It's your Jam

It’s your Jam, Babe

Around this time last year I was not in a good place. I met up with a friend and told her that I’d been re-reading the books of one of my favourite authors - Marian Keyes, because I got a lot of comfort from those books. I don’t think I imagined that she baulked with disdain. We all do it sometimes, flinch when someone talks about getting pleasure from something which we ourselves can’t stand, sometimes without having properly watched, listened to, read or tasted the thing itself, we just have this perception that the thing is beneath us. The thing is, why should anybody feel the need to be defensive about the things that bring them pleasure? Who made any individual the arbiter of good taste?

Tribes
When I was a teenager I felt that I had finally found my tribe in the Indie music scene - here were a bunch of thoughtful, sensitive, shy types, they hadn’t been the popular kids at school, but the more interesting ones (ha ha). The music was the thing, the string that pulled us all together and it was our selective, special thing. It didn’t matter that others didn’t get the music - in fact it made it more attractive - the music was a deep pool, only to be understood and dived into by a choice few. We had found our place in the world. Then, suddenly, your favourite band would appear on the front of Smash Hits, be played on Radio 1 and everything was ruined! That was your band, you didn’t want everyone’s grubby mits on them! They were yours to listen to in your tiny bedroom, learning the lyrics by rote and occasionally venturing into the outside world to see them play live.

There is this protective snobbery around the music scene - popular is bad, teenage girls liking it is bad, it is a largely male domain, with the occasional backstage pass issued to the occasional woman. The musos are sneering and dismissive of anything that doesn’t pass their own impossible standards of excellence and artistic integrity. Anything remotely poppy is dismissed as being totally without merit. But the thing is, to slightly misquote Laura Mvula, who made you the master of the freaking universe, love? Who made you the ultimate arbiter of good taste?
I get it, that protective thing, that not wanting the masses, those same masses who mocked you at school, to take this special thing of yours and ruin it. But I felt like that when I was a teenager, I’ve got over it now I’m an adult. I can happily listen to The Smiths (not happily, but kinda guiltily, if I’m honest), Radiohead, Alice Coltrane, Bonobo, Katy Perry, The Beatles, Crowded House, Kendrick Lamar, Ian Brown, Depeche Mode, Harry Styles….etc, etc, with no restrictions on myself and it makes life more varied and fun!

So called low brow

Back to Marian Keyes, one of my favourite authors, lumped into the category of ‘Chick Lit’, yet the first person I came across who depicted depression, in her books, in a way that resonated with me (more than sodding Jean Paul Sartre, babe!). Why would I not love her? Her books make me laugh, entertain me, contain universal truths and make me feel less isolated. There is nothing wrong with this, I shouldn’t even have to spell it out or defend it. I don’t really feel like I have anything to prove with my reading matter, I have my English degree but even if I didn’t, could still happily dive into a range of material without having to defend my choice. I love Jane Austen and Barbara Pym and Agatha Christie and Maria Semple and Jonathan Coe and so many others. The best, albeit bittersweet, feeling is when you feel sad to finish a book.  The characters stay with you, they cling to your clothes and speak to you from the pages. You go back over passages you love, rolling the words over your tongue. Or, sometimes, you might just read something silly, fun and forgettable, to get you through the day. You don’t always want a fancy, open sandwich, made with focaccia bread, topped with olives, roasted artichokes and drizzled with oil, sometimes you just want a cheese sandwich.

The ‘Idiot Box’
Same goes for T.V. I have to be in the right mood for a subtitled film I’m usually rewarded when I make the effort but often I just want to watch First Dates! Again, why should we feel that we have to defend our choices. There should be no such thing as a guilty pleasure, we need to knock that sanctimonious Jiminy Cricket figure off our shoulder and just get on with it.

I know that for self-preservation, I often have to impose a news embargo on myself, it makes me less well informed but more robust, mentally and I’ve gotten over feeling remotely guilty about it. I feel similarly about my choice of books, TV, film and music - a Dolly mixture array of things and nobody else’s business.

So, on that note, I’m going to go off and watch some episodes of Sabrina the Teenage Witch - the original, kinda silly one, I have found that, whilst I really love the darker, modern reboot (The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) I also enjoy the original.
Have a marvellous weekend!