I Appreciate the Appreciating of Appreciation
I spoke to someone the other day about what it means to be a connoisseur. The conversation revolved around this notion that, if you know something well enough, you can appreciate and/or critique that thing on multiple levels. Anyone can appreciate a ballet, for example, but only a dancer can truly understand the form, discipline and sacrifice of a particular performer or performance.
The connoisseur sees the object as a collection of both discrete and continuous elements. My Rocky Road ice cream is comprised of sugar, cream, nuts, marshmellows and cocoa; vary the elements, vary the recipe, vary the experience. I, as a connoisseur of said flavor, will tell you precisely what I like or dislike about any given Rocky Road recipe, whereas a typical diner will claim to like or dislike the flavor just generally or may not even be able to discern one recipe from another at all.
But see how it's all still a matter of taste? Quite literally in this case. Even supposing I were to dismantle my appreciation down to its component parts (which itself can be a daunting task), I still face the challenge of trying to communicate my appreciation to another. If you just don't like Rocky Road of course then I can only hope that you'll appreciate my appreciation.
In much the same way, we can be a connoisseur of people.
I've said it before - a given person is like a bottle of wine. Some are clear, others are dull. Some are deep, others fruity. Some people (take my most recent ex for example) leave behind a nutty aftertaste. And of course, every once in awhile you find someone who's just plain gone to vinegar - and usually because of neglect.
Many drinkers aren't, of course, interested in flavor - they just want to get shitfaced. Sure, they'd prefer something sweet to something bitter, but only because it eases the process of drunkeness. To complete the analogy, this would be the "typical" guy who only considers the youngest, prettiest woman with the nicest rack. He doesn't want the drink, he wants the alcohol. He doesn't want the woman, but rather he wants to run his hands along the gently curving slopes of her unblemished epidermia. Maybe he's a connoisseur of curves? Possibly, but that's not where I'm headed with this.
Few things in life - people especially - can be so simply defined. There's ALWAYS more to appreciate. And yet, more often than not, we see only skin deep. She is pretty. He is black. That guy is fat. Like an iceberg, the bulk of who we are remains unseen. If you are particularly textured, reader, understand that most of your fellow humans won't have the pallet required to parse your flavor. Truly, if you want your contents to be more than slammed, you'll need to find yourself a connoisseur.
The connoisseur sees the object as a collection of both discrete and continuous elements. My Rocky Road ice cream is comprised of sugar, cream, nuts, marshmellows and cocoa; vary the elements, vary the recipe, vary the experience. I, as a connoisseur of said flavor, will tell you precisely what I like or dislike about any given Rocky Road recipe, whereas a typical diner will claim to like or dislike the flavor just generally or may not even be able to discern one recipe from another at all.
But see how it's all still a matter of taste? Quite literally in this case. Even supposing I were to dismantle my appreciation down to its component parts (which itself can be a daunting task), I still face the challenge of trying to communicate my appreciation to another. If you just don't like Rocky Road of course then I can only hope that you'll appreciate my appreciation.
In much the same way, we can be a connoisseur of people.
I've said it before - a given person is like a bottle of wine. Some are clear, others are dull. Some are deep, others fruity. Some people (take my most recent ex for example) leave behind a nutty aftertaste. And of course, every once in awhile you find someone who's just plain gone to vinegar - and usually because of neglect.
Many drinkers aren't, of course, interested in flavor - they just want to get shitfaced. Sure, they'd prefer something sweet to something bitter, but only because it eases the process of drunkeness. To complete the analogy, this would be the "typical" guy who only considers the youngest, prettiest woman with the nicest rack. He doesn't want the drink, he wants the alcohol. He doesn't want the woman, but rather he wants to run his hands along the gently curving slopes of her unblemished epidermia. Maybe he's a connoisseur of curves? Possibly, but that's not where I'm headed with this.
Few things in life - people especially - can be so simply defined. There's ALWAYS more to appreciate. And yet, more often than not, we see only skin deep. She is pretty. He is black. That guy is fat. Like an iceberg, the bulk of who we are remains unseen. If you are particularly textured, reader, understand that most of your fellow humans won't have the pallet required to parse your flavor. Truly, if you want your contents to be more than slammed, you'll need to find yourself a connoisseur.