I was talking to a friend and telling him how I wish I was able to appreciate fine art. He told me that once he started taking art classes, he realized what skill it took to do things such as being able to blend the right colors and what not. He said after trying to paint his own paintings, he had a finer appreciation for the subtle intracies of art that never occurred to him before.
Although it never ocurred to me to try painting in order to develop a better sense of appreciation for fine art, I’ve always felt that a person never fully develops an appreciation for something until he gets his hands dirty in it. One of the reasons why I decided to jump in and give brazilian jiu-jitsu and boxing a try was because I was really into mma at the time. I didn’t want to be just like every other idiot fanboy on youtube or those mma forums who talked like they knew it all though, so I figured what better way to learn than to do. I’m not so much into the mma scene anymore though, with the exception of a handful of fighters whose careers I follow. After I started training, I realized how ignorant most people sounded when they talked about the sport.
In other things such as football and photography, I would never have appreciated either if I had not started doing it. I never understood what football was about and always thought it was a confusing mass of men on a playing field whenever I saw it on television. I had a friend in college who was patient enough to teach me the basics of the game, such as catching (which I still suck at), tackling, angle of pursuit, what to do on offensive and defensive line, etc. I’m not a football fanatic, but I do enjoy playing now as well as watching, although I doubt I’ll ever care for professional football as much as some of my friends do. Following the season is too much work, and even moreso if you have a fantasy league. Not my idea of fun, but at least I can appreciate a beautiful diving one handed catch or a hard hitting helmet ripping tackle.
As for photography, I don’t think I’ve ever had an appreciation for a good photograph until I started getting into it as a hobby (although I’m a very lazy hobbyist). I began to develop an eye for what a good picture looked like to me, and began to appreciate good photography, which is a mix of patience, creativity, and trial and error. This has made facebook a lot harder to deal with because it becomes obvious that 99% of people taking pictures haphazardly point their camera and snap without ever giving a thought to how a simple change in angle or perhaps shifting over a few spots to the right or left would create a much more pleasing picture. The ubiquity of the digital camera has turned the art of photography into something mundane and probably regarded as an after-thought.
Just like I wrote in the sidebar: “Life is not a spectator sport.” All the reading and watching in the world will only amount to so much. Nothing compares to the actual experience of doing something. So who knows? One day I might take a stab at painting. Fine art still eludes me, but then again so do many other things. I can’t appreciate jazz no matter how much I’ve tried and I’d be hard-pressed to tell you if a wine I had was good, although if I had an inkling that you spent a pretty penny on it I’d be inclined to tell you it was good.
