I was lying on my couch absorbing the latest Chuck Klosterman book “Eating the Dinosaur” when I came across a word pairing, a term, that satisfied a desperate intellectual need. The pairing? “Post-Taste.” After reading these two words I realized that one of my favorite drunken monologues had just been rendered obsolete. I have been living in a post-taste world for years and I just didn’t know how to say it.
I used to express post-taste to whoever was buzzed and in my booth like this, “I don’t care what you like, I care why you like what you like. It doesn’t matter what you are watching and listening too. It matters what you are getting out of it.” Hopefully after I uttered these words, at least one of my hipster companions started contemplating their ipod play list and ironic t-shirt in new and profound ways. Post-taste is a philosophy of the future.
A post-taste attitude will set America free. We can all just like what we like and let go of the concern that what we like could secretly and unknowingly define us as totally and utterly lame. Disney movies? I think they mostly suck but maybe you have brilliant impressions about the cartoon’s ability to exploit the universal anxieties surrounding a mother’s mortality. Baseball? I have trouble getting behind fat smokers that call themselves athletes, but maybe you are tired of all the glory being bestowed on the muscled winners of the genetic lottery. In a post-taste world you never have to write someone off because of their media choices. You could even authentically continue a date after she mentions her favorite song to make out to is “Crash” by Dave Matthews. Our “taste” is very different than our “soul.”
However… to be completely honest… the opportunity to identify with those who embrace the Elvis to my Beatles was not what lead me to the post-taste epiphany. It was really the opposite. There is nothing worse that hearing someone spout off about loving something for the wrong reasons… nothing worse than someone loving what you love because of ideas that you hate. Post-taste gives us all the freedom to dislike the other people at the concert/movie/ art opening. Yes I too love Joe vs. The Volcano… but that doesn’t mean you aren’t a gigantic douche. Our lines of connection are deeper the patterns of our consumption.
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Sounds a lot like a way of looking at the world I like to call The Third Level. Transcending the first two levels is the hard part. But the view is much better.