Preferences
by Jon Worley

There's a notion somewhere that a person's character can be divined from her personal preferences. Sitcoms or dramas? Movies or "films"? Operas or musicals? Rap or rock? Symphonies or ballads? Christianity or "real" Christianity? Beer or wine? I know plenty of folks who choose friends (and lives) on the basis of how these distinctions fall.

Even in my life, these notions have caused discord. My wife as threatened to divorce me if I make her listen to opera. As she has Saturday off, and that's the only day that I can hear opera, I don't listen to as much opera as I like. A sacrifice I'm willing to make. After all, Barbara will listen to just about everything else.

As a music critic, I deal with a wide variety of sounds. I like to say I review everything from folk to death metal, jazz to pop. and most everything in between. I love music, and while I'm aware of thousands of distinct sub-genres, I can honestly say I like at least some expression of each different sound. Though I do like certain thing better than others.

I also like to read books. Some of my favorite authors include T. Coraghessan Boyle, Elmore Leonard, Mary Doria Russell, Jane Smiley, Philip Roth and Kurt Vonnegut. I read plenty of science fiction, and I have been known to indulge in a P.D. James mystery or two. I like to crash through plenty of thrillers (they make for nice one night stands) and the occasional popular non-fiction book.

Balanced taste, I like to think. I don't particularly like manicured writing (you know, the dry stuff which requires a machete to slog through), though again, I have been known to go that way now and again.

I also like movies. And films. Whatever. Some of my favorite movies last year were The Ice Storm and Men in Black. This year I tip my cap to Bullworth, The Last Days of Disco and There's Something About Mary. Oh, there's plenty of other good movies that I've seen, but those are the ones that really stick out.

My point here is that there's no need to be judgmental in a personal way when it comes to these preferences. And yet I know of folks who have broken off serious relationships because the other person just didn't like Casablanca. Or Gone With the Wind. Or Public Enemy's Welcome to the Terrordome. Two or three breakups hinged on a fanatical devotion to The Bridges of Madison County and the ridicule which ensued.

Perhaps the worst snobs are classical music fans. I do not wish to malign all such aficionados, but too many listen to Haydn and Mozart and Beethoven and Schubert and such because they believe that such tastes are proof of a superior character. That by owning every Leonard Bernstein recording they might have the key to the universe. Or something just as silly.

But classical music is not necessarily superior to other, more popular forms of music. In terms of complexity, yes, most classical music is denser than most rock (though if you talk about Frank Zappa and others, the picture begins to distort). Certainly, though, jazz as a whole is at least as complex as classical music (it is taught in much the same way, after all), and once you admit jazz into the pantheon, then all sorts of walls start tumbling down.

No, I don't believe that the average Snoop Dogg fan (or Jewel fan, for that matter) has the musical knowledge of even a budding classical music fan. But I'm guessing the pop music fan enjoys a greater visceral reaction to their music than the classical lover. Oh, it's nice to weave your head and get all dreamy-eyed when the strings kick in, but most folks, even those who have fastidiously studied numerous books on the great composers, do not automatically go into a trance when they head some anonymous sonata.

And for me, what is important is what works. I like to read lots of different kinds of books. I like to listen to as wide an array of music as possible. I prefer movies with clever scripts to movies with lots of flash. For that matter, I prefer good defense to good offense in football, and I prefer good pitching to good hitting in baseball. I like end-to-end hockey. I like crisp soccer passes. I like blue bubble gum. I prefer Nautilus to free weights. I prefer biking to running. I prefer Macs to PCs. I like being a born-again atheist. I like the rainbow car strips.

There's no need to get all worked up over these things. One of my best friends visited last spring and we talked music. I didn't like much of his stuff, and he didn't like much of mine. In fact, we kidded each other about the disparities in our likes and dislikes. But that doesn't mean I think any less of his musical taste, much less him as a person. After all, if it works for him, that's cool with me.

I prefer to bombard myself with as many different ideas, images, sounds, tastes and smells as possible. Diversity is the human condition, and getting in touch with as much otherness as possible will make everyone just a bit more humane.

Jon Worley likes to see Kristin Scott Thomas in movies, though he did not like Angels and Insects when he rented it last week.

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