Speak it like a second language!

Just got out of Interpretive Approaches, it was dizzying as usual. The professor brings so much information to my attention so rapidly that my brain fizzes with excitement and starts spurting out thoughts and ideas like a shaken and opened coke can. Don't ask me how these subjects came up in class-- the teacher rambles on and on about fascinating things which are often only slightly relevant to the text we are covering, but I always leave INSPIRED!

Noteworthy points:
So, he was talking about how the modernists, in reaction to the romantics, place a high value on impersonality and escape from personal emotions. Then he starts talking (for God only knows what reason) about how the romantics particularly valued music for two reasons.

1) Because it is an art of time--that is, music, unlike other forms of art, uses time as a medium, and divides time in various ways in order to create meaning, and
2) Because it is vague, and romantics value this vagueness because it requires no education in a particular language to be understood.

In contrast, he talked about the language barriers between cultures, which hinder people of other languages from absorbing the full intention of the author, or prevent an author writing in a second language from expressing him/herself at the idiomatic level that native speakers would find most natural. He framed this as a negative and frustrating situation. Now, he wasn't stating these points dogmatically, but these are his formed opinions. This discussion was very interesting to me, and my current perspective has inspired me to raise the follow issues/questions about this topic.

a) It might have been meaningful to the romantics that music requires no formal education to be heard--unlike literature, where you have to be able to read--but, the more I know about art music, the more I know I don't know about art music. In other words, increasing amounts of education exponentially enhance your appreciation of the art music in your own tradition. And, wow, art music in other traditions can easily sound horrible and meaningless to you without some background information.

b) A non-native speaker can have perfect grammar, vocabulary, and syntax, and will have trouble writing in a foreign language on the idiomatic level. This is true.
However, I would ask-- what's so great about idioms? Don't we value freshness and spontaneity in art? Think of how alive you feel when an artist paints an everyday occurrence in a way that makes it seem totally new.
This is a really important point I'm trying to make here. I am close to a few people who speak English as a second language, and some of the things they say to me are mind-blowing. The English will be totally correct, perfect in every formal sense, but something about the way they express themselves is fresh and, I think, beautiful.
LISTEN to me, I don't mean beautiful in some sort of patronizing, what-a-beautiful-person- that-special-athlete-is, all-0f-God's-creatures-are-beautiful sort of way; no, I mean truly aesthetically pleasing. On a consistent basis, I hear simple everyday thoughts expressed in a way that, to me, seems borderline poetic.
Furthermore, I feel that each person has such subtle and nuanced definitions for each word in their lexicon that no two people can communicate perfectly anyways. So what(!?!) if something gets lost in translation-- the important part is not that we understand the total meaning of each word, but that we care enough to take the time to understand one another. And our interactions with people of different backgrounds will bring new meanings to each word we utter, and nuances will arise which had not previously existed and which will not be understood by anyone other than those who bother to look outside of their own little bubble.
Language barrier schmanguage barrier! We need to stop looking at different languages as these invisible borders dividing peoples, and start seeing them collectively as one large palette containing many colors that we as human beings can use. More words, more perspectives, more methods of expression will only provide us with more ways to love and please and help one another and to exclaim this love to the universe.

Yes, I know this is all very idealistic. Yes, I remember that I plan on being a lawyer. I admit, I will one day make my living interpreting the precise meaning of written words. I just sincerely feel that if we all truly believed that the varying perspectives which different people present are innately valuable --rather than imagining for some reason our that own background is inherently superior-- then we would put much more effort into trying to understand who others are and where they are coming from, rather than focusing on the miscommunications we may have when it comes down to the details.

Now that I've let all that out, Happy St. Patrick's Day! I'm going to go have some fun, I hope you do too!