Sophisticated Dinner Conversation

We’re sitting having dinner one night shortly after Beck came back. I forget what we were eating. Something pretty simple I suspect. Pasta, perhaps? I sat with my back to the various book shelves and CD towers that are crammed down the one wall of our living room. Beck sits, facing me, on the uneven little white-wooden chair we stole from her sister years ago.

“You’ve rearranged the books?” she asked almost fearful, her forked perched somewhere between the plate and her pretty mouth.

“Yeah, I cleared a few out. And a load of CDs.” I felt pleased with myself. She’d been moaning for a little while about how words and music seemed to be taking over the place, spilling out into independent piles of ideas. I’d been wondering how long it would take for her notice that I’d finally fulfilled an oft made promise and done something about it.

“Why?” This was not the reaction I had been expecting.

“I thought you’d like it.”

“I notice that some are still loose,” she nodded towards the heap of a dozen or so CDs in the corner. “You haven’t actually chucked anything, have you?”

“No, no, no. The CDs are in a box upstairs. I moved about a hundred or so. Ones I hadn’t listened to in the last twelve months, singles or things I’m actively embarrassed to own. When did I buy a Gabrielle album for God’s sake?” She pulled a slight face, “nothing of yours though. Except for that dodgy French crooner. He’s gone. The books I just rearranged. I’ve put the gardening book in the kitchen with the cook books.”

“That strangely makes perfect sense.”

“Some have gone in the empty cupboard upstairs. Things like that rubbish Nostradamus picture book or that atlas from the seventies.” I took a bite of my food. “I decided we didn’t need two copies of Robinson Crusoe, so I’ve kept the nice hardback out and the tatty paperback’s upstairs. Some of my books about language I’ve put in the office.”

“Studio.”

“Office. There’s some others we can probably move. Do you really want Sister Wendy Beckett’s History of Painting on public display?”

“I occasionally use it for reference.”

“But a buck toothed nun is hardly giving you artistic credibility.” I chew thoughtfully for the moment, “oh and I chucked all your chick-lit up there.”

“You what?”

“You know. What’s her name? Jennifer thingy and the other one. Them.” I looked at her darkening face. “Only upstairs.”

“But why would you do that?”

“Because it’s rubbish.” She opened her mouth to speak, but I continued regardless, “Okay, not rubbish, but… trashy? They’re a bit of fun, but do we really want them on the shelves, out in the open?”

“You’ve got Raymond Chandler up there.”

“Chandler’s fantastic.”

“You’re such a book snob.”

We ate for a while in silence, both formulating the next stage of our arguments. Planning our next move, not wanting to descend into “am not”, “are so”.

“The things is,” I said after a few mouthfuls, winding myself up into full pontificator mode (never a winner with the girls), “your general tolerance for pap is lower than mine. Airport fiction. You’ll tape trite films like Sweet Home Alabama and then force me to waste a couple of hours of my life watching it with you.”

“That was, disappointingly, crap, I’ll agree.”

“I’d have never even considered watching it.”

“I don’t watch rubbish television, though.”

“Big Brother? Wife Swap?”

“Torchwood?”

“Okay,” I brushed past her counter-argument, “perhaps not as much recently, but then you’ll be bitingly critical of pretty much any artist who’s done financially well by compromising their integrity. Jack Vettriano. You loathe the guy, but loads of people love him. If I’m a book snob then you are definitely an art snob.”

“Art’s different…” she begins.

“Sod off,” I intellectually interrupted. “That’s an even worse attitude to take. My thing‘s better than your thing.” I sit back and feel more than a little smug.

“Git,” she said, not unreasonably, because she’s right.

I can be more than just a literature snob, my arrogance can apply itself to all forms of culture. Films; I’ll watch a nineteen-thirties Hitchcock in rapture or some French film with subtitles I taped in the middle of the night on BBC2, but I haven’t been to an Odeon since 2005. Theatre; I’d happily go to all of Shakespeare’s histories when they arrive in London in April (could I afford it) or to some random socialist-bed-wetting east end performance in a basement, but don’t get me started on Cowboys Workin’ Down On The Docks the new play to the music of Bon Jovi.

But we all have our likes and dislikes and there is neither right nor wrong. At least I’m aware that mine place me over the snob-pompous arse line.

This isn’t to say I dislike genre stuff, be it books, film, TV, whatever. Detective novels, good romantic-full-blown-slush affairs, science fiction, action blockbusters, soap-operas, slice of northern life things, if it’s done well it’s great.

Good writing is good writing.

Four Weddings and a Funeral (to use an example from the argument that went on longer than I can manage to rewrite into this blog) is a great film, I’ve just probably seen it too many times to ever watch it again. Ian Rankin writes great detective stories, not as good as Chandler but probably as good as anyone else in twenty-first century Scotland. I enjoy his books. They do what they say on the sleeve. Would I rather be Rankin than any number of critically acclaimed yet poor selling novelists?

It’s a tough one, but possibly, yes.

(I’ve no stomach for reality TV. I only endure Beck’s Big Brother watching if there’s a possible hint of tits.)

I’m pretty tolerant towards music too. I felt a secret thrill at Ian and Claire’s wedding when S Club Seven’s Don’t Stop Moving came on. I left Beck’s Best of Robbie Williams out because, hell, Kids is a great pop song. Bubblegum can be great, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to start watching the X Factor or darting out for Steps reunion tickets.

And that contract out on all of Westlife still stands.

Art’s the same. Despite all my years of following Beck around various galleries across the world I still tend to have an instant reaction of “that’s hideous” or “that’s shite” or, simply, “wow“. Sometimes things grow on me, nut ninety percent of the time it’s an immediate reaction, It’s hard to explain and it can even depend on my mood.

I secretly quite like Vettriano. I think the sense of pathos or romantic nostalgia his work evokes is quite nice and it clearly appeals to an awful lot of people. But at the same time I can see Beck’s point. It’s a little lazy, it’s commercial, it’s derivative of generations of other people’s work. It doesn’t do anything new.

Still, it’s easy to be resentful of someone who’ll make more in an annual sale of posters than most artists will make in a lifetime. Deserved or not.

I think our attitudes come from our tolerance for the things we craft ourselves being significantly lower. Architect friends are dismissive of certain buildings and I’m quite tempted to say “well, it’s got walls and windows and stands up. What’s wrong with it?” But I can also see where they’re coming from.

Blandness is the biggest creative crime.

A classical musician friend of ours came round for dinner years ago. At the time I was in the dying stages of my infatuation with dance music and was playing the then new Faithless album all the time. She’d barely been in the house five minutes when she made some irritated comment about a lack of melody and talent. I was annoyed at the time, but in retrospect should I have been?

Is it just snobbishness or is it professionalism?

“Hold on a minute,” she called from the lounge. I paused my hands covered in soap from the washing up. “have you put everything into bloody alphabetical order again?”

I pretended not to hear her and dropped a sauce pan for effect.