hell is the absence of taste

Nam June Paik, Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii, 1995

I’ve been thinking about taste lately—what it means to have taste, how to develop taste, and what taste looks like in a world where trends are dead.

The art/challenge of developing “taste” has radically evolved since the advent of the digital age. Before the internet, you had to pick and choose where to dedicate your time. You had to actively decide to dive into a certain subculture, a certain designer, a certain artist—and because you were forced to choose one thing over another, that choice meant something.

Now, for better or for worse, “you could moderate a subreddit for the Canadian punk scene while posting everyday to a dark web Death Grips forum while being a massive Twitter advocate for a Marxist political candidate in Alaska, all while watching 24-hour news coverage of Formula One racing. Then that same kid could get up, put on a Nike tracksuit, and go to their high school where they play football and never talk to their friends about their actual interests.”

My working theory is that the practice of developing taste has largely become outsourced. Rather than undergo painstaking research or close observation, I can flit through a personal, algorithmic feed or listen to a Spotify-curated playlist, like reading the SparkNotes analysis of a book in order to understand it.

I don’t mean this to say that I think people literally don’t have preferences, but I do think we have lost the ability to probe what resonates, lost the vocabulary to describe what touches us in the parts of our souls we have yet to bare.

A very vocal speaker on this topic is Tyler, the Creator.

At his 2022 All Star Series Talk in Paris:

“Instagram has this thing where if I take a photo of you right now, it has an algorithm where it can look at your shirt and you can see other shirts like it; I think that’s fucking weird. I grew up where you see something and you have to spend the time and energy to figure out what it is because you truly give a fuck. […] That release you get when you find out what it is, and then you find out how to get it, and then you have to go get it, and touch it, and this and that… that is deeply embedded in everything I do. […] And now, ‘it’s there? cool.’ There’s not much inquisitive love and care in these things anymore, and because of that people just buy anything now. People aren’t buying pieces that they truly love.”

“We’re at a time where things don’t hold personal value anymore, it’s now for other people. Even a conversation about music now has changed. People just say something’s ‘mid’ but they can’t articulate why they don’t like it. They don’t have the vocabulary or the energy or the actual care. People don’t even talk about why they like the shit they actually like.”

To be fair, the democratization of trendsetting/the eradication of digital monoculture paves a promising path for more diverse perspectives. However, the general overabundance of choice, and consequentially our lack of close attention, has disintegrated our ability to discern—devolving into mindless consumption with no care and even no emotion.

When I think about how to combat this, at least at an individual level, I look toward artists I love who create with maniacal focus and intensity.

A true man of his word, Tyler is able to articulate his preferences incredibly well.

During a tour of GOLF le FLEUR*, he explains why he added scallop detail on the back pockets of a pair of shorts, how he designed the brick-and-mortar store with rounded shapes because he finds modern homes too “square” and “cold.”

During an interview with Rick Rubin, Tyler and Rick discuss/deconstruct the track “Running Out of Time” on his album IGOR (2019) (they go through the entire album but their discussion of this track is my favorite [25:30]), pointing out small details like car sounds and using the bridge to “let the song breathe.”

Another example: music artist Fred again.. is known for his authenticity and unabashed joy while he performs (uncharacteristic for a dance music artist). He describes the art of performing live with an unbelievable amount of intention:

“‘Electronic music and live shows still does not know itself. When I was first working out how to do this, I was stunned to learn how embryonic and unsolved it is. There needs to be jeopardy. There needs to be a sense of risk. It needs to feel like it could fall apart, otherwise it’s something else. If you feel a sense of, “This is tangibly happening in front of me, and if he didn’t do that, it would fall apart,” that’s the excitement of the experience.’”

These are only two of many examples of artists who approach their craft with a phenomenal amount of care. I believe that it is our responsibility as patrons to approach our consumption with the same amount of attention, rather than depending on feeds or gut reactions to guide us.

I’ve been lucky enough to have a slow, few weeks—a little more time to linger a few more seconds while reading a page, a little more attention to give when I listen to an album. Developing this practice has been challenging, but worthwhile. Because I’ve slowed down, taken more time to consume less, I’ve begun to understand my own consumption and my own taste more. And during this exercise, I’ve found that I’ve begun to enjoy things more wholeheartedly, although I may be enjoying fewer things.

In the way that writing distills thought or sketching improves depth-perception, giving full concentration to what I consume has given me a vocabulary for and attunement to what truly makes my heart sing—and that is what I would consider taste.

I’ll leave you with another Tyler, the Creator quote:

“I hope we get back to a point where when you do open your mouth, it’s because you truly give a fuck, whether you dislike it or truly love it.”

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thank you to Sean and Eugene for helping me to distill my thoughts on this over several occasions and for reviewing this piece <3

ps the title is a riff on the title of the short story “Hell is the Absence of God” by Ted Chiang, please read it.