Taste (Who is it Good for?)

Yet another rant on authenticity and identity

I took this photo at the Guggenheim in New York City a few weeks ago.

I used to have a profound admiration for those who have taste. As in I want to be able to discern and define beauty and goodness like them. It’s actually more complex than that: I want to be able to naturally like the same things they like (because I know that what they like is good and beautiful, and that by liking it I can be recognized as a ‘person of taste’, and that's cool). I experienced this with jazz, when I first came close to it. I wanted to learn to like jazz because I liked those who liked it, because I thought they had a certain sensibility and culture. And I wanted to be like them: sophisticated listeners with a refined ear. Not necessarily, at first, because I was attracted to jazz per se. As I went about building an understanding of jazz, though, I realized that I liked it, that it spoke to me. And so, with time, I developed a taste for jazz. What sounded good to me was often also good for others generally known to be jazz connoisseurs with good taste -- the ultimate validation. But it wasn’t innate, I had to work on it. Up to a point where things became natural. 

The more I yearned to mirror the taste of those I admired, the more I realized that, for the most part, I had little or no interest in what they had a taste for (jazz being one of a few notable exceptions). I just wanted to be like them. If I had their taste, I thought, I could make their choices, decide like them. But true taste is a deeply personal affair shaped by unique experiences, explorations, memories, and emotions -- it cannot be merely borrowed or replicated. It’s an important part of our identity. The pursuit of taste is about discovering who we are through the discovery of what captivates us.

But when we’re young, we care more about our taste's universal goodness than about its uniqueness. More about developing a taste that would make us look sophisticated and easily accepted (if someone we admire and want to emulate likes X, then X must be good/beautiful and we want to like X too, even though we don’t really like X) than about discovering and nurturing the taste that’s already inside us and reflects who we are. I want to decorate my home exactly like that certain celebrity’s because I know they have good taste and that, when I have people over, they’ll love it and think that I have good taste. Never mind that the wood flooring and some pieces of furniture do not really reflect my personality (also, suck). We care more about appearing, than being. 

I’ve always felt uncomfortable with the idea that universal good taste exists, that liking some things is objectively considered a sign of good taste whereas liking others isn’t. Who decides what these things are? And who decides that my taste is good? Is there a set of unwritten rules to determine whether a certain taste is good? I’ve always found it ironic that, although taste is a deeply personal affair, whether I do have taste or not is generally for other people to say. I may believe that I have taste, but unless somebody else says so, it’s as if it had no value. A person of taste is such only to the eyes of others. How preposterous. The only exception that I can think of is in the lyrics of an old song by The Rolling Stones called “Sympathy for the Devil”: Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste, it goes. We don’t think about the origin, meaning and implications of taste very often, I suppose. If and when we do, a whole universe of mysterious, unarticulated, inexplicable concepts and ideas emerges.

Susan Sontag, in her 1964 essay titled Notes on “Camp”, writes that taste is a concept that’s almost impossible to articulate. But, although it “has no system and no proof”, taste has a logic: it is generated by a “consistent sensibility”. And sensibility is ineffable, it cannot be described, let alone “crammed into the mold of a system, or handled with the rough tools of proof”. If it could, it would no longer be a sensibility. It would be an idea. Yet, as difficult to pin down as it is, there’s nothing more influential than taste in personal decision-making. We tend to think of taste only in our reaction to people or art: a subjective, mysterious attraction driven by anything but reason. But taste is everywhere. There is taste in people, visual taste, taste in emotion -- and there is taste in acts, taste in morality. Intelligence, as well, is really a kind of taste: taste in ideas, writes Sontag. 

Also, in her essay Notes on Taste, Brie Wolfson writes that, though taste may appear effortless, you can’t have taste by mistake. It requires intention, focus, and care. Taste is a commitment to a state of attention. It’s a process of peeling back layer after layer, turning over rock after rock. I find this critical. You can choose to trust other people’s taste and embrace it blindfolded, without even questioning why they like certain things and, therefore, why you should like them too. Or you can choose to commit to a state of attention, give a hard look inside yourself, identify what you like, understand why you like it, and cultivate it. Maybe what you decide to cultivate isn’t included in the pot of things they say you have to like to have good taste. But taste requires originality, it invokes an aspirational authenticity, writes Wolfson. Or maybe you can choose to position yourself in between and trust someone else’s taste without embracing it blindfolded, and start paying attention to what it does to you and questioning why you feel attracted to it. In other words, you can borrow someone else’s taste to jump-start, and eventually develop, your own. Like I did with jazz. Whether you emulate someone else’s taste or work on developing your own, you have to know what you like, and why.  

