Linear algebra has motivations and applications everywhere, since its main defining concepts, 'addition' and 'transformation that keeps sums' are everywhere. So a linear algebra curse is a huge pile of disjointed facts. It is not such a set of material that can have motivations behind it.

But the good news is that if you are only interested in for example geometry, game theory, systems of linear equations, polynomials, statistics, etc, then you can skip 80% of the content of linear algebra books. You don't have to read them, understand them, memorize them. You'll interact with a tiny part of linear algebra anyway, and you don't have to do that upfront.