IMMERSION II - Culture
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‘IMMERSION’ is an exploration of how we can make travel more sustainable for ourselves and the world around us. With a focus on slow, solo travel, Lily Alford examines and resolves the linguistic and cultural disconnection between ourselves and our surroundings when abroad in a way that protects our individuality. Over the course of six thematic instalments (language, culture, environment, community, simplicity and the self), a more holistic attitude to immersion emerges: one that doesn’t aim for perfection, but for peace.
Culture is a fickle creature: formed from acceptance and rejection, peace and war, grave comics and absurd poets. We visit curated exhibitions of once-vilified artists, whilst anarchist symbols are graffitied on train tracks.
You won’t read about culture in a book, nor hear of it on a guided tour. You won’t read it on walls or hear it in supermarkets. It can never be quantified or qualified. Nobody has authority over it; however far we chase it, however tightly we grip it.
I’m British, but what is British culture? Pubs, football, and pints? Teabags, the races, bonfires, the Union Jack? All are static and vapid reflections of a shared living consciousness that squeals and bites and scratches.
But we look at France and think of bureaucracy and striped jumpers and cigarettes.
And then we look at Spain and think flamenco and tapas and sex.
These stereotypes, and many others, have been long viewed as a glass door to cultural immersion. Understanding a culture through the means of food and drink, sports and music, certainly has its worth, but it often leads to a very limited perspective. Through this lens, we perceive other countries as being less well-balanced than our own. It’s this patrimonial approach to cultural understanding that will always hold us back, because when a country has its traditions, it becomes traditional in a pejorative sense. No doubt you cringed at my description of British culture, one that stinks of coloniality.
These stereotypes may be a glass door, but it is locked. We think we’re looking through them to see the foreign culture outside, but we’re really looking at our own reflections. We’re only making our inside world brighter, never getting beyond the darkened pane of our misunderstanding.
But less of the evocative, and more on the intrinsic embarrassment of language learning.
For a short while in school, I convinced myself that I had to like reggaeton.
Unfortunately, this one isn’t a metaphor. In my head, either that or football came as a package with learning Spanish. I thought I’d give reggaeton a go because it required a shorter attention span. I listened to it all the time, downloading Spotify playlists and claiming a favourite artist.
The issue was, however- in tragic circumstances which came about entirely against my will- that I don’t really like reggaeton. Certainly not enough for it to be my thing, anyway. I felt like an imposter, and not because I’d been pretending to like reggaeton for a month; because I felt a huge pressure to have a specific cultural hobby that would somehow prove I was interested in the subject as a whole. I wanted to have a neat response to that fateful question of “Why are you learning this language?”. What they meant by that, of course, was clear: “why don’t you just speak English and do English things?”
And I was right. Saying that I was learning Spanish because I was really into reggaeton sounded a whole lot better than admitting it was just the latest instalment in a long history of being a bit of a language freak. Bringing a Welsh dictionary to school to learn in my lunch break in Year 5 just wasn’t as cool.
I also believed that having a cultural interest in my target language would make me naturally better at it. It would make the whole thing seem more relaxed- the grammar and vocabulary simply things I had picked up on my journey of self-discovery, rather than the gruelling slog it actually was.
My realisation that some bespoke knowledge of reggaeton would not actually set me apart from the rest came from seeing how real-life Hispanic people viewed it themselves. I met some lovely girls during a home-stay in Argentina, who listened to and even loved reggaeton, but who saw it as an entirely nondescript genre of music. It would always mean far more to them than it could me, however much Spanish I learnt; but not because it was particularly brilliant or a defining point of their generation. It was because they thought nothing of it, because it was both casual and- that awful word often used so wrongly- authentic to their lived experience.
Reggaeton would never unlock the glass door to cultural understanding for me. Nor has reading iconic literature, drifting in and out of podcasts, or studying history. I have faced many an amused look when bringing up some political point, historical or contemporary, to a native speaker. Even if they have read less than me about it, perhaps not even a news article or a Tweet, they have felt its presence in their own home and daily life: through the price of milk at the local shop (an establishment which no doubt serves different culinary purposes to ours), or the ramblings of their grandparents (who may play a greater or lesser role in their family than we expect).
Where does this leave us? Is there any way that we can break through this glass door?
We could start by relenting from our pursuit of authenticity, from attempting to capture culture in a trap. No Italian takes coffee the same way, if they drink coffee at all; just as not every German drinks beer. What do you want to drink? Try the local grinds and brews, it doesn’t mean they have to be your favourite. Respect cultural tradition, of course, but there’s always a space for challenging these norms without causing offence.
That’s the key to the glass door. The hinges might squeak a little at first, and there might be thick carpet trapped underneath, but slowly you’ll be able to peer through the cracks into the brightness outside. At first, you might not like what you see, unable to make sense of all the strange, sharp, things thrown together thoughtlessly; but you’ll forget all about the fickle creature that first caught your eye through the panes.
Coming Soon…
Chapter III: Environment