Is good taste a myth? I sometimes wonder to myself if my quest to live life to its fullest is really meant for achieving some end, some girl or some job, rather than simply for the purpose of enjoying the ride. I suppose that’s a side effect of being simultaneously uncertain about the future and content with the present, but really, what does the future matter?
It reminds me of the dialog from Dazed and Confused where Mike (played by a spot-on Adam Goldberg, if you’ll remember) and his two lesser friends are driving to that burger joint and talking about the greater purpose in life. They consequently deduce that the only thing we’re all living for is death—“life of the party”—and that there’s really nothing to be studying, working, loving for in the end.
I don’t know if I buy it, because I appreciate the sensations of touching, tasting, feeling, smelling and hearing everything around me, and I don’t imagine that’s a very individual characteristic. But I do wonder from time to time if all those senses don’t amount to something less penetrating, less powerful, than whatever death is like.
I’m getting too abstruse, so I digress. The question I pose instead, is do we love what we are because of where we’ll end up, or because of where we are right now, in this moment? It frightens me less to suppose the latter; and if I can capitalize on happiness and contentment while finding a balance amongst ambition and potential, then I say, just go with it.
That picture of the bourbon glass, reminiscent of the smokiness and the earthiness and that sweet burning in the esophagus, is meant to suggest such a philosophy.
3 years ago