2010 Theme: I Like What I Like

January 3, 2010

aka I am what I am
aka taking the guilt out of guilty pleasures

My second theme for 2010 is to double or treble my efforts to reinforce my defense against the pressure to conform aesthetically to please others. Some of this pressure is real, some imagined… but it almost always involves my own ego and the need to feel perceived in a certain way by some group or person. I need to banish the self-conception that leads me to worry that I’m not “post-avant enough” or “I’m too mainstream.”

I need to stop worrying so much that someone will come across my digital presence and find too much flim-flammery and tomfoolery and “off-topic” writing. I can live with the split between “work/edtech me” and “creative/maker me,” but I can’t continue to allow myself to become ever more splintered by worry about my (minuscule) audience. Each shard cuts me and in the end I suffer the death of a thousand cuts of the expectations I attribute to unknown others.

I like what I like. Those who aren’t interested in the same things– which is likely to be the significant majority– can walk on or look the other direction. I like British mysteries, BBC sitcoms, hard scifi, and the occasional romantic comedy. I like probably more than my fair share of pop fiction, pop culture and pop music. I like some television in controlled, commercial free doses… I’m not embarrassed at enjoying Red Dwarf & The Wire, The Sopranos and Rome, Dexter and Sherlock Holmes.

I like story in stories, narrative in films, coherence in poetry, and melody in music. Most of the time. And when I don’t, or I find something else… well, bully for me then!

I like Ray Carver’s “minimalism” and David Foster Wallace’s near logorrhea alike. I enjoy Le Carré & Hemingway, John Ashbery & Billy Collins, Jack Gilbert & EE Cummings. I love Faulkner & O’Connor but I also love Robert B. Parker’s Spenser novels and Lawrence Sanders’ McNally’s series. Just to name a few.

I don’t have to choose between these authors when I can choose from them.

I don’t have to be ashamed that I read in different ways. Yes, sometimes I read as a writer, with pen in hand, and analyze. I’m not killing the subject with this examination. Sometimes I read for simple, unencumbered enjoyment. Sometimes, when I get really lucky, I and the work can sustain both of these activities simultaneously.

I can read without worrying about “readings,” and I can share what I enjoy in my reading without having to be a Theorist.

And I can substitute listening and looking at art for “reading” in all of the above. Shamelessly.

Tags: aesthetics, nythemes, Psyche, resolutions