Why have I never really explored my own culture's art?

There is a shelf somewhere — a language never learned past greetings, a grandmother's song remembered only in fragments, a museum visited solely when relatives came to town. It has waited a long time, patient as an object waits, asking nothing. The trouble was never distance. It was that the tradition arrived wrapped in duty or nostalgia, never in curiosity. Something owed cannot easily become something played with. So it stayed on the shelf, respected and untouched, and the not-touching itself grew into its own quiet shame. Working with others changes the shape of this. Each person in the group is unfamiliar with something of their own, in their own way. No one here is the expert required to represent an entire people. That single shift — from performance to plain curiosity — is most of the work.