Preference and Familiarity

My mother never, ever wore trousers. And my father has never worn jeans. Perhaps a generation thing. He never wears a hat. But then neither does my son Eddie wear jeans nor hats. Now that's a pure preference thing. A 21 year-old who doesn't have any jeans (and has never had any jeans) in his wardrobe is rare. We all have our own set ways.

My aesthetic tastes are shaped by the past, in particular by past visions of the future from the recent past. The postwar years, the early 1950s, were years of optimism, space-age dreams of rockets and Saturn's rings. Modernism in architecture, the automotive flights of fancy as created by Detroit - that's where I'm at. To a soundtrack by Count Basie And His Orchestra.

The notion of spiritual continuity - not reincarnation, for that suggests that from life to life you continue being you - but more the continuity of familiarity and preference across lifetimes. How does this happen? Could this phenomenon be connected with the theory that matter consists of mass, charge and consciousness?

For me, there are times and places that resound with an immediate familiarity, that 'click' or 'PAFF!' moment, this has happened to me since early childhood. I have written about this over the years on this blog; my goal being to bring greater understanding and definition to a strange phenomenon that defines me.

One immediately familiar object that resonated with me was getting a toy American diesel locomotive from Święty Mikołaj (aged four or five), one of these, though moulded in orange plastic. I pulled it out of the box and - instant recognition. It was one of these (below)

These are images which still connect with me far more than train pictures from Britain, Europe or anywhere else on earth. Immediate familiarity. A year or two later, we visited Ruislip Lido, which had a miniature railway featuring a scale replica of the Electro-Motive diesel loco. To this day, I get flashbacks to this scene from my childhood, flashbacks that 'telescope' back even further. [Photo: Francis Frith Collection - an excellent resource for British nostalgia!]



Others pieces of machinery that have the same effect have included (in the air) the Douglas DC-3 Dakota, Piper Cub, North American T-6 Texan, Chance-Vought F4U Corsair, while on the road all manner of Cadillacs, Chevrolets, Chryslers, Fords.. and Hudsons, Studebakers and Nashes, Harley-Davidsons and Indians.

But more than anything, we are defined by our tastes in music. It's natural to have a lifelong affinity for music you enjoyed during your childhood, teens and young adult years. But what determines whether we grow up preferring, say, soul over heavy metal, jazz over folk, or Ralph Vaughan-Williams over Gustav Holst. Research is definitely needed into the genetic sources of musical preference. Do certain harmonic structures, musical intervals and tempos tend to create emotional responses in people with a certain genetic variation?

Watch Louis Jordan, another of my "past life" favourites, getting all existentialist. I fundamentally agree with the tenets of his argument here.


Is there something deeper at work here? A spiritual, supernatural, (for want of a better term), rather than biological reason behind our aesthetic preferences, be it in the visual arts, the built environment or music?

This time last year:
A long day in wonderful Wrocław

This time three years ago:
Putin will not heal Russia's tortured soul

This time four years ago:
Opole, little-known town

This time five years ago:
Raise a glass to Powiśle  (Mrs G-W gets a thumbs down)

This time seven years ago:
Mud, rain and local elections (Mrs G-W gets another thumbs down)

This time nine years ago:
There must be a better way (commuting woes, again)