changing tastes II

Here's the part I didn't get to.

There are some people who can tell you "x is my favorite y" whether y = food, book, actor, painting, or any of a thousand other things with both certainty and consistency. They know their favorite whatever and it's been their favorite whatever for fifteen or twenty-five or forty years. Me, the only y I can say that about is movie; my favorite movie has been my favorite movie since I was ten and time and repeated viewings have not changed that. But everything else? Not so much.

It's not that things I used to adore I now look at and say, "what were you thinking?" Usually. [Insert obligatory ex-husband joke here, kthx.] It's more like "Persistence of Memory" where I can still appreciate it, still like it, and still remember why it grabbed me like it did when it did, but its power as my image of "the best" is gone. Similarly, for years I would have told you that Heart Shaped Box was my favorite song, but then suddenly some time in the last couple years, it just wasn't anymore. It wasn't even my favorite Nirvana song anymore. I don't hate it, I'm not sick of it, and I still remember exactly what it was about it that made me just love it so very much. But when it pops up on my iPod these days, I don't think "Best.Song.Evah." (I could keep giving examples, but I hope I've gotten across what I'm talking about.) And I wonder what this means about my personality. Or my aesthetic sense. Or how my brain works. Or...I dunno...something.

In a related note: so my friend L is one of those people who has a very consistent set of likes, a very consistent aesthetic sense. She likes the same things she liked 30 years ago, and is kind of confused about people who don't. She'll say to me, "Oh, you really really like [whatever], right?" and I'll be like, "Well, I did when we were in college, but [whatever] isn't my favorite person/place/thing now" and that honestly puzzles her. Whereas I could pick out a piece of clothing, piece of furniture, piece of music for her based totally on what I know she would have liked in 1980 and be certain she'd still really like it today. It seems like a really basic divide on our respective takes on life and I wonder if it means she's got a stronger aesthetic sense than I do, less of an aesthetic sense than I do, or if it's all relatively meaningless.

And yet and yet and yet... I *do* think I have a lifelong overarching aesthetic sense, that there are kinds of ys that I'll always like, even if the exact specifics change. This is perhaps best shown by 25 years of various and sundry friends referring to certain footwear as "Andrea Shoes." I couldn't quite define what those are, nor could my girlfriends, but we know 'em when we see 'em. Andrea Shoes are Andrea Shoes, even if this Andrea has never had her foot in them. And, as I may have mentioned lately, much as you people sit at your monitors and roll your eyes and snicker at Boho Paradise, I've always taken a little crap for some of my less...conventional...decorating decisions. But even some of the mocking people come through with, like, leopard-print vases for Xmas, because even if they don't like it, they know an Andrea vase when they see one on the clearance table at Kohls.

So, yeah. I'm probably over analyzing this, since mental wanking is as sad of a character defect in me as the fondness for animal prints and sparkly shit.

xoxo