High Standards

[jaybee]

It doesn’t address the peculiarities of each genre, however, and therefore is unhelpful in your attempt to assess the market success of these two individuals on a reasonable basis.  In other words, if you manage to persuade me that chef Blumenthal is better than Bob Dylan, I’ll consider your point.

I was not applying the criteria of market success to assessment of greatness. Bob Dylan had more impact on the lives of more people than Blumenthal ever will, and both use creativity and technique to further their art.

[jaybee]

What does surpressing your feelings have to do with the acquisition of knowledge and altering your choices as a result? Your post seems to project some inconsistancy between a person's sensual likes and their choices made on the basis of the thought process. Let's call that one neurosis. What differenc does any of it make if they come to the correct conclusions?

Ah, now I understand your perplexity. You are focussing on a destination. I am focussing on the journey. It becomes clear to me now.

[Steve Plotnicki]

Since when is the destination a function of the journey?

[jaybee]

Since when is the destination a function of the journey?

It's not. You are saying what difference does it make if your rational mind clouds your emotional or sensory response as long as you come to the "correct conclusions."

Edited January 28, 2003 by jaybee (log)

[g.johnson]

Er, what's the difference between jaded and over-critical? Aren't you jaded when you have had mutlitple experiences and you adopt a higher standard? How is that different from being over-critical?

Over-critical implies that you're finding fault with something that you have previously enjoyed. Jaded implies that you no longer find the previously enjoyable experience satisfying. Though I realize that there's a similarity, the former is an intellectual position, the later an emotional one (if you will).

[britcook]

Over-critical implies that you're finding fault with something that you have previously enjoyed.

A good summation. Does the acquired knowledge which now enables you to find fault enhance your dining experience, lessen it or merely change it? A good point for me to exit the discussion.

[Tonyfinch]

Jaded implies that you no longer find the previously enjoyable experience satisfying.

Maybe but it also may imply a temporary surfeit of a generally enjoyable experience.

If I did what some of our American friends appear to do and spend ten days or so on the trot eating in 3 star restaurants in France I know I would be jaded after three days at the most and be yearning for a curry. Similarly if all I drank was first growths,after a while I'd be saying someone give me a chilled Beaujolais for God's sake.

Maybe Jaybee's friends have got their culinary lives out of balance and the key to remaining enthusuastic as you acquire more knowledge is to recognize that just because somthing is better than something else it doesn't mean that you will neccessarily enjoy it more if you have it all the time, or even that much more often than anything else.

Edited January 28, 2003 by Tonyfinch (log)

[Steve Plotnicki]

Over-critical implies that you're finding fault with something that you have previously enjoyed. Jaded implies that you no longer find the previously enjoyable experience satisfying. Though I realize that there's a similarity, the former is an intellectual position, the later an emotional one (if you will).

A good summation. Does the acquired knowledge which now enables you to find fault enhance your dining experience, lessen it or merely change it? A good point for me to exit the discussion.

Gee this is where I was a few hundred posts ago. You are describing people not food (relativism.) And when you describe people and not food, the standard is fungeable. But that is not the case when people tie themselves to a standard and when the dining process becomes a quest for those standards and keeping them.

Eating, like any other hobby that people might have where you practice your analytical skills through repetition, is about learning how to taste things better. And the loss of sensuality you are describing (really ignorance) is replaced by ever increasing standards. And the sensuality of the dining process is not lessened by the increased knowledge, in fact it is heightened because it is now combined with high intellect. What does occur is a loss in the frequence of it occuring because the standard is higher so it is harder to find. But the intensity of the emotion when it does happen does not.

If I can once again shift the discussion to music, I enjoy far fewer CD's in my middle age. But the ones I enjoy I listen to intently. Now that I have whittled down the ones that make profound statements down to just a few, I can listen to them over and over again to the exception of the others. I always joke and say I want to hear them perfectly. But I hear them in a way that is much more profound then I heard them when I was younger and they move me much more deeply now then they did back then.

It's one thing to bemoan the loss of a raw emotional response that one used to experience when they were exposed to certain aesthetics. But if what you are really describing is naivety and what was really a superficial appreciation of things, face it, you were just turned on by the wrong things. That is what acquiring taste is all about. It is about learning that a better standard is available if you care to apply it. And in reality, I believe that this is what each and everyone of us does, including the people who are arguing against me.

