“Why do you love this book?”

How do you answer that?

“Why do you love this film?”

Does your criteria for answering that change from the previous?

I find it truly impossible to write real criticism–the kind of criticism you read in the Times. I can’t bite-size my revelations of a piece into matter-of-fact expression. But expression of other sorts I do understand.

I had a kind of epiphany reading Bob Dylan’s Modern Songs book this year: he accompanies meaningful songs with short essays, some of which seem to have nothing to do with the song itself. And that is exactly where my entire body goes when I want to tell someone how art makes me feel. I can’t explain the beautiful prose, despite recognizing it. I can’t explain the shot selections or musical swells in films, despite it moving me. I have to tell you about how Terrence Malick makes me want to climb trees. How Paul Thomas Anderson makes me want to be a professor in a non-existent utopia. How Colson Whitehead puts my shoes on for me. How Alice Munro writes about the fragility of humanity and how that makes strengthens my bones.

I associate great art with where I’m going. Which, as a critic, helps absolutely nobody understand what to think of a film. I can’t recommend anything to my friends because it is entirely possible that they do not wish to buy a new lamp after listening to FKA twigs. The lamp is the key to her music. It’s a small quantifiable change, and I am changed.

If I wrote a Christgau-sized review of Summertime (1955) which I watched this morning it would go like this:

Summertime is my feet burning on hot pavement, but I don’t feel the burn through the ideal Italian air I breathe, I feel sounds collaging; the birds, the bicycles, the people. Summertime is about two people falling in love–but it makes me wonder about falling out of love, being on foreign soil, and how if you walked in a straight line for days you could end up back where you started. The sun beats for me, for a moment, for just the right amount of time.

When I was a teenager, then young adult, art that really spoke to me would move me so deeply that I would feel invincible for days after. It always wore off, but I was a different person after experiencing whatever it was that moved me. Seeing Moonlight (2016) alone in a movie theatre and coming out to a light, silent snowfall changed my life. I drove home that night contemplating my entire existence, wondering who I was. I still think about that night often. I couldn’t tell you even now why I think it is a masterpiece of film–but I can tell you about how my world was perfect on my drive home that night.

Being a writer makes all of this quite difficult. I feel as though I’m bastardizing the experience a bit by trying to sum up the artists’ intentions and whether they worked or not on a technical level. When I see a great film I don’t want to write about the editing, or the lighting, or the screenplay’s merits. I want to write about how I am feeling.

“Throw away the light, the definitions, and say what you see in the dark.” — Wallace Stevens.

[Let me say that I didn’t have a quote ready, but quickly googled Wallace Stevens quotes because somehow I knew he would know what to say. I wasn’t let down.]