I hear a lot of terms used to describe a person that is supposed to know something. All those words are purported to mean different things sometimes. Other times, different. I’ve heard a carpenter called an artist – akin to a god in the way it was used – when he devised a clever way to frame out a sloping staircase that would have taken non-linear geometry to explain mathematically. And he eyeballed it. To that, I agree that the word was used right. I’ve heard friends call their tax accountant that same thing. I disagree with that usage wildly.
So, I hereby offer the new Farmer Standard on these four terms: Expert, connoisseurs, Aficionado, and Artist.
Expert: There are no true experts. Expert means technical proficiency in reality and we will from henceforth use it that way. But technical proficiency is based on the facts that science has given us, which are always expanding, so the instant that someone knows everything there is to know – technically – about a subject, something new is discovered and that expert us usurped. Or, maybe more likely, something old is refuted, and the same holds true.
Connoisseur: This term is experiential only and should only be used in regard to a pleasure. Better, for a vice. A connoisseur doesn’t produce anything qua connoisseur. Perhaps, a connoisseur is also an expert, but an expert does not mean you can blindly walk into your local X, and say that this place has the best X that Man has ever known. The expert likes the connoisseur to validate their technical execution of their trade, but the expert can still keep making cigars, wine, or love and get on just fine without anyone widely versed in those trades ever tasting their wares.
Aficionado: Experts can do, aficionados have done and still can. And better than you. Because they know why they do it. Impulse – or compulsive, so to speak – is gone. The "must" drive has given way to the "should" drive. Here is where the technical expertise meets the want to savor the fruit. The aficionado is the old man you know at the blue collar bar down the street that is missing most of his teeth, smells of cheap gin, hates you, but has every woman in the place in the palm of his hand because he developed a love in his life long before you were born that still shines through his toothless grin that can melt any woman. It’s the French winemaker you see on PBS that can somehow be drunk all day long but make wine that tastes good on a whiskey hangover. They do and they teach. There are few. Allow them to be.
Artist: This is where we all are. So much of what we have is from an armature swag at doing something better and it just grows from there. Artists don’t discount what an expert knows, but an artist doesn’t get bogged down in the weeds. Artists don’t begrudge the experience of the connoisseur, but sometime experience comes from only doing the wrong thing a thousand times. An artist gives it the old college try, swings for the fences, punches above his weight class, asks the pretty girl out on a date, and usually fails. But an artist doesn’t give up.
So, friends, those are the definitions from now on. Next time a good friend at work gets a complement of being an aficionado when he really should have just got an atta’boy, call him a shaft and go get coffee.
Note: there are a lot of accepted ways of spelling connoisseur, and I’ll never know which is right, so I picked one that makes me laugh.
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