Imagine we make contact with aliens and begin showing each other our art. We trade plays, they enjoy our tragedies, epics, and comedies, which they enjoy, and in return they show us all of their greatest theatre productions. We recognize their own versions of our genres, but then they show use “Aolymic” plays, which just seems like emotionally chaotic plays with no real purpose. We ask them what “Aolymic” means and they get confused, “you know, Aolymic! It makes you feel Ecrax.” We watch an Aolymic play with them and see their faces scrunch up into an unrecognizable form, some of their appendages even seem to alter in unconscious ways. Yet no matter how they describe this feeling of Ecrax, we just can’t understand it. They swear up and down these are some of their world’s most beloved works of art, yet no matter how we try we just can’t appreciate them. Some humans begin experimenting, trying to reproduce Aolymic plays themselves by basing them on the alien versions. While some do manage to be recognizably part of the genre for the aliens, they complain that they’re all quite sophomoric and derivative. Over time, through repeated trial and error, however, some human Aolymic productions do eventually begin receiving positive ratings. It becomes a kind of challenge for humans, to reproduce this genre which is entirely alien to us. By learning and experimenting with the recognized conventions, it even becomes one of the most prestigious artistic genres for humans due to its emotional inaccessibility. Human Aolymic plays praised by the aliens become celebrated on earth, enjoyed for the talent it takes to produce them, yet we never do ever understand what Ecrax feels like, though we do learn how to enjoy its illusion.