I LOVE YOU, WE SAID
Chapter 2: Honourable Retreat
A serialised novel
So, here’s how that went down — our first of five gargantuan, totally bullshit battles of married life, all thanks to my childish insistence on principle.
‘You know what?’ I opened with pre-emptive bitterness, on being asked where the CD was (burning a hole in my jacket’s inside pocket, in case you’re wondering): ‘People don’t get music. They don’t. And let me tell you — they’re the majority.’
Nothing. Her eyes, so brown, mild and pleasant…
I pressed on.
‘Beethoven, Van Morrison, Thom Yorke –,’ I intoned. ‘Their contribution has been for naught. But the tone-deaf hordes — they reign supreme, somehow. Rather than letting themselves be elevated by sublime composition and interpretation, they get to set the standards in our musical democracy. So stung are they when their taste in music is questioned, so convinced of the equality of all music, that they devalue any notion of good or bad. To them, relativism is an absolute. No right or wrong, just the Gospel of Personal Taste.’
I waited.
Crickets.
I was going to have to kick it up a notch.
‘But in truth, Jessica, music can be shit, Jessica, or it can be great. Taste is preference, and preference is genre. But discernment is an ear for mastery. You might say it’s its own kind of mastery.’
Throughout being harangued in this way, Jessica responded with the pretty, unconscious gestures, expressions and sounds of one unused to arguments with Ben Human, would-be author and past master of the self-defeating principle.
At being told she lacked discernment in music, she rolled her eyes with good-natured impatience, the kind already marshalling a comeback.
On hearing she was but one amid a roiling mass of musical philistines, she smiled derisively — so sweetly and distractingly unpractised in the arts of disparagement as to almost penetrate my ardour and silence me.
She frowned crossly at the idea that refinement of her arsenal of critical constructs was needed above all in this situation, and snorted with disgust at the suggestion that one’s — anyone’s — taste in music was anything but sacrosanct.
But when it finally became obvious to her what little regard I had for her music, and how poorly I thought it reflected on her, for an appalling sliver of time her face contorted into a mask that I saw with full and absolute clarity would become her default countenance if given the benefit of five years with the likes of me. It projected such outright fury, just this side of contempt, that I thought I could read her mind: mine were shitty ideas and they’d never amount to anything like the achievements of my precious heroes of philosophy, music, literature, art, and sport (since self-flattering comparison with the stars must have been what I had in mind, given my constant judging and failing of everyone by the masters’ impossible standards).
I was momentarily shaken, but continued.
‘I don’t expect you to understand,’ I said, which is how this slow train-smash picked up speed and certainty of outcome.
‘Enjoying truly brilliant music is a solitary pursuit. Not only are there fewer of the kind of person who understands this, but they are cowed and bullied into silence and isolation. The Bee Gees aren’t bad per se. I’m not saying that. It’s good bad music, you understand — competent and affecting and meaningless. Nana-na-na-na-na-na-na-naaaaaah… There’s a way-ay, ever’body sayay, to each and ever’ liddle thihihihihing…’
I’ll skip the details of what happened next and fast forward to the both of us trembling with rage and righteousness, her threatening not to go through with the wedding, and me seizing on this moment to relent.
I said sorry.
It was a surprising turn of events, also for me. I was, in fact, rather pleased with the late arrival of my all-male weasel instinct advising retreat at the precise moment when victory might be gained from it.
What was I after?
To get married: check.
Not to have the Bee Gees playing at my wedding: check.
It was an honourable retreat in my book, and a timely one. To her, it was just too much trouble to prolong the fight, and she gave in.
The Bee Gees were out!
Knowing this I kind of hated myself. I had taken something away from her, on her day, our holiest memory.
But I was greatly reassured by how craven and sensible I could be in my handling of love. I was a man and a prat, no arguments there, but I was human — if not first, then after all — and now I too had a shot at happiness. Nobody would question a man who put love and peace before principle. A man who manipulated outcomes, on the other hand… But we never spoke of the incident again.
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