[tommy]

the only way people know if you are able to "taste better" is if you convince them.

[Steve Plotnicki]

the only way people know if you are able to "taste better" is if you convince them.

But how would someone who has bad taste but who who doesn't know that be convinced? How do you formulate a discussion if taste is a matter of personal preference and not objective standard? Or if is a function of just sensual and visceral reaction and not an acquired skill?

[tommy]

my point is that it's much easier to say that you have good taste, and argue that it comes from years of practice and experience, than it is to convince someone that you're a really good nascar driver for example.

we're all convinced though.

Edited January 28, 2003 by tommy (log)

[oraklet]

"my point is that it's much easier to say that you have good taste, and argue that it comes from years of practice and experience, then it is to convince someone that you're a really good nascar driver for example.

we're all convinced though."

PLEASE! you know well that it is a matter of training one's senses and the vocabulary that goes with it. for instance, steve could analyze two steaks prepared by two different cooks and tell you what makes them different, whereas the average steak eater would tell you only of his preference. what do you think egullet is about?

damn, how can it be so hard to understand?

[hollywood]

Gee this is where I was a few hundred posts ago.

Nothing goes out of date quicker than the avant garde.

[Wilfrid]

If I can once again shift the discussion to music, I enjoy far fewer CD's in my middle age. But the ones I enjoy I listen to intently. Now that I have whittled down the ones that make profound statements down to just a few, I can listen to them over and over again to the exception of the others.

Very much my experience with the Ramones' first album. As for the marketing/subsidy argument, as his Lordship would say: I'm sorry, you've lost me.

[Steve Plotnicki]

Easy. When someone subsidizes the opera, they don't intend to make any direct profit out of it. The best they do is to get their name posted somewhere as a sponsor. If someone wants to do business with them as a result of their being good guys, it is ancillary to their core business. When Columbia subsidizes the next Dylan recording, they do so for a variety of reasons that are all related to increasing the sales in their core busines. When there is a new Dylan album released, it allows their sales people to market the entire catalog. Same with when they do press for him. When writers write about the new album, they will probably reference his old recordings. In fact it is only a loss leader when you create a balance sheet that is discreet to that recording. But if you create a balance sheet of the entire Dylan catalog over what we would call the lifespan of the recording as a current release, it is probably extremely profitable to them. In reality the term "loss-leader" might be nothing more then hype that is intended to make them seem like good guys by supporting "art.". But in reality, they are doing it for the ancillary sales to the catalog that the new recording generates.

[Wilfrid]

So a good performance in the market-place includes attracting high levels of subsidy.

[Steve Plotnicki]

You've lost me. Subsidies are not related to core businesses. Loss leaders are because they generate sales directly related to that item. Two different line items on your balance sheet. So Sony Classics gets a more direct benefit from sponsoring the opera then Mercedes does.

[tommy]

I’m very good at making myself disappear, and since you can’t see me, you can't prove otherwise. and you can't prove it because you don't have enough experience to prove it. for if you did, you'd understand that i'm able to make myself disappear.

[hollywood]

I’m very good at making myself disappear, and since you can’t see me, you can't prove otherwise.  and you can't prove it because you don't have enough experience to prove it.  for if you did, you'd understand that i'm able to make myself disappear.

What if I don my x-ray specs?

Edited January 28, 2003 by hollywood (log)

[Steve Plotnicki]

Or I use my special vision that only I have because I have practiced using it so many times and you haven't?

[Blondie]

Or I use my special vision that only I have because I have practiced using it so many times and you haven't?

Just because you practiced a lot doesn't mean you ever got any good at it

[tommy]

Or I use my special vision that only I have because I have practiced using it so many times and you haven't?

Just because you practiced a lot doesn't mean you ever got any good at it

prove it.

[Wilfrid]

Would anyone like to buy some pannetone?

Oh, wrong thread...

[hollywood]

Would anyone like to buy some pannetone?

Oh, wrong thread...

I'm not so jaded or sophisticated that I couldn't enjoy some pannetone. How much?

[Steve Plotnicki]

Just because you practiced a lot doesn't mean you ever got any good at it 

My, Blondie is being cheeky this week. I guess she is just going to have to experience the magic herself .