Just got back from Wes Anderson (The Royal Tenenbaums, Rushmore etc.) at the New York Public Library and the host –– who was both utterly charming and unbelievably insufferable –– felt compelled to read from Roland Barthes’ list of Likes and Dislikes.
I’m too windblown –– my iPhone says it feels like 3 degrees outside but I think that’s generous –- to create my own, so I’m cheating a bit and just posting his:
I like: salad, cinnamon, cheese, pimento, marzipan, the smell of new-cut hay (why doesn’t someone with a “nose” make such a perfume), roses, peonies, lavender, champagne, loosely held political convictions, Glenn Gould, too-cold beer, flat pillows, toast, Havana cigars, Handel, slow walks, pears, white peaches, cherries, colors, watches, all kinds of writing pens, desserts, unrefined salt, realistic novels, the piano, coffee, Pollock, Twombly, all romantic music, Sartre, Brecht, Verne, Fourier, Eisenstein, trains, Médoc wine, having change, Bouvard and Pécuchet, walking in sandals on the lanes of southwest France, the bend of the Adour seen from Doctor L.’s house, the Marx Brothers, the mountains at seven in the morning leaving Salamanca, etc.
And of course, the things he dislikes are worth noting as well:
I don’t like: white Pomeranians, women in slacks, geraniums, strawberries, the harpsichord, Miró, tautologies, animated cartoons, Arthur Rubinstein, villas, the afternoon, Satie, Bartók, Vivaldi, telephoning, children’s choruses, Chopin’s concertos, Burgundian branles and Renaissance dances, the organ, Marc-Antoine Charpentier, his trumpets and kettledrums, the politico-sexual, scenes, initiatives, fidelity, spontaneity, evenings with people I don’t know, etc.
I don’t agree with all of this … but I’m too cold to argue!
(And honestly, I’m not quite sure where blogging –- and/or consistency — falls on my lists but at least for now, I’m here to stay.)
