Friday 17 January 2014

J'aime... Je n'aime pas - I like... I dislike

If you watched Amelie by Jean-Pierre Jeune you might remember the like-dislike story of those participating in the fabulous destiny of Amélie Poulain: her parents, friends, cafe visitors and even a cat! 


Now I know where it probably originates from...



Here is an extract from a multifaceted men Roland Barthes' book Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, 1975. 


J'aime, je n'aime pas ~ I like, I don't like

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.

don't like: white Pomeranians, women in slacks, geraniums, strawberries, the harpsichord, Miró, tautologies, animated cartoons, Arthur Rubinstein, villas, the afternoon, Satie, Bartok, 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 like, I don't like: this is of no importance to anyone; this, apparently, has no meaning. And yet all this means: my body is not the same as yours. Hence, in this anarchic foam of tastes and distastes, a kind of listless blur, gradually appears the figure of a bodily enigma, requiring complicity or irritation. Here begins the intimidation of the body, which obliges others to endure me liberally, to remain silent and polite confronted by pleasures or rejections which they do not share. 

(A fly bothers me, I kill it: you kill what bothers you. If I had not killed the fly, it would have been out of pure liberalism: I am liberal in order not to be a killer.)


Probably, writer Susan Sontag was inspired by Barthes in compiling her lists of likes and dislikes. She also turned to be an inspiration to an Australian illustrator Lynore Avery in visualizing these lists. 


Source: Behance


You probably make groceries or "To Do" lists, correct? Oh, my house if full of post-it notes and papers of various dimensions with daily assignments (most of which I move to the next day!). But how many of you have made a list of things you like and you dislike? Try to write one yourself and involve others... you might discover some really interesting things about yourself and people around you! 


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