Walking to work, he used to pass her every day, going in the opposite direction. She didn’t seem so interesting at first, but he became increasingly curious about her. He started to look forward to seeing her. He became attentive to details, to the way she moved, to what she was carrying, what she was wearing, her ever-changing moods. Even though they never spoke, he became a little obsessed. Then, when he confessed his fascination to a friend, they said, ‘Oh, that’s Alice; everyone thinks she’s amazing’, and he was gutted. He thought something special in her spoke to something special in him. He thought he alone was alert to her charms and would champion them. I think often that’s how good art works, how it wheedles its way into our heads and gets under our skin. It doesn’t address us directly but our engagement with it builds over time, gently, inevitably. We think we have some special, privileged rapport with it, that our appreciation of it makes us unique, that we picked it out of the crowd. We feel flattered that we noticed it, that we ‘get it’, only to find it has the same effect on almost every one.
•