How to get alien signals today: browse art from a different culture. It doesn't have to be high art. I'm fond of youtube videos.
The surface impressions are available immediately. All the references and set dressings and context in the literature, however, slowly bubble up over time, as you learn more about other works and the origin culture.
Delay, distance, and mystery.
(I had a friend in school who remarked that his mother watched exclusively movies about "two people who love each other but can't marry because they have different forehead dots." I often think about that phrase while watching non-bollywood fare, asking myself how the director+team have communicated the colours of the virtual dots.
e.g. 2:08 marks the switch from V- to T-pronouns. As for the band's name, it's ambiguous, and I still don't know which is the intended referent for native speakers.)
The surface impressions are available immediately. All the references and set dressings and context in the literature, however, slowly bubble up over time, as you learn more about other works and the origin culture.
Delay, distance, and mystery.
(I had a friend in school who remarked that his mother watched exclusively movies about "two people who love each other but can't marry because they have different forehead dots." I often think about that phrase while watching non-bollywood fare, asking myself how the director+team have communicated the colours of the virtual dots.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DF6W1XD25Dc
e.g. 2:08 marks the switch from V- to T-pronouns. As for the band's name, it's ambiguous, and I still don't know which is the intended referent for native speakers.)