You like me, you like me not

Raphaël Poulain doesn't like peeing next to somebody else. He doesn't like noticing people laughing at his sandals, coming out of the water with his swimming suit sticking to his body. Raphaël Poulain likes to tear big pieces of wallpaper off the walls, to line up his shoes and polish them with great care, to empty his toolbox, clean it thoroughly, and, finally, put everything away carefully.

Amélie's mother, Amandine Fouet, was a Primary School teacher from Gueugnon, she had always been unstable and nervy. She doesn't like to have her fingers all wrinkled by hot water. She doesn't like it when somebody she doesn't like touches her, to have the marks of the sheets on her cheek in the morning. She likes the outfits of the ice-skaters on TV, to shine the flooring, to empty her handbag, clean it thoroughly, and, finally, put everything away carefully.

In the opening scenes of Amelie, the characters are introduced by their likes and dislikes. In Miss Universe, contestants introduce themselves by saying what they like. What is it about our preferences that defines who we are, sometimes with even more precision than a string of adjectives might?

It is almost as if the book, or song, were in a strange way, an extension of who we are, defining us. We identify with something when it says what we want to convey, when we ourselves are unable to adequately convey our sentiments - a cathartic release for our half-formed sentences, our inexpressible sentiments. Or they might be the things we wish we could aspire to, the things we think are true. They materialise a reality, albeit a transient one, which we can identify with. Particularly when it comes to exchanging taste in books, or music, or movies, we are connected by our preferences. When we share in an experience like that, these works of art augment our connections to each other, and our understanding of ourselves. When we share in them, or understand them, we are in momentary accord with what is real, what is true - we share in something concrete, and relatively less relativistic than the relativistic world we purportedly experience.

Part of me wonders, is this a taste of what it was like before Babel? Before our world was fragmented by an inability to understand fully what the other person was saying.