Consuming isn’t easy, sometimes. It can be a form of emotional labour. Though series and films can play themselves out in front of us, we don’t just sit and absorb their images. Or at least, not by default. In this way, A Clockwork Orange has a quasi-fallacy in it – that being forced to watch something would change us, simply by being made spectator. Of course this is the case for certain experiences, that we are particularly receptive to, but the active spectator can critique whilst in the process of watching (hopefully not out loud…)

This idea has an interesting expression in the world of music – are there not songs that you love, whilst being almost completely ignorant of the lyrics, or cognisant of them only in a vague, catchphrase fashion. Consuming music like this is simply allowing it to bounce off us, alter our rhythms. But to consume the whole is to process the message of the song, and to come to a conclusion regarding its sense. I do this rarely. It’s a lot of work.

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Sometimes I come across people like this. I ask – do you love books? They say – Yes, I love 1984.

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Nationalism is the symptom of a badly functioning state.

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“Become who you are!” – Easy to read Nietzsche’s phrase as a spur to selfishness. But who you are can obviously include others.

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People in positions of information-power say we are insulating ourselves in small online communities. And that’s because we’ve stopped listening to their bullshit.

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When you go back to a piece of music that means a lot to you, so much that you are scared to hear it, it can help to bear this in mind; that every moment we listen to it adds to the chain of moments that will stretch back through our life and be brought along with it when we listen the next time. It can sometimes be hard not to be disappointed if the song no longer affects you like it used to – but if that’s the case, you aren’t listening for the song, only the way the song used to sound.

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The figure of the guardian angel comes across as melancholic now, as opposed to simply wistful at some past time. It was once a mysterious and hopeful possibility, but now it brings with it this longing for a story we can never have.

Only one story is more comforting and leaves me distraught and that is being with lost friends once more. It’s interesting to think whether the past or the future prevails most in time machine stories. But insofar as the past comes into them, this impossible meeting often takes over. And the figure propelled into the future strongly wishes to return for the same reason.

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What we feel when we hear about vast forces in the galaxy is our previous alignment of values and it’s particular connections and associations in our minds being blasted as if by solar wind, burning away to reveal a transformed conception of ourselves. I would hazard a guess that those who grow up already knowing this stuff would find it odd that we found it unnerving to hear that, for example, Mars used to have an atmosphere, but it was destroyed by the sun.

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Criticism (in the artistic sense) is an odd beast, often symptom of a desire for control. Aesthetic theory can be the same. Wanting to tell someone how to consume, how to spend our time. To alter values. Fair enough, if our values are themselves arbitrary. But they might not be. Certain of them might not be in the realm of justifications.

The ground of a certain sort of criticism has yet to be found, and perhaps never will be – the sort that says, this art is bad. Do not like it. But the principle that has a certain legitimacy is this – here is a fact that may interest you about that book. Here is something that might help you understand it. Here is a history that changes how you experience the show if you know it. What do you think?

Criticism that behaves otherwise is like the heritage of a lord – illegitimacy based on position, and nothing more. Position can be powerful, ‘pragmatic’ and has its logic. But it collapses with the slightest comparative thought.

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Do not confuse mechanical change in page form and grammar with progress in content and content relations. The latter is the avant-garde of the heart ❤

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It is foolish to count the number of people who appreciate a thing. If talk of number, one person’s care is worth as much as ten people’s, as much as a thousand, as much as one million. What we are searching for is a care which has quality – not in an aristocratic sense but in a sense of being recognised. Once we find this, we can be comforted. But the talk of numbers can creep back in via the back door. Do not be foolish enough to let it in. Ten thousand of the same thing is often still the same thing.

There is a story of a gardener who, on a mountaintop above a city, built a garden. Thousands of people made the climb to see it, but the gardener remained quiet, unmoved by the attention. Her apprentice was confused – surely she should be happy at the fame of her garden? This went on for months, and eventually years, until at last he saw her rise and talk to a visitor, one who was standing back from the rest. They bowed to the gardener, and pointed calmly to a part of the garden without a single flower, a place she had built with care to counterpoint the rest, a place that no one else had spared a moment to see. That evening, she smiled all through her meal. Interested, the apprentice asked her: “Gardener, why are you happy now, after that one person’s visit? Have the many impressed crowds that came before them not pleased you?” And the gardener looked at him, and said: “Surfaces reflect better than depths”.

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Esoteric knowledge has the joy of a puzzle to be solved. But rareness is not a sign of importance.