like?

As a bad critic (I give most things 4-5 stars), how do I dislike? What does it mean when someone dislikes something - I find myself enjoying basically most things. And if I don’t enjoy, then… it means it’s prob just something I find personally un-fun.

Also, my appreciation for the art of a song; loving the enjoyment and the discordance of some piece. The appreciation of noise music or FKA twigs or whatnot—what does it mean to enjoy it? What does it mean to enjoy uncomfortable art? (Why can I still not stand the sorts of films where people are doing things I cann’t stand… the miscommunication, the horror, the bad decisions…) Where is that delineation?