I think that taste is both something innate, that we’ve always had and at some point discover, and something that we borrow and critically reshape to develop our own framework of preferences. I don’t think taste has anything to do with uncritically and effortlessly replicating the preferences of those whom we admire -- that’s an idea of taste, a representation of it, not taste itself. Whether innate or developed, though, taste requires two key ingredients to emerge: sensibility and work. Granted, sensibility is ineffable and hard to define. But I like to think of it as a box containing clues of its existence, more than defining it. Like our ability to care, to pay spontaneous and effortless attention, to notice hues, to smell and hear consciously, to be aware of the slightest change in state and emotions, our skin getting goosebumps, our sliding naturally into ease and peace of mind. And many more. If I had to venture into a definition, I’d say that sensibility is when our senses and faculties (a) are naturally alert to the smallest alterations of reality (reality being anything we can perceive), (b) can decode these alterations, and (c) decide whether they’re good or bad. Whether they meet our taste or not. And work is exploration, risk-taking, exposure, education, and confrontation. It’s learning the whats and the whys.  

Food, for example, is something we develop a taste for over the course of our lives. A good taste for food means having a palate sensible enough to recognize even the slightest nuance of savor. But we weren’t born with such a natural ability. Having a taste for food means being able to tell an excellent extra virgin olive oil from a merely great one, and, within the excellent ones, being able to tell the different types of olives grown in different places with different texture and acidity and what have you. Although at home we make our extra virgin olive oil out of a small number of olive trees that we own, I for one don’t have the sensibility to discern all those things. I can tell when an extra virgin olive oil is not from home; that I can do. But that’s about it. I guess, besides developing a sensible palate, it’s also a matter of experience and willingness to explore and being around people who can point you in the right direction. I’m sure I can train my sensibility if I get enough exposure and guidance from someone whose taste I trust and like. Having a palate sensible enough to recognize even the slightest nuance of savor is certainly a necessary prerequisite for developing a taste for food, but it’s not sufficient. A sensible palate means that you know how to pay attention, that you’re naturally paying attention. But then you have to be curious and available to explore, to take risks. You have to be willing to put in the work. 

It’s clear that my taste for extra virgin olive oil has not been deliberately nurtured over the years, that I’ve spontaneously developed some by simply being (often unintentionally) exposed to it. Do I want to put in the work and refine my sensibility to extra virgin olive oil? Am I interested in developing a good taste for it, in getting more sophisticated around it? If you’d asked me when I was in my early twenties, and I thought it was cool to have that kind of sophistication because someone that I deeply admired had it, probably I’d have responded yes without even thinking. Now, I’d respond yes if I’m genuinely interested in developing such a taste for me. But I’d probably respond I’m good, thanks, as I’ve got other things I’d rather train my sensibility on. I cannot aspire to have a good taste for everything. 

I don’t usually like to give advice. And, if you’re reading this in your early twenties, I won’t be so presumptuous to list the things you should develop a taste for if you care to be viewed as a sophisticated “person of taste”. Also, I have no idea. Many years ago, when I worked on Wall Street and I happened to hang out with my co-workers at some dinner party, being able to talk about -- and show a taste for -- expensive watches or golf gear or boats or cars was a must. Also, showing a taste for aggressive behavior was seriously appreciated (taste is not only about people and things). And so sometimes I forced myself, otherwise I’d have no dialogue with anybody. But I was so evidently, cheekily, wholeheartedly fake. I knew that I was the least aggressive person on the planet, and that I liked guitars and chess and books and photography, and I knew why, and I could entertain discussions for days on them and maybe even show good taste around them. But if I wanted to be included in certain circles, if I wanted to be part of that tribe, I had to develop a taste for those other things. Time passed and things changed, and I understood that taste is identity. And that we have to believe in what we want to have a taste for. 

So, be patient, the process of metabolizing the world is a slow one. [...] Take your time learning what you find compelling, and why. There are no shortcuts to taste. Taste cannot sublimate. It can only bloom, writes Brie Wolfson. Look inside yourself, discover what you genuinely feel attracted to and care for, and train your sensibility around it. Work on it. Read, smell, observe, pay attention. Close your eyes, be with it. Trust but also second-guess your instinct, do a disproportionate amount of trial and error, get exposure, and some guidance, if you get the chance. Your taste for it will flourish. Beautifully, naturally, truthfully. And it will be yours.

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