What is Taste

I'll just say my main points in bullets to keep it succinct

• Creation and appreciation are different types of taste. They can be intertwined (and usually the creators are deeper appreciators). But they can exist simultaneously. Lack of creation doesn’t mean lack of taste.

• it’s a permanent state, and you probably know the person around you that has it. You seek their judgment on certain topics.

  • Bickering about whether taste can or can’t be taught is dumb. It takes a ton of work. The more interesting question is identifying what characteristics lead a person to put in the work required to have prolific taste. From what I’ve seen, it’s whatever makes them compulsively refine their craft: limitless curiosity about a subject, a relentless desire to solve a specific problem, or a meticulous mindset that leads them to pursue perfection in all areas of life. For these motivations to be strong enough to yield “taste” is a .1% phenomenon — requiring a healthy dose of the work ethic.

  • The more you're in love with the craft, the easier the process of fully investing in the craft, and thus developing genuine taste becomes.

• You get there by chasing originality. It’s aspiring for authenticity. It’s going through a level of mastery of the language in question to a point where you’re technically confident to be defiantly and joyfully yourself.

  • True taste is the alchemy of skill + soul

• However, taste comes in lanes and is like a pea under the mattress. Being tasteful in one lane, doesn’t necessarily mean it would auto-transfer (although there are lanes that borrow from each other and might even give you an edge on the other). Going back to the pea though, having too many of them under your mattress would eventually make life grumpier

• Taste is about having a well formed opinion about topics in accordance with the reality of what is True and Good. Revealing good decision making.

• Correctness isn’t the same thing as taste. Tastefully is a step further, it intrigues, compels, moves, enchants, fascinates, and seduces. Tasteful is making an art out of the fascination at hand.

• There are no shortcuts to taste. Taste cannot sublimate. It can only bloom. To quote Susan Sontag one last time, “taste has no system and no proofs. But there is something like a logic of taste: the consistent sensibility which underlies and gives rise to a certain taste.”