Why Feeling Comes Before Fluency, at Home and Abroad
There was a moment during the Super Bowl halftime show when the air shifted.
Not because everyone understood every lyric. Many didn’t.
Not because the choreography begged for translation. Some people’s bodies could never.
But because the message didn’t need permission to land. Yet somehow… many people said it “missed.” Or worse— they felt indifferent. And that indifference told me everything. We’re conditioned to believe understanding is intellectual first.
But culture doesn’t enter through the mind.
It enters through the body.
Before you can conjugate a verb, you feel tone.
Before you translate lyrics, you feel rhythm.
Before you understand a people, you feel whether you are willing to listen without control.
When Art Speaks Beyond Language
What unfolded on that stage was not a concert. It was a declaration. Representation. Cultural pride. History carried in rhythm and breath. The artistry melted effortlessly into heritage—no hand-holding, no apology. What unfolded on that stage was a raised fist moment.
Pride.
The kind of pride that has carried people through erasure, through silencing, through generations of being told to be smaller. A declaration without permission. A reminder that cultural survival itself is an act of power.
This was a moment that said:
We are here. We have always been here. We are beautiful.
You didn’t need to know the language to understand the intention.
You didn’t need subtitles to feel the weight. You only needed willingness.
Why Some People Missed the Magic
When people say they “didn’t get it,” what they’re often saying is:
It didn’t center me.
And that’s the discomfort. We are so accustomed to being catered to—especially in American culture—that when art refuses to translate itself for our convenience, we label it confusing, unrelatable, or “not for us.”
But here’s the truth that matters: Not everything is meant to be filtered through your familiarity. Some art invites you to listen differently. Some moments ask you to be the learner—not the judge.
The halftime show spoke a language older than words.
It didn’t ask to be understood. It asked to be felt.
The Same Mistake We Make Abroad
This is the same entitlement many Americans carry into other countries.
Travel long enough and you’ll see it, faces that say:
“Why don’t they speak English here?”
And sometimes in the most awkward of moments, it will audibly spill from expectation in silver spoon doses
You don’t speak English?
As if we are not the visitors.
As if the world owes us comfort.
The irony? That halftime show was a perfect rehearsal for humility. A reminder that we are not always the center—and that doesn’t diminish us. It expands us.
Art as Resistance, Beauty as Protest
In a time when raids, policies, and fear tactics have had entire communities in a chokehold, that performance was a bold victory.
Not timid.
Not unsure.
Not careful.
But Pure. Beautiful.
It said:
We still show up.
We still dance with the fullness of our whole selves.
We still create joy in the face of erasure.
That is resistance.
And the tragedy isn’t that some people didn’t like it. The tragedy is that they didn’t see it.
What We Were Invited Into
This is the same mistake we make when we travel the world expecting English to meet us where we are.
Sometimes, the lesson isn’t comprehension. It’s humility.
That halftime show could have been a bridge. A collective inhale. A shared moment of humanity. Instead, many stood on the shore, arms crossed, waiting to be entertained rather than transformed. But for those who felt it? For those who recognized the courage, the culture, the pride? We witnessed something sacred. Because when art refuses to translate itself, it isn’t excluding you. It’s inviting you to grow. And growth—real growth—always requires listening first.
And we have to be careful not to treat this moment any differently than we did Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show last year—another moment rooted in Black expression, symbolism, and truth-telling. When we start distancing ourselves from cultural expressions that don’t mirror our personal taste, we risk inching closer to the same logic that labels “difference” as something to be feared, flattened, rejected, and dismissed rather than honored.
Black Intellectuals Have Been Naming This for Decades
Long before a halftime stage made this visible, Black thinkers were already articulating the difference between being translated and being received.
James Baldwin once wrote that in America he was always seen through a racial lens, but abroad he was simply himself.
Toni Morrison reminded us that the demand to constantly explain ourselves is not curiosity—it’s distraction.
bell hooks taught that discomfort is often the doorway to growth, not something to be avoided.
And Chinua Achebe warned that when only one group gets to narrate, everyone else’s truth is misread as noise.
What happened during the halftime show wasn’t confusion.
It was a refusal to listen without control.
Studying said intellectuals have given way to my own documenting of my Black and abroad perspectives and experiences.
This is why this moment belongs on a travel blog.
The same reflex that caused people to dismiss a culturally rooted halftime show is the reflex many Americans carry abroad—the expectation to be centered, translated to, and made comfortable.
Travel exposes this quickly. When you are no longer the cultural default, you learn what art has always known: feeling comes before fluency. I explore this more deeply in my Black & Abroad episode—where travel becomes a classroom, humility becomes a skill, and being the foreigner teaches you how to listen without entitlement.
Read: Beyond Borders: A Black Family Living Abroad
If you feel led, leave a comment and let’s start a healing discussion.
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