taste

Hossam Dirar, Lost Beauty, 2017

1. Like Wendell Berry’s fox, I make “more tracks than necessary / some in the wrong direction.” I am distrustful of authority. I wish to be hidden, preferably underground. I think writing is a form of lying. At the same time, it’s a form of confession. To be both seen and tucked away: that’s my taste.

2. Sensibility, as Susan Sontag wrote, is hard to talk about. But like pornography, I know it when I see it. And I believe that it is objective. Everyone I know who I consider to have “good taste” converges on—well, if not the same things, then at least the same people. The same paintings.