A Lot Of Us Fell Prey To The Taste Gap
Lin-Manuel Miranda (creator of the Broadway musicals Hamilton and In The Heights, as well as the soundtracks for the animated movies Moana, Vivo, and Encanto) attended a selective school for gifted students with artistic aspirations. Decades later, after he’d become one of the most successful artists of his time, some of his former classmates were asked why, in a school filled with kids who had similar potential and ambitions, Miranda became the superstar. “A lot of us fell prey to the taste gap,” one said, “feeling that we’d never [be] like the greats. A lot of us made ourselves give up. But Lin was never like that. He always saw his creative output as worthwhile. He wasn’t comparing himself to his heroes. He was like: ‘I’m going to make what I can right now…and learn as I go.’”
Not falling prey to the taste gap—that’s the theme of this SIX at 6…
Most People Die In That Gap
The “taste gap” was first articulated by the radio personality Ira Glass. “I really wish somebody would have told me this when I was starting out,” Glass explains. “Everyone who does creative work gets into it because they have good taste, right?” Those who get into writing, for instance, usually do so because they love books. Filmmakers first fell in love with watching movies. Chefs started as people who uniquely appreciated great food. Designers, architects, musicians, entrepreneurs—whatever the field, we tend to begin as connoisseurs, able to recognize excellence before we can produce it ourselves. “So you get into this thing,” Glass continues, “I don’t even know how to describe it, but it’s like there’s a gap: for the first few years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making is not that great. It’s really not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s just not that good. But your taste—the thing that got you into the game—is still killer. Your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you. You can tell that it’s kind of crappy, it’s not as good as your favorite stuff.” At this point, painfully aware that what they’re trying to make is not as good as the stuff they know is good—“most people at that point, they quit,” Glass said. “Most people die in that gap. They give up. They stop creating work.” To avoid falling prey to the gap, “You gotta know that it’s totally normal, and that the most important thing you could possibly do is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work. It’s only by going through a volume of work that you close that gap. Your work will be as good as your ambitions…You just gotta keep creating.”
Everyone I Knew Would Have Quit
When he was 17, Quentin Tarantino dropped out of school and moved to LA. He worked at a video store called Video Archives, where he built a reputation for his taste. Customers went to Video Archives not to rent anything in particular, just whatever Tarantino suggested. When he wasn’t working, Tarantino was working on making his first movie, My Best Friend’s Birthday. Every dollar he made went into producing the movie, and three years into working on it, Tarantino showed it to a Hollywood producer. “Quentin,” the producer said, “what you need to do is…wrap this film in meat, go out into the sharkiest waters you can find, and feed the meat-covered film to the sharks.” Tarantino’s taste—what got him into the game in the first place—was good enough that he knew the producer was right: the movie he’d made was terrible. That he’d spent so much time and money on it, “and it ended up being nothing, absolutely nothing,” Tarantino said, “made me very depressed.” And that he didn’t give up at that point “is my single most proudest moment of character,” he said. “Of all the accomplishments I ever did in the course of my life, the one I’m the proudest of is the two weeks after that movie failed. I’m just proud. Everyone I knew would have quit. There’s not anyone I knew at that time—after donating three years of their life and having it not be good—who wouldn’t have quit.” Everyone he knew at that time would have died in the taste gap.
Stay On The F*cking Bus
The photographer and filmmaker Arno Rafael Minkkinen has a theory of creative originality: “The Helsinki Bus Station Theory.” In the heart of the city of Helsinki, there is a bus station. Before they branch off into different directions, every bus makes the same first few stops on the way out of the city. Like these buses—an artist, early on, can’t avoid taking a similar route as the artists who came before. “Let’s say…metaphorically speaking,” Minkkinen says, “you have been working for three years making platinum studies of nudes.” “You take those three years of work on the nude to [a gallery], and the curator asks if you are familiar with the nudes of Irving Penn…[or] Bill Brandt.” Realizing that your style is derivative, that it’s not as good as the stuff you know is good, Minkkinen says, “You hop off the bus, grab a cab, and head straight back to the bus station looking for another platform.” Back at the station—metaphorically speaking—you set out again to develop your style. Then three years later, again, you take your work to an art gallery. Again, the curator says your work looks like a lesser version of a more famous artist. So again, you decide to get off the bus, but this time, Minkkinen himself stops you and gives you some advice: “Stay on the bus. Stay on the f*cking bus.” If you stay on the bus, you will get out of the taste gap, and “soon your differences will begin to appear with clarity and intelligence. Your originality will become visible. And even the works from those very first years of trepidation when everything you did seemed to have been done before [will] all have the stamp of your unique vision. Why? Because you stayed on the bus.”
On The Frontier Of Uncertainty And Confusion
For a long time, the actor Jeremy Strong held up his acting heroes and felt like a fraud by comparison. So instead of actually acting and working on his craft, Strong said, “there was a long period in my life where I sought out teachers, wanting to get the magic beans from them. I wanted to find the masters and apprentice to the masters.” At some point, “I realized that the masters, like all of us, are just on the frontier of their own uncertainty and confusion.” The greats are just on the frontier of their own doubts and uncertainties about the quality of their work—“just like all of us,” Strong said. “And so there is no kind of axiom that they can impart that’s going to unlock the mysteries. There are great practical tools, of course, that you can pick up from the masters, because a lot of work, especially film work, is practical. But then there’s the element that only you can unlock by going to the frontier of your own uncertainty and confusion,” by going through a volume of work, as Glass said above.
You’re Only As Good As You’re Willing To Be Bad
Randall Stutman, an executive advisor and the founder of Admired Leadership, likes to say, “You’re only as good as you’re willing to be bad…The fact that you’re not good at something—that’s OK. Because you’re never going to get good unless you’re willing to be bad.” Your work will get as good as your ambitions. You just gotta be willing to be bad on your way to getting good. You just gotta stay on the bus. You just gotta avoid falling prey to the taste gap.