Opinions are like arseholes

This week I have once again been writing aplenty. Things are proceeding well, this blog may become utterly redundant as a result of this productivity. But I promised myself I'd write a blog every week to update myself as to how I was going, and thus I am writing this anyway. I am aware of just how insane that sounds, but it is nevertheless the truth.

I have also spent this week trying very hard to stop having conversations with myself as well. Mostly because I have become so unselfconscious these days that I am doing it in public now. For as long as I can remember I have argued with myself, out loud, as a very useful method of working things through in my head and help with decision making processes, creative ideas and any other aspect of being a human being you can think of. Generally in the privacy of my own home, or while out on the moors with the dog, and utterly alone. I am fully aware that the people engaged in these arguments are aspects of my own personality, and I am not hearing voices or anything as odd or untoward as that, it's just a thing I do, it helps me, and it works. However, as I am now doing it while walking through town, and sat in the open plan office I work in, it is now making me look even more like a drunken tramp than I already do. This cannot be a good thing, however, in my attempts to stop myself I have unfortunately made it worse by shouting “shutupshutupshutup” at myself every time I catch me doing it. Really trying to stop now, as this really looks crazy. Buggrit, millenium hand and shrimp. Anyhow, none of this is relevant to what I was actually going to write about today.

While pondering my blog from last week where I proved that nobody creates anything good any more, I remembered some things. I remembered various times where I have been scathingly critical of music, films and books that I have consumed, and received incredibly emotional responses from fans of them. I am pretty sure that I am emotionally detached enough from things I have had no hand at all in creating, that you can confidently say to me “I think AC/DC are shit, and I have no idea why anyone in their right mind would enjoy their inane screaming” and I would shrug and assume you were entitled to that opinion. I may attempt to engage you in a conversation as to why I personally think that powerage is one of the most sublime pieces of vinyl I have ever listened to, but I would not start raving at you as if you had just punched my mother in the face.

I have received rebuttals like this for my occasional observations of other people's music tastes, and would genuinely like to find out what moves others to identify so strongly with a thing that someone else made. In a similar vein, football supporters appear to have the same problem, does my lack of emotional attachment to things that I have no hand in or influence over make me some kind of sociopath? Possibly. Probably. Oh well.

Equally, saying art you don't like is not art, is not helpful. If someone calls it art, it is. If I draw a smiley face on the back of a stamp and say it is worth 10 million pounds, it is not immediately worth that, but it has been declared as art. If someone is gullible enough to give me 10 million pounds for it, then it's actually much better art than I immediately thought. This may be by the by, and is a point that many people online are never going to concede. I also think that rothko is awful, Martin Creed is a pillock, and that guy who did the slashed canvas (Lucio Fontana, I have google) was a cretin. However, all of them have done pretty well, so somebody is wrong here. It is clearly me.

The web does not help with these problems, as if somebody says “This is a shit thing, I can't see why anyone would like it” they are immediately pulled up for not saying “in my opinion” despite the fact that all art is subjective, there are no facts, and thus anything anybody says about it is de facto their opinion. My personal favourite rebuttal was when I claimed that all music that hadn't been written by me was utterly shite and unlistenable. There were some very entertaining responses, I am entitled to this opinion, although I only held it for about an hour, then I went back to listening to the Russian Futurists, and wishing I could write something that good. Everyone is entitled to hold any opinion they like, and everyone is also entitled to call people up on their opinions as being basically bollocks. But if you genuinely believe that nobody can like a certain thing just because you yourself hate it, then there is actually something wrong with you.

 Just in case you are about to call me up on any of this, all of this is obviously just my opinion. :)