Culture is a Revolution

Taken in Vietnam 2023

I think about how culture was never about a place I belonged in. It was never a here nor there nor whatever pin stuck into a map. I think about how it’s this river inside me that keeps rushing onward, never stopping, never thinning, but forever streaming fast and strong and wide. And I always met it at its edge so afraid to cross it because it meant that I might get caught in it without ever really knowing what I was swimming in. 

The first time I encountered culture, like truly felt culture present in the air and tingling on my skin, I saw colors. I saw the way they sprawled out across every surface like splattered paint across a worldly canvas, carelessly dripped about without an inkling of doubt of its wide intentions. I saw the way colors were not shy here. They spoke with pride and strength and diction. They even dared speak politically. And I remember thinking, how beautiful it is to see the way this culture was not afraid of displaying all these colors at once. No matter how bold or harsh—sometimes blinding—or vibrantly clear. These colors were here to make a statement and they knew what they wanted to say.

And the people. You can’t think of culture without thinking of people. Without thinking of the smiles that shine through when music is coursing through the streets. Without thinking of the way their bodies danced movements like it was choreographed by their entire ancestry. The dialect that bounced through the air and jumped from one person to the next. Everyone is singing here. The people are the art that no camera or record will ever truly capture. Ephemerality was an acquired taste.  

This was my first encounter with a culture that wanted to be heard. And I knew that I was taking a piece of it with me back home, even if I didn’t mean to dilute its presence. So I vowed that I would honor its liveliness by building a culture that was reminiscent and not dissonant. 

“There’s an opposite to déjà vu. They call it jamais vu. It’s when you meet the same people or visit places, again and again, but each time is the first. Everybody is always a stranger. Nothing is ever familiar.”

I returned home with the colors still fresh and wet in my mind, coming to the self-proclamation that that was how I wanted to envision culture. Everything around me was going to have its own color that spoke with its vibrant language curated by the sights and sounds that were specifically associated to that thing. Everything was going to have a rightful place in its world and nothing will ever feel unbelonged. These things were going to taste like how they sounded when it rolled off the tip of the tongue. That’s what you think of when you think of culture, right? The way its food tastes. So sharp and fresh and flavorful, piling over our tastebuds like collected memories in a photo album or stacked books of history and art like a library in our mouths. Culture was not going to be a mine or yours thing. It was going to be an ours thing that we worked on over time, building sentiments like skyscrapers of collective nostalgia and manifestations and hopeful caricatures. 

Culture is not just home. It is a revolution. Maybe it’s time we heard more of what it has to say.