On Taste

Lying in bed the other day I thought on how physical taste was a remarkably useful metaphor (and perhaps not entirely a metaphor) for artistic taste.

In the beginning, as children, what seems to us the acme of good food?  Simple: foods that stimulate us the most.  Extremely sweet sugary confections, very sour candies, and strong salty-fat foods such as french fries.  In order to put all the focus on these experiences, though, these foods by necessity must also consist of only one or a few basic flavors.  If what you want is sweet, then the other aspects must either be very minor (it tastes sort of like raspberry) or separate (perhaps a sour center to a sweet jawbreaker); it's just the inevitable reality of trying to make an experience bold for its own sake.

The other aspect that guides childish tastes is familiarity.  By our nature, one of the first things we appraise food of is whether it is one we have already eaten, with a natural inclination toward that which we already know but have not rejected.  It's safe, after all: we tried it before and liked it (and in the case of food, it didn't poison us either).  No need to worry about any uncertainty, or the associated effort of scrutinizing, a second time.  By comparison, unfamiliar foods always meet with an initial degree of skepticism; they not only have to prove themselves with no assistance of previous association, they are compared against things that we already have fondness for.  The hurdle has been raised and many dishes that are quite palatable fail simply because they are not what the child has eaten before.

So this is the baseline human state: we like what is highly stimulating with a prejudice toward the familiar.  This can endure for some time, and indeed for some people all their lives.  However, for many there begins to creep in a basic dissatisfaction with the repeated monochrome flavors.  Despite their intensity they become dull.  How do we overcome this?  Simplistically we may try to make them ever sweeter or sourer, but this soon runs into the same limitations, and indeed becomes unpleasant when taken to an extreme.  

The other course is to combine flavors.  If salty and sweet by themselves are not engaging, perhaps together they create a new experience.  It is novel, and we are suspicious of novel, but boredom helps us overcome our trepidation.  What we soon discover, though, is that it is no longer just the intensity of the flavors that matters, it is the relationship.  Too salty or too sweet and the other flavor is eclipsed; they have to exist not only at the right absolute levels to be enjoyable, they must also be the right level relative to the other flavor.  We have the beginnings of the idea the parts must exist in some relation to the whole and that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Now, unlike the relatively limited set of basic flavors, the number of combinations of flavors is exponentially greater, both due to possible pairings as well as their relative contributions.  It's a whole new world of possibilities, and while many may not turn out to be very tasty we nonetheless are exposed to much we wouldn't otherwise.  Also as we explore these combinations we realize that the secondary characteristics that originally were not as important take on greater relevance.  They further differentiate what were once single flavors, and we find that these sub-flavors have great bearing on each other.  Raspberry sweet doesn't make a very good teriyaki sauce.  So not only has our ability to experience a broader array of dishes increased, so too has our ability to differentiate what we once regarded as monolithic flavors.

A side effect of this experimentation is that we discover that while some combinations/dishes are popular with most people, because they really are good, there are some that for us hold a particular place.  This is a natural result of discovering that there are much finer gradations than we previously thought existed.  And in a way, they didn't before - the food was always there but the experience of eating it only occurs when the food reaches a mouth connected to something which can process that information.  Before then it tastes like nothing (or like one hand clapping).  Now that these subtleties are available to us, though, we find that there are some which, for some reason or another, we are particularly sensitive to.  There are flavors that only a few people can discern, and therefore reflect not only the nature of the food but begins to say something of the nature of the taster as well.

Having started down this path, however, there's no saying where it ends.  For instance, perhaps we add a temporal component: the order of the dishes matters, as some are more appropriate for whetting the appetite and others for rounding it out in satiation at the end.  This also serves as contrast, for it is patently obvious by now that too much of one thing in succession causes us to become habituated to it.  Sight and aroma become more important for they can play into the experience through anticipation, which in itself is a significant component of enjoyment.  By now the original categories that one started with, the sweets and the sours, have become all but insufficient to characterize the experience.  What the child perceives and what the connoisseur perceives have become entirely different.

At this point I reach the edge of my culinary knowledge.  I am no gourmet, and while I have used this as an illustration I admit I do not believe that epicurean pursuits are particularly elevating for the soul.  The human olfactory/gustatory system is not all that refined by comparison to our vision and hearing, our primary modes of art, and I suspect are too much tied up with basic needs of satiation.  Nonetheless, even given these limitations I hope that this simpler, more neutral subject is an effective illustration of a progression in artistic understanding:

• An early state ruled by the intense and the familiar
  
• A more developed state that perceives relationships and subtleties and is open to new experiences
• A growing state that internalizes, learning more about the self and in turn more about the subject
• An advanced state where only hints are required to call up associations, the experiencer's own nature having taken on a far greater role than before
  

This is why an expert cannot just explain anything to a beginner - the very vocabulary they use will be incomprehensible.  They can try to guide and offer suggestions, but ultimately an education in this topic works a change in the person that cannot be offered externally.