Elizabeth Gilbert smashed my window and now my Spotify playlist is a mess

How do you choose which books to read, movies to watch, or music to listen to? Nostalgia and recommendations? Sure. But, have you ever challenged your choices? You should and this is why.

Liz Gilbert and I in Stockholm. Photo: Joakim Ström.

A few days ago, I told

Elizabeth Gilbert

I never wanted to read, nor even expected to remotely like one of her novels. She loved it! But before I get into the hows, whys and whats of that, I have a question for you.

How do you choose which books to read, movies to watch, or music to listen to? Chances are, you're not choosing quite as freely as you think. Let’s ignore the impact of marketing, which only aims to override our natural impulses to ensure that the money ends up in the right pockets. Then, we are left with the two things that are most commonly understood to guide our choices above all others: nostalgia and recommendations.

If you fell in love with a song during your formative years, the odds are that twenty years on and five albums of rapidly declining musical quality later, you will still buy tickets every time the artist is in town. When we dare to try something new, it's usually because someone near and dear to us - someone whose judgment we trust - recommended it. We all do this.

However, we rarely question why we also routinely shut the door on some cultural experiences. This is a mistake because there is a third – more sinister - thing that guides our cultural choices: cultural bias. Luckily, I've spent much time thinking about this very poor guide. It all started with a culture shock of my own.

I was at an airport with a long flight ahead of me. To my horror, I realised I had forgotten to bring something to read. Boarding had already begun, so I needed to find something to read quickly.

My dad was a pilot and taught me two things about aviation safety. The first related to small planes and helicopters: "You can fix just about anything with a bit of duct tape!" The second related to larger planes: "No matter what they tell you in the safety briefing, large planes don’t make emergency landings on land or water. They crash. And if they do, you will be dead.” Despite this dreary pep-talk, I’m surprisingly not afraid of flying, but I do prefer to keep my mind occupied with something other than all the empty air between me and the ground. This was why heading up in the sky without a book - any book - was no option.

There was a bookshop right next to the gate. I rushed in and grabbed the thickest book with an interesting title that I could find. There was no time to vet it properly. I just paid and shoved the book into my bag without further examination.

Once aboard the plane, I settled into my seat and watched the flight attendants go through the safety briefing. My dad would have rolled his eyes at the futility of it all, but my mom imbued me with good manners. If the flight attendants put time and effort into convincing us that we have some control over our fate at 10,000 meters, it would be rude to ignore them. Being polite costs nothing. Come to think of it, it may be the only thing that doesn’t cost extra when flying, so why not take advantage of it? But I digress.

When the plane reached cruising altitude, I pulled out my newly purchased literary companion: The Signature of All Things. The title still sparked interest in me, which was a good sign. Elizabeth Gilbert. The author's name didn’t ring a bell, but I’m terrible with names. I regard every day I still remember my own name as a success. So, no red flags there.

But the devil is in the details. My eyes homed in on a sentence that had escaped me in the bookshop. It was nestled just below the author’s name and said: “Bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love.”

And this is why an almighty “DOH!” - loud enough to make Homer Simpson proud and the passengers in the row in front of me glare - escaped my lips somewhere above the icy waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

I had not read Eat, Pray, Love. I had no plans ever to read Eat, Pray, Love. If I had any plan whatsoever concerning Eat, Pray, Love, it was NOT to read it. A very efficient way of making me utterly disinterested in something is to bombard me with "You must do XYZ!” or “Everyone is doing XYZ!” I don't respond well to peer pressure. The more you push something on me, the harder I will reject it. If you’re scientifically minded, it’s basically Newton’s third law of thermodynamics: “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

For years, the New York Times bestseller list and the rest of the world had told me to read Eat, Pray, Love, and I had not. Neither was I going to. Much like I was not going to read this other novel that had snuck like a cuckoo into my nest.

I glared suspiciously at the book. It did nothing right back at me. I glared some more. It still did nothing. I approached it the way you would a spider, slowly and ready to recoil in horror at any moment. I flipped it over and read the blurb. Dear God! A novel about a woman who dedicates her life to the scientific study of moss?! I glared even harder at the book. Still no reaction. Moss? You’ve got to be kidding, right?!

But time slows down when you fly. The plane seems to chug along at half speed. It feels like you're never going to get there. This event took place in the not-so-distant past when airlines graciously offered you the possibility to pay a small fortune for internet onboard with absolutely no intention of actually delivering it to you. I had no alternative means of distraction. It was this book or nothing. I gave in.

If you're 10,000 meters up in the air, you've already placed your life in the hands of a bunch of strangers. Pilots, mechanics, Boeing, you name it. What difference can a little bit more trust flung about – however possibly misplaced – do?

