I've finally figured my wife out– she loves platitudes. I think it is because she doesn't pay attention to what other people say.

We go to the Daegu International Opera. It's plebeian night. Ten dollars per person for Mozart's Impresario. Children are probably cheaper.

I am surprised to find that I really enjoy the orchestra. The violins most of all. I like when the movement of the bows is synchronised. They are not always in sync, so I don't know if they do it on purpose, but they are often enough in sync that I know that it is infinitely satisfying.

The violinists bob too. Moving back and forth with their bows. When they are in sync, this amplifies the effect. The one thing they don't seem to syncronise is their angle to the audience, so the bows are not all going up in the same direction. I guess it could be tricky, because they have to sit in that circle for warmth. Probably for warmth. But it would be awesome if they were all looking right at me. That could be for warmth too.

Then the singers enter. The actors, I guess, because it is more talking than singing. It is in Korean, but I understand enough to find it boring. It is supposed to be a comedy. If there are jokes, I would probably miss them– that is to be expected. But the Korean aren't laughing either.

The singing is translated, on a screen, from German into Korean and English. As usual the English translation is about as helpful as the Korean one.

But it is good enough to understand that the songs are just repetitive platitudes. Well, some drivel, and some platitudes. An exercise in saying the same thing a hundred different ways.

After 20 minutes of this, I see that my wife is enjoying it. Nodding as if it is a math class. And that is when I realise that she loves platitudes.

That when she is reading her boring non-fiction about philosophy and old french women, she enjoys it because it is old tried wisdom.

That she loves these old ideas. Repetition and regurgitation.

That she thinks there are no new ideas. That every idea is heard somewhere. Like 'research' in movies, where all knowledge is found in lost ancient texts.

That when I make a joke, she asks where I heard it, because she thinks anything good comes from boring old books.

That when she is talking, she lectures, and the lecture is always the same. I only have to mention President Yook Suk Yeol, and she talks me to sleep.

There is an underlying contradiction here though. Because I feel that the reason she loves these platitudes is because she thinks they are new ideas.

Every time she eats something sweet, she announces, as it is a discovery surprising even herself, that when she eats sweet things she then wants to eat something spicy as balance.

Every couple of months she discovers a restaurant that she feels should deliver, and asks me how she can patent the revolutionary suggestion that they do so before she offers it to them.

I realise that these example don't just point in two contradictory directions, rather that they are a tangle of examples, at angles to contradictory theses. My wife is not one contradiction, but a ball of them.

Her contradictions are violin bows, and it is the vagaries of their pitch and yaw that make her so compelling to me. She is an orchestra.

I ask her what she thought of the opera as we walk out.

"A little boring." she says.