In recent days, I’ve found myself explaining out the fact that I like nice things through various slightly pejorative permutations - “I know this sounds materialistic but” or “listen, I know you’ll think this is bougie but” and it wasn’t until a recent conversation that I fully understood the implication at hand: it was somehow bad to be any of these things - a person who liked nice things, materialistic or bougie. The person gently reminded me that all of these were indicators of taste. I had mine and it happened to be expensive. Was that a bad thing?
Since that conversation I’ve found myself catching myself just as I’m about to apologize yet again for suggesting something that for whatever reason, feels excessive to suggest. Instead I have sat with this idea of what it means to have good taste.
Once again, I turn to the hallowed words of Rick Rubin I referenced in an earlier post. You just know what you like.
We live in a world that teaches us through every stage of our existence to follow a herd - so many of us spend our formative school years yearning to be normal, yearning to be popular in the way that books and tv shows us prime us to be. We are encouraged to study surveys of literature and art pre curated for us as the classics. We are encouraged to find “stable jobs” and get married and populate the world with more obedient young humans. Hell, even the food we eat and movies we watch have ratings associated with them by which we are further encouraged to give up novelty and follow what’s popular.
The second you actually step away from any of this and start the work of asking yourself what you like, you start an act of literal rebellion: as a child other kids will tell you you’re weird. As an adult, your peers will pass veiled comments about the time you seem to have and strangeness of your audacity (do you really think anyone cares what you think?), coworkers will think you’re not spending enough time doing work and the icebreakers at the start of meetings focused around the last show you watched will always be really awkward. But if you stick to it, remain deeply curious and expose yourself over and over to a set of things from which you can extrapolate what you are inherently drawn to. And most critically, if you can actually defend that decision and stick by why you like it, you’ll start to develop this thing called taste.
More often than not, your preferences will start to become aligned with opulence because you will seek out good quality. You’ll start to know a lot about random random things like why mulberry silk is so prized or the difference between wool and mohair. You’ll start to follow your curiosities down wild rabbit holes. (Did you know that the compound indole which gives jasmine its distinctive smell is also found in feces?)You’ll start to appreciate why expensive things are expensive and you’ll start to scoff at labels, quickly realizing that a hefty price tag still requires meticulous review of quality. Your purchases will become quicker, more decisive and excessively judicious. Stitches, minor defects in craftsmanship, how something feels, a bass line that moves your soul - the mundane will begin to speak to you.
Soon you will curate your possessions. Your home can turn into a shelter shrine nest of things that bring you and only you joy. Your people will come over and exclaim loudly that your home feels like you and so warm and cozy and that will be the single best compliment.
And soon you will find a point where the inanimate things you have added to your care will want to be used and placed in very specific ways. Your home will speak to you, will require of you a certain dynamism. You’ll want to see a piece of art in a particular place. Chai will taste better in a specific mug. One movie will always remind you of a specific thing that brings you joy. Your outfits will work for you. Life will feel so much more joyous as you become more comfortable with your specific brand of joy.
And people? The ones who get it will find you. And they will love you for your specific taste. Being around them will feel endlessly validating as you continue to consume the creativity of this world through an infinite curiosity and refine it to your context with each other. In your friendship you will find the joy of exploration and that will make it stronger. You will become more discerning about who you want to spend time with - realizing quickly that specific people make the whites of pupils dance with joy. Those are your people. Love them hard and grow together. Your taste will expand alongside them and you’ll have the privilege of living an extraordinary, interesting life, underscored by the deep knowledge of what brings you joy.
🥹✨️ugh🩷
Loved your essay, and referenced it in my latest 🙂 https://shahidhn.substack.com/p/in-defense-of-the-dilettante