Sometimes I think judging people based on what they like is perfectly acceptable. Mostly when I look at a person's profile: The bands they like, the books they read, and I say to myself: Their layout will look like [insert mental description here], their writing will be about [insert topic here], and I happen to be right. It happens more often than it probably should.
I don't know why this is, exactly. I'm not sure if it's that people's thoughts are molded by the thoughts they consume--and music and books are most certainly thoughts, if not often entire worldviews and emotional states of being, or if people choose their fandoms based on who they are.
Oh fuck. I'm doing the shtick from the beginning of High Fidelity. This after being told just a few days ago that I constantly reminded someone of that movie.
Okay. To avoid further damning myself, the conclusion: I think it's most likely a bit of both. For example, pre-Manics, I was already a stereotypical Manics fan. I cut, I starved, I read classic literature (read as: good books), I dressed differently from the rest of my classmates. But the Manics did intensify a lot of those traits, most notably in my manner of dress. (Not that I don't still dress as I did before sometimes, it's just that I have more options, more diverse elements of my wardrobe. They added variety.) Literature was a second expansion. I was already reading Wilde, Rimbaud, and Dostoevsky, but they introduced me to people like Bret Easton Ellis and Yukio Mishima. Great acquisitions.
Perhaps music and books and all the rest simply help a person to become a more complete version of what they already are. Exposing yourself to people who are similar to yourself, and their views on said similarities, can lend you new insight into those traits that you share. The insight into the why's and how's and all the rest can lead to a deeper understanding of the self and the world. And I believe that understanding can lead to a more true and consistent expression of one's own traits.
And. Jesus this is pretentious. And I don't have much else to say on the topic without getting redundant, so I suppose that's all I'll say.
So. There we go. End.
revoless.
10:37 p.m.
August 11, 2003.
Listening to: the alcohol mix, Fuck to The Good Life.
A truncated weighted-up style entry or Description of a night