I read Brie Wolfson's notes on taste, and it inspired me to catalog my own thoughts about it (and also to write this in this fashion as she and her inspiration for the essay - Susan Sontag did).
Welcome to the fourth issue this season of Bombay Daak - a note on taste, a newsletter on creativiting.
The existence of taste is universal, but its manifestation is subjective. Taste is all that we have sensed and liked but shared through the eye. To me taste is the recognition of things. A calling of their true names as such.
But recognition of what?
Taste recognises the politics of things, at least by the definition of Fisher Ames - the science of good sense, applied to private things
Taste knows the history, the context and the meaning. It is the evidence of one's personal curiosities dug deep
Taste recognises the essence of things. Taste is how you have when peel off something that is otherwise shrouded and muddy. Taste clarifies
Taste doesn’t see virtue, it just sees what’s different
Taste notices the detail. It knows the elements and the whole, separately and together. It is thus a recognition of a talent, of a peer, of a teacher. An artist doesn’t necessarily need taste, but a collector does
Taste knows the influence. What led to this thing being what it is today. When a taste isn’t recognised, it usually is the ignorance of its influence
Taste knows its own inheritance. All taste is learned. Taste is not a genetic endowment. You can learn it from anyone who inspires you, but you always learn it from someone. Every taste is acquired (unless it is literal)
Taste doesn’t see the path it took. One can jump levels of taste. The learning of taste isn't a dedicated practice, it is sensory, and one can adapt faster
Taste recognises its evolution. But taste can stagnate, and can reverse
Taste knows when it finds what it was looking for. While this might seem banal from the perspective of a consumer, from that of a creator's it's the difference between jubilation and despair
Taste knows it is a spectrum, and knows what falls where on it, and doesn’t pursue convergence of any. The homogeneity of taste is style
Taste recognises style, and hence knows the difference
Taste leaves where the person enters
Perhaps my own path crossed with one of my many futures once. Passed me by to let me know we are waiting this other way, that the road may seem long to you today, but it is short, a few stumbling steps and we are there waiting. That it won’t take long, that where we are the days pass by in a blur. But I know they knew it then that I didn't see them. That they too passed by in a blur to me, unlike this forever day of mine with sunshine and rain is only half done.
- a summer afternoon, 2017.