After all, this Elizabeth Gilbert person was not a terrorist. She had not built a bomb and snuck it with me onto the plane. She had just written a book which I had vowed never to read because ... Well … I didn't quite know why. Because a lot of other people had read it and liked it? Thinking about it like that made it all seem a bit silly. And that book wasn’t even the one in front of me. However bad this one turned out to be, I had at least not let myself down. I began to read:

"Alma Whittaker, born with the century, slid into our world on the fifth of January, 1800. Swiftly – nearly immediately – opinions began to form around her."

I sat up straight in my seat. I had not expected this. I was offended. Who did Gilbert think she was? She had no right to so confidently grab hold of me and pull me into her story. The audacity! I read on. Anyone can get lucky and accidentally form a great opening sentence, but the cracks will begin to show - sooner or later.

By now, it can be no surprise that I can be a bit of a snob regarding culture. If spring is interrupted by a fresh layer of snow, I will probably quote T.S. Eliot at you and say something haughty about April being the cruelest month. When I recently overheard a lady asking my mother when they should meet up again, I couldn't help chuckling, "When the hurly-burly's done, when the battle's lost and won", to myself. Sometimes, I'm dreadful, but what happened next has completely changed my approach to culture.

To my great surprise and disappointment, the novel did not crack and come apart in my hands. The story was rock-solid. The language flowed over, around and through it like water. Sometimes as fresh trickles, sometimes as a raging flood. There was an effortless lightness to the language. Yes, anyone can get lucky with a sentence or two, but this was something completely different. Luck does not explain five hundred pages of exquisite prose. This was an author in perfect control of her craft. More annoyingly, the writing was so good I found myself utterly fascinated and excited by moss. How?!

I was shaken to my very core. Jeanette Winterson’s mother used to say: “The problem with a book is that you don’t know what’s in it until it’s too late." Crazy, but true. I had stepped into the trap, but was it the book or I who was the problem? It was me, and I had been this close to missing out on one of the best novels I have ever read. And for what? Stupid, stubborn, and thick-headed cultural bias.

When I came home, I asked friends what books, films, or music they habitually avoided like the plague. Then I asked them why. Every time, it went something like this:

Friend: “I really can’t stand anything by Madonna.”
Me: “Why?”
Friend: “Stacy liked her.”
Me: “Who the hell is Stacy?”
Friend: “A mean girl who joined my class when we were nine.”

I’m not saying that everyone must love or even recognise the cultural importance of Madonna. We all resonate with different things. It just doesn’t make sense to me that the word of a mean nine-year-old thirty years ago should impact your view on Madonna’s work more than the actual work The Queen of Pop has produced over the last three decades. She’s been a very busy bee, you know. If you peel off your bias, surely there must be something you like, even just a little, even if heavy metal or jazz fusion is normally your jam, right? And, even if there isn’t, why is Stacy still running your life? Be your own boss over whatever tickles your cultural fancy. Fire Stacy, already!

I had the great pleasure of meeting Liz a few days ago in Stockholm. I told her the truth. (In a much condensed version, of course.) I told her I had not wanted nor expected to like The Signature of All Things - at all. I told her I had reluctantly found myself not just tolerating the novel - but loving it. I told her she had, against my explicit will and all odds, even gotten me disturbingly fascinated and excited about moss. That cracked her up.

Liz, Stockholm City Hall and I.

It felt good to give a little something back. All biases are nothing but windows begging for a brick, and my cultural bias was no exception. I’m very happy Liz happened to walk by, see it, and toss her rock-solid prose through it. It has expanded my cultural universe infinitely.

I don’t care what I’m supposed to like anymore. Culture doesn’t care, so why should I? Our relationship with culture shouldn’t be monogamous. It should be curious, exciting, and downright frivolous. Art is not prone to jealousy. One work of art won't mind if you have a dalliance with another. It’s all part of the same ecosystem anyway. If you tickle one end of culture, the other will giggle along with it.

This is why my most-played Spotify playlist is a glorious feast of plenty. At one end of the dinner table, Abba chats with Ozzy Osbourne, and Billie Holiday whispers with Michael Nyman at the other. On a small stage in the corner, Dolly Parton jams with Nina Hagen. Lady Gaga and Nick Cave are having a heart-to-heart, waiting for Beethoven to exit the bathroom. Diamanda Galás shares a joke with Kylie Minogue at the bar. In a corner, Mozart and Eurythmics bond over a few crates of old vinyls. Pizzicato Five and Carl Orff smoke in the hallway. And, in the wee hours of the morning, Jedward parley with The Rolling Stones, Astrud Gilberto and Andrew Lloyd Webber in the kitchen. It’s a complete mess and I love it.

All limitations in our relationship with culture are artificial. They are put there by convention, religion, family or friends. More often than not, we put them there ourselves. Our need to be deep, interesting or cool gets in the way. Let go of all that, and you'll find that there’s so much more to like – maybe even love – than you ever thought.

Go forth and read, watch and listen without bias. It’s one of the best gifts you can give yourself.

Onwards and upwards,