Cooking is a bit like writing. Basically everyone does it almost every day. But few are good at it. Even fewer excel. For most it’s a tool to get a job done. For few, it’s an art form.
It’s the same with eating, too. Some gobble on a sandwich on their way to work, barely paying attention to the tastes. Few can taste whether cauliflower was marinated with parsley or thyme.
I’ve always loved both food and writing. I think it’s because they’re so pedestrian. Things we interact with every day, but rarely pay deep attention to.
I find that the deeper I get into things like these, the richer my perspective on the world. There’s a certain joy of understanding why a piece of writing is good or what makes my favorite cafe’s tuna sandwich so much different from what I’d make at home.
You become like a sommelier. Where I taste a dry red, a sommelier might taste gooseberry, leather and watermelon.
There’s something enchanting about this depth of perspective. You feel like you get access to a hidden layer of reality.
It’s similar to how butterflies see the entire light spectrum. I often wonder what it’d be like. What are those colors?
Of course, those colors are so far outside of what we can perceive that they’re impossible to see. We can’t even conceptualize them because all the colors we know are based on the 3 elementary colors we know.
And sure, this is true for writing too: Whether it’s masterful fiction, moving poetry or riveting screenplays, it’s all made from the same 26 letters.
From those 26 letters arises infinite complexity. And yeah, the same is true for cooking.
There’s salty, sweet, bitter, sour and umami and those make up everything. It’s the infinite recombination of their intensity and balance that creates everything from cheese sandwiches to jam-filled donuts.
I think this is true in almost everything. You can break down most disciplines into simple parts that combine into infinite complexity.
If you only see the complexity, it seems impossible to grasp. But if you understand the basic parts and how they interact, you see them reflected in each complex interplay thereof.
And then you have a truly deep understanding.