Taste is Truth

It’s been almost three months since I began writing this journal. What strikes me the most is how much my taste—literary or otherwise—has improved in such a short span of time.

I used to think that the cultivation of taste was equivalent to developing a sense for the comme il faut—the likes and dislikes of “liberal” “arts” “professors”—and the dutiful copying of it. But it’s quite the opposite, really—taste is about awareness and freedom. Awareness of one’s predilections—and the freedom to be frank about them.

Becoming more refined, then, felt like removing all the cringe expectations that used to guide and girdle my artistic glance. What remains is warm, visceral, and true.