Endpoints of the Yellow Brick Road: Deliciousness

“Don’t go for perfection; go rather for deliciousness.”

This is the counsel of Monica Caspari, whom I have the privilege of having called my instructor for four months during my Movement & Unit III training in São Paulo, Brazil. In her foundational article "The Functional Rationale of the Recipe," published in Rolf Lines in 2005, she declares that "deliciousness, joy, and happiness are more important than perfection" (5) for our clients.

One reason this is the case is because, as it relates to the human body, perfection is an ideal, a "top-down" imposition on the person. This appeals to our rational minds—the Euclidian drive that sleeps but softly within us all, needing but the smallest spark to erupt in all the flames of idealistic fury. There's no such thing as a perfect circle, perfect symmetry, or even a perfect cigarette. Perfection is an idea(l); it precludes real instantiation. It is the conceptual currency of the cortical mind & not the physical universe.

But the lizard brain deals not in conception but in perception, not in thought but in sensation. And crucially, despite all its illustrious accomplishments, the cortex cannot manage graceful movement. Lost in thought as the thinking brain is, it's too busy to orchestrate other functions. We must evoke the lizard to orient us within our mental mists if any action is to be skillful. But "deliciousness"—that's more than an idea...

It's an experience with enough substance to interest a reptile.

What happens when we abandon our crusade for perfect movement & follow flavor instead? The shoulders relax, tension eases, our gait becomes fluid as we saunter down the halls of the Lizard King...

Image of a geko climbing a mesh net.