‘on tuesdays, we hate twilight’

“the virtue of your style in­scribed on your con­tempt for mine.”
—Joni Mitchell

               In the midst of a discussion,
               at a party,
               in the mid­dle of the street,
               maybe in the mid­dle of a gyros,
               civ­i­lized right up un­til that record-scratch: 

               “you like what – ?”
 

Buried be­neath the sud­den slag of rec­om­men­da­tions, en­treaties and mis­sives to check out this, that or the oth­er – your per­son­al taste has be­come a cause for alarm.

I get lov­ing some­thing. I get want­i­ng to share it with some­one else. What I don’t get is the cal­iber of your taste has to fit in with a math­e­mat­i­cal for­mu­la some­one else buys into.

Sure­ly, the no­ble ped­a­gog pos­tu­lates, I can only like such an in­fe­ri­or prod­uct be­cause I have not yet sam­pled the sum of good taste. I have only to add the rec­om­men­da­tions they thrust into my sweaty lit­tle palms, sub­tract my in­fe­ri­or likes, and sim­ply mul­ti­ply their opin­ion un­til I reach the same an­swer. Be­cause I am sim­ply adrift in a sea of un­fil­tered in­for­ma­tion, a naive lit­tle lamb at worst and a troglodyt­ic con­trar­i­an at best.

It might nev­er oc­cur to these con­cerned cit­i­zens that the per­son they are de­nounc­ing like a witch at an in­qui­si­tion may in fact have read the same things they read, lis­tened to the same songs, watched the same movies and – shock! hor­ror! – ar­rive on their own to a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent con­clu­sion than any­one else’s. Or that I might not be any more en­riched by your sug­ges­tion than you would be by mine.

Be­cause this is the met­ric that so­ci­ety sets be­fore us: If you are a good per­son, you must like good things. Ergo, if you are a good per­son who likes un­cool things, you are not re­al­ly a good per­son. Un­less you en­joy it on that most loath­some and overused and mis­ap­plied of lev­els – iron­i­cal­ly. Then and only then are you al­lowed to ex­press en­joy­ment of the in­fe­ri­or thing.

Well, enough I say. You’ve got a freak flag, fuckin’ fly it.
Your fa­vorite movie is Bar­bie and the Di­a­mond Cas­tle?
Good, own that shit.
You were one of the three peo­ple to buy Linkin Park’s last al­bum?
Head­bang that noise in public.
You ac­tu­al­ly en­joyed the Fifty Shades tril­o­gy?
Well, hy­po­thet­i­cal­ly, while I find your per­son­al choice odi­ous to the ex­treme, I will de­fend to the death your right to get down.

Be­cause con­tempt for an opin­ion that’s out of step isn’t su­pe­ri­or, it’s in­sin­cere. It im­plies re­al­i­ty is a con­sen­sus view, and that good things are de­ter­mined by pop­u­lar vote. Well, taste is not de­mo­c­ra­t­ic, re­pub­lic, hell, it isn’t even oli­garchic. It’s a monar­chy, and you are the tyrant that de­ter­mines the lay of the land.

It’s an old ro­mance, the opin­ion dance, and hasn’t gone to sleep.

—rachel gard­ner

Flom­mist Rachel Gard­ner cur­rent­ly writes weird fic­tion with a hor­ror bent. Find her at Greet­ings from the Waste­land, which up­dates week­ly. Copy­right © 2015 Rachel Gard­ner. Pho­to: Mod­er­ate­ly-used Linkin Park CD, found at a bus stop.

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