One deceptive aspect of an arts education is that what it teaches becomes second nature so completely that the effort (and the memory of effort) disappears.
The person who learned the skill ends up thinking they've always been like this, and the person who didn't thinks they are 'simply not like that'
I'm thinking about things like : speaking about a topic that has no wrong or right answers, looking silly on stage, plastering walls of text, listening to the little voice inside, following a whim, staying with ambiguity, treating attention, movement, voice, and timing as things you can practice...
I've realized this while listening to Alex Dobrenko's Make Computer Fun Again Sublime talk (which ended up being a source of delight and deep motivation, similar to zara zhang on code as a medium).
At some point he is talking about how you 'just' need to speak to the AI, and notes that :
I literally just say exactly what's in my head. I know that sounds annoying, but I think it's also profoundly true in how hard that is to do most of the time. Even for me, I think my training for that comes from improv where the funniest thing to do is just say the thing that you think in a moment.
The talking to AI part has always been the easy bit for me. I've found it very strange how people don't do it and need to be shown how. Now I'm starting to see that my education background in drama and playing on stage as a teen has something to do with it.
I've always dismissed it as a time of following a whim, having a bit of fun, and secretly wishing to become an actress (without taking it seriously enough to be able to do anything with it). It gave me some cultural baggage, yeah, but I thought the benefits ended there.
Yet Alex's comment made me have flashbacks about being the first act of the play and therefore the first one to step on a bare stage, about testing ways to say things and rehearsing in weird outfits, about designing my own interpretation, about starting a scene with a huge scream, about forgetting my lines during the big show and still getting an applause because the public has no clue, about finding a clown personality to become, about being so immersed in your character's feelings that it takes a while for you to come back...
That taught me skills that many people don't have. I have been mistaking them for personality. That has affected my confidence (thinking I don't have merit if it's not skills - another strange belief). But it also has had a very bad impact on my relationship with others. Thinking people just need to 'get out of their own way like I did', when it has taken me all those years of practice to get semi-good at all of this.
I want to remember these memories, so I can cherish those skills, so I can be more understanding, so I can be more helpful, so I connect better.