The Artist's Superpower Is Speaking Languages Others Don't

When you learn to play an instrument you learn a language.

When you learn to paint a picture you learn a language.

A second language.

That’s a superpower, if you know how to repurpose the skill.

When we learn to speak, we learn to do something with no translation.

Your word choice is, kind of it, going forward.

Thoughts and feelings get labels, but then everybody else speaks what you speak.

But when you learn an art, like an instrument or a visual craft or cooking or - I’ll be very generous in the definition here - you are learning a new mode of communication.

It doesn’t matter if you become a great artist or not.

All that matters is that you learn the skill.

All that matters is that you’ve learned to copy, express, and formulate thoughts in something other than regular, spoken language.

If you’ve done any artistic studying at all, no matter how casually, you’re in a special super power club.

You know how, at least a little bit, to say something in a language others don’t speak.

Which means any time you’re around others speaking a language you don’t speak, you have an edge on bridging the gap and finding a way to communicate faster.

You can learn another language, you can pick up on other modes of communication, you can get down to action faster than people who have never learned to think or operate this way.

It’s not just a liberal arts thing.

Artistic thinking is liberating.

Don’t forget it.

ps. make a list of all the creative stuff you’ve done, right down to the little bits, and marvel at the languages you know. Yes, this is me partly feeling guilty for not being able to speak French to my French family when they’re trying to speak English (amongst other examples), but make that list and marvel at your skill set. It’s an important reframing of our abilities to communicate across modalities.

pss. h/t to Jett Black on LinkedIn for the back and forth that inspired this one