For Taste Governs Every Free—As Opposed To Rote—Human Response
The first time I read Susan Sontag’s Notes on “Camp” (about the many meanings and uses of the word “camp”), I missed or didn’t seriously consider this point: “These are grave matters,” she writes. “Most people think of sensibility or taste as the realm of purely subjective preferences [or] attractions…They allow that taste plays a part in their reactions [to] works of art. But this attitude is naïve. And even worse. To patronize the faculty of taste is to patronize oneself. For taste governs every free—as opposed to rote—human response. Nothing is more decisive.” Taste, not as it has to do with preferences, attractions, or reactions to works of art, but rather as a governor of choices and responses, day in and day out—that’s the theme of this SIX at 6…
What The Hell Is Water?
There’s a story told in 12-step programs about two young fish swimming along. They come across an older fish swimming the other way, and the older fish nods and says, “Morning boys, how’s the water?” The two youngsters keep swimming, and eventually one turns to the other and goes, “What the hell is water?” Famously, David Foster Wallace explained what is so hidden in plain sight all around us humans, the way water is to fish: your total freedom of choice regarding what to think about. If that seems too obvious to seriously consider, Wallace says, “I’d ask you to think about fish and water, and to bracket for just a few minutes your skepticism about the value of the totally obvious.” By way of example, it’s the end of the work day, and you’re tired, stressed, and hungry, and you just want to get home, but it’s rush hour, and now you have to sit in slow, heavy traffic filled with lane-blocking, smartphone-swerving, no-turn-signaling, idiots, who seem for all the world to clearly be in your way. Traffic jams, crowded grocery stores, long checkout lines, delayed flights, the wi-fi goes out—life is full of annoying, boring, petty, frustrating crap. “But that is not the point,” Wallace says. “The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing comes in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don’t make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I’m gonna be pissed and miserable all the time.” Here’s another little example: in that traffic, all those vehicles stopped and idling in your way, you can choose to consider, “it’s not impossible that the car that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he’s trying to get this kid to the hospital, and he’s in a bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am: it is actually I who am in HIS way…Please don’t think that I’m giving you moral advice, or that I’m saying you are supposed to think this way, or that anyone expects you to just automatically do it. Because it’s hard. It takes will and effort, and if you are like me, some days you won’t be able to do it, or you just flat out won’t want to.” But day in and day out, you can consciously choose possibilities that aren’t annoying and miserable. For taste governs every free human response.
I’m Still In That Night
In a moment of boredom and petty frustration, a tasteful choice began the writing career of the screenwriter and playwright Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing, The Social Network, Moneyball, Molly’s Game, etc.). After graduating from college, Sorkin moved to New York City to pursue an acting career. He slept on friend’s floors and couches, and he said, “there was this one night where I was staying in this very, very tiny studio apartment. It was a Friday night, one of those nights in New York City where it just feels like everybody has been invited to a party you haven’t been invited to.” The apartment had a broken TV, a broken stereo, no books, no magazines, and a working semi-automatic electric typewriter. “The only thing to do was to put a piece of paper in that typewriter and start typing,” Sorkin said. “Out of pure boredom, I stayed up all night writing, and I feel like that night has never ended, like I’m still in that night.”
Forrest, We Have A Problem
During the filming of Forrest Gump, director Bob Zemeckis realized he had a problem: The kid cast to play the young Forrest had an accent he was unable to tone down in order to mimic the way Tom Hanks was portraying the adult Forrest. One day on set, Zemeckis told Hanks, “We got a problem here, you have to teach this kid how to talk the way you talk.” Hanks was enjoying a run of box-office hits, had just won his first Oscar for Best Actor, and could have let the fact that he was one of the hottest actors in Hollywood govern his choice to demand that Zemeckis cast a different kid. Instead, Hanks asked to meet with the kid. He was from Mississippi, and when Hanks heard the kid talk, he loved his thick Southern accent, and Hanks said, “I thought, ‘Why don’t I just talk the way HE talks?’” The accent and mannerisms that would define the iconic character and help Hanks become just the second actor ever to win two consecutive Oscars for Best Actor: it was just the simple choice to mimic the kid.
The Tide Is Just Out
At the age of 8, the future singer-songwriter Jewel was abandoned by her mother. Her father became abusive, and so at 15, Jewel left home. She lived in a car and worked odd jobs to make ends meet. She was stressed, anxious, pissed, and miserable, day in and day out. Once, uniquely, completely, permanently (it seemed) depressed, she took a walk, and at a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, she sat down. “I sat there for about 8 hours,” Jewel said. “I watched the tide go out and then come back. It happened so slowly, so imperceptibly.” She considered the possibility that the ebb and flow of the ocean was somehow like her mood, Jewel said, “And I thought, ‘sometimes the tide is just out.’ And that thought changed my life. Because I felt so sad, like my sadness would be forever. But watching the ocean tide out and back in, I realized that change is a basic law of nature and physics. And I’m part of nature and physics, so it would be impossible, it would be outside the laws of nature and physics, for my bad mood not to change.” That realization now allows Jewel to think of her stress and anxiety as not only manageable, but as natural, alive with the same forces that govern the universe. “To this day,” she said, “whenever I get sad, depressed, stressed, anxious—I say to myself, ‘The tide is just out. I don’t know how long it will take, but it will come back in because it has to: nothing is permanent.’ That’s what I choose to think, at least.”
This is Water. This is Water.
The faculty of taste in human response, the freedom of choice regarding what to think about and pay attention to in the day-to-day trenches of life—this has little to do with your preferences, attractions, or reactions to works of art, “and everything to do with simple awareness,” as Wallace says. “Awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over: This is water. This is water.”