I don't like liver. I never have. It smells pretty good when it's cooking but the moment it hits my tongue I'm looking to give it to the dog. And I don't own a dog. The main reason I don't nibble snacks at fancy parties is because I have been bushwhacked by liver disguised as eatable food before.
I used to feel that way about some other foods when I was a kid. Like spinach. I tried to eat it several times because of Popeye (the Sailor Man not the fast food place) but it just didn't taste good to me. When I grew up it started tasting a lot better.
I didn't stop loving hamburgers, hot dogs, and pizza. I just stretched my boundaries - expanded my horizons. I learned to like (if not love) other dishes.
Art is like that for me too. When I was a kid I liked mostly pop music. The kind of stuff I could jump around to and pretend that I was dancing. Easy music to sing along with. I gradually started listening to folk music like Pete Seegar, Josh White, and Bob Dylan. After a journey through rock and then jazz I somehow landed in the world of classical music. But I was still a "meat and potatoes" kind of guy. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, etc.
As I looked at at the paintings of Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollack ("Jack the Dripper"), and others I honestly didn't get it. And I often wondered if Andy Warhol wasn't just playing a large joke on us all.
The dance stylings of Merce Cunningham, Twyla Tharp, Alvin Ailey seemed as foreign as whale song. And the various experiments in music during the twentieth century left me standing on the sidelines scratching my head. I once described one piece as "sounding like two dogs fighting over a piece of meat".
I once played a work for the guitar by Benjamin Britten as my contribution to a larger concert. After a dress rehearsal and two performances I put the music away and announced to anyone who would listen that I would never perform that piece again. And I kept my word - sort of. A couple of years ago I dug it out and played through it for the first time in nearly forty years. But I haven't performed it.....yet.
I have tempered my stiff attitude toward modern classical music. I have learned to admire and even love some of it. The music, like spinach, seems to have become better as I've aged. The same is true with other art forms. Painting, poetry, film, dance, et al. I find that my "meat and potatoes" choices have become routine.
I blame this change in my attitude on my young students. The repertoire collections that I teach from have a wide variety of music from all periods and a lot of the kids seem to like the "new" stuff. They just don't know any better. I've never wanted to foist my personal tastes on my students so I go along with it and teach them the songs that they like. But it goes against my personal mantra: "In classical music the only good composer is a dead composer".
The weddings that I play at usually request classical music with a couple of pop tunes tossed in. My practice time is largely occupied with meeting these requests. I spend a few minutes practicing for church and then trying to meet my teaching obligations. But every once in a while I will go online and listen to something unique. I'm not obligated to like it or dislike it so I can simply listen and judge in on it's own merits.
So at this end of my life when I'm supposed to be set in my ways I'm learning to appreciate new music, and by extension, other contemporary art forms. This is why I hope to continue to teach for many more years. I believe the children have so much more to teach me. But I still refuse to eat the liver.