Expert Witness

In Stephen Dunn's long poem "Loves," he writes, "I love how true experts speak / precisely, embody all the words." I remembered this line last night as Suzanne and I were watching a new episode of Chopped on the Food Network. As most of you know, Chopped is a cooking competition that starts with four chefs making an appetizer with ingredients they only find out about the moment before they're supposed to start preparing them. The appetizer gets evaluated by expert judges and the chef who is the least successful in terms of taste, creativity, and presentation is then "chopped." Someone else gets cut after the entree and then the last two competitors battle it out over dessert. The winner gets ten thousand dollars and bragging rights.

Anyway, it occurred to me last night what a pleasure it is to just watch someone who really knows what he/she's doing. It's fun to watch an expert do their thing, you know? Last night, Chef Darius, this towering, lumbering guy with a head like a tree stump, did some really tasty and beautiful-looking things with string cheese (of all things), jicama, gingersnaps. I'm not a foodie by any stretch but I can appreciate creativity in almost any arena. He took string cheese, processed and log-like, and used it to stuff a boneless chicken wing along with some celery. It was ingenious and looked really good.



But this isn't just about one guy and how he made nice looking food on TV. This is about listening to my dad explain about plumbing a house and watching Don Ricks put paint on a canvas. It's about listening to Captain Admiral talk about baseball. It's the pleasure of watching a film put together by Alfred Hitchcock. It's the joy of having the company computer guy come into your cube and miraculously fix your problem. It's listening to Terry Gross conduct an interview. It's watching a really good dancer. It's reading dialogue by Richard Russo.

I think everybody is an expert at something and sometimes I encourage my students to write about what they know. Even if it's something I don't particularly care about, when it's described by someone who knows and cares, it becomes interesting. I read a really good essay this semester about to "lay a spread" of decoys for duck hunting. Another student was really successful with an essay about how to detail a car, while another student made "how to make a milkshake at the Tastee Freez" (sic) sound fascinating. Details, expert knowledge, and an ability make something accessible to the layman all go a long way to making almost any subject interesting.