#1 ·
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the concept of "loyalty" versus "expertise," and how we tend to obsessively categorize people based on where they were born, even when they’ve spent their entire adult lives contributing to a completely different culture. It’s this weird psychological tug-of-war we perform as a society. We love to claim people as "ours," but the moment they show a hint of their original roots, there’s this sudden, intense scrutiny about where their true allegiances lie.
I saw a performance recently—not a specific one, just a general type of high-level artistry—and it got me thinking about how much of an artist's soul is tied to their heritage versus their training. We have these incredible individuals who move to a new country in their teens, soak up every ounce of tradition and discipline that the local institutions have to offer, and eventually become the absolute gold standard of that new culture. They become the faces of the institutions they serve. And yet, when they celebrate their origins—whether it's through a small personal detail, a piece of clothing, or even just a name they give to a pet—there's this subtle undercurrent of "Oh, so you aren't actually one of us?"
It feels like a double standard. We celebrate the "immigrant success story" until that person refuses to fully sanitize their background to fit the local mold. We want the talent, we want the prestige, and we want the "homegrown" label, but we get uncomfortable when the person reminds us that they carry a whole other world inside them. It’s as if we want them to be a blank slate that we can project our own national pride onto.
I remember watching a documentary about a world-class musician who had been living in Berlin for decades. He was the quintessential German classical musician. But during an interview, he mentioned a specific rhythmic pattern from his childhood home, and the interviewer immediately pivoted to asking how he could possibly maintain such "authentic" German precision while being so influenced by "foreign" sounds. It was such a loaded, unnecessary question. It implied that his mastery was somehow diluted by his history, rather than enriched by it.
Is it even possible to separate the person from their origin? I don't think so. In fact, I’d argue that the very thing that makes someone a "once-in-a-generation" talent is often that unique intersection of two different worlds. That friction—the tension between the discipline they learned in one place and the passion they brought from another—is exactly where the magic happens. If we strip away the heritage to make someone "fit in" more easily, we’re actually stripping away the very thing that makes their work transcendent.
We see this in sports, too. We get so worked up about players switching allegiances or showing love to their birth nations, even if they’ve lived abroad for twenty years. We treat it like a betrayal, rather than a complex, beautiful expression of a multifaceted identity. Why do we feel the need to force people into these neat little boxes of "this person belongs to this flag and no other"?
I’m curious to hear what you all think about this. When we celebrate a person for reaching the absolute pinnacle of a craft, should we be looking at them through the lens of the culture that trained them, or the culture that shaped their spirit? Can someone truly be a "national treasure" if they still hold onto the echoes of a different home?
I saw a performance recently—not a specific one, just a general type of high-level artistry—and it got me thinking about how much of an artist's soul is tied to their heritage versus their training. We have these incredible individuals who move to a new country in their teens, soak up every ounce of tradition and discipline that the local institutions have to offer, and eventually become the absolute gold standard of that new culture. They become the faces of the institutions they serve. And yet, when they celebrate their origins—whether it's through a small personal detail, a piece of clothing, or even just a name they give to a pet—there's this subtle undercurrent of "Oh, so you aren't actually one of us?"
It feels like a double standard. We celebrate the "immigrant success story" until that person refuses to fully sanitize their background to fit the local mold. We want the talent, we want the prestige, and we want the "homegrown" label, but we get uncomfortable when the person reminds us that they carry a whole other world inside them. It’s as if we want them to be a blank slate that we can project our own national pride onto.
I remember watching a documentary about a world-class musician who had been living in Berlin for decades. He was the quintessential German classical musician. But during an interview, he mentioned a specific rhythmic pattern from his childhood home, and the interviewer immediately pivoted to asking how he could possibly maintain such "authentic" German precision while being so influenced by "foreign" sounds. It was such a loaded, unnecessary question. It implied that his mastery was somehow diluted by his history, rather than enriched by it.
Is it even possible to separate the person from their origin? I don't think so. In fact, I’d argue that the very thing that makes someone a "once-in-a-generation" talent is often that unique intersection of two different worlds. That friction—the tension between the discipline they learned in one place and the passion they brought from another—is exactly where the magic happens. If we strip away the heritage to make someone "fit in" more easily, we’re actually stripping away the very thing that makes their work transcendent.
We see this in sports, too. We get so worked up about players switching allegiances or showing love to their birth nations, even if they’ve lived abroad for twenty years. We treat it like a betrayal, rather than a complex, beautiful expression of a multifaceted identity. Why do we feel the need to force people into these neat little boxes of "this person belongs to this flag and no other"?
I’m curious to hear what you all think about this. When we celebrate a person for reaching the absolute pinnacle of a craft, should we be looking at them through the lens of the culture that trained them, or the culture that shaped their spirit? Can someone truly be a "national treasure" if they still hold onto the echoes of a different home?