Taste-making
I’ve been thinking about taste and my funny affinity for people who exhibit good taste. It’s not necessarily expressed in a visual way. It’s not just about picking out good art, or being able to distinguish good sashimi from bad, or being able to put together a stylish outfit. Taste can be exhibited in abstract ways. Like people who get when an idea is beautiful. Or people who get that a plan was executed well.
So it was with great joy that I stumbled across this very old Paul Graham essay, Taste for Makers.
My favorite excerpts (bold mine):
“I think it’s because humor is related to strength. To have a sense of humor is to be strong: to keep one’s sense of humor is to shrug off misfortunes, and to lose one’s sense of humor is to be wounded by them.”
“There is good pain and bad pain. You want the kind of pain you get from going running, not the kind you get from stepping on a nail.”
“When people talk about being in ‘the zone,’ I think what they mean is that the spinal cord has the situation under control.”
“It’s not so much that resembling nature is intrinsically good as that nature has had a long time to work on the problem.”
“A novice imitates without knowing it; next he tries consciously to be original; finally, he decides it’s more important to be right than original.”
“But if you just try to make good things, you’ll inevitably do it in a distinctive way, just as each person walks in a distinctive way. Michelangelo was not trying to paint like Michelangelo. He was just trying to paint well; he couldn’t help painting like Michelangelo.”
“The recipe for great work is: very exacting taste, plus the ability to gratify it.”
What a satisfying read.
