[Thor Joachim Haga]

Probably especially painful when this comes from young attractive women. And one might think, “Again an ignorant music jerk caught in the body of a pretty girl.”

He, he. Definitely. Major turn-off, and not because she didn’t like film music, but because it displayed a closed-minded attitude. I remember my view of her was never the same after. 😀

But one thing happens, when you’re always the new kid on the block: you learn, with each new environment, how to be the new cool kid on the block, and so, with each new environment, I learned how to adapt and by the time I was actually becoming seriously interested in music and subjects like that mattered, I belonged to the more cool crowd and my nerd interests were not something to be ostracized but embraced.

I can relate to that. I changed schools a couple of times too. I wasn’t necessarily part of a “cool crowd”, but I had a toe in several crowds – armed with humour, I was in with both the hardcore nerds and the jocks alike. So whatever people felt about my nerd interests didn’t bother me, personally, and I rarely had to “stand up” for it with any kind of vigour. But it was something that I observed, just being around in the 80s and 90s; that nerd-dom was often ridiculed and/or marginalized in popular culture (REVENGE OF THE NERDS, anyone?). To a far, far greater extent than it is today, when it is usually admired. When my fellow teens latched on to grunge in the 90s, for example, I listened to old-school prog rock, electronic music and film music. I was definitely odd, in their eyes.

It was mostly a question of navigating, or choosing your battles, whenever you encountered disparaging remarks. I found a lot of value in the Socratic method, asking questions rather than defending with arguments (“ah, so you like 70s disco? Are you aware of Moroder’s work?” or “ah, so you like Nick Cave? Did you know that he has written a couple of film scores?”).