“This is my brain spa….”Yesterday, when I posted, I highlighted a website that I’d discovered some time ago, ted.com (specifically,
ted.com/talks) and suggested you might want to check it out (and/or return to it, regularly, even if you already knew about it). A month or two ago, I happened to catch a
Charlie Rose interview with ted.com’s current day curator,
Chris Anderson. I thought it was fascinating, but I maybe, probably stuck with it and enjoyed it as much as I did primarily because I’d already become familiar with and captivated by his organization and its website. This morning, I found that that interview, finally, has been made available online, and I’ve posted the link, below.
Over the past few days, especially in my not particularly unsettling early morning insomniacal “free time,” I’ve watched a few, for me, pretty special talks that were posted there recently. One was given by the Egyptian activist/Google guy,
Wael Ghonim. I love that guy for how “real” he seems to me, for how hopeful and dynamic and infectiously happy and enthusiastic he is. Then there was another by the poet,
Suheir Hammad (whose incredible spoken word masterpiece, “First Writing Since,”
KF Julia introduced KivaFriends to, for which I will long be grateful). And then the last one I watched was by this guy,
a French guerilla artist,
JR, whom I’d never heard of but who won this year’s “Ted Prize.” He spoke of his wish “to use art to turn the world inside out.”
(Even though I had a hard time overcoming his really thick French accent and almost shut my computer down several times, at two something this morning, I ended up becoming really taken by him and his project and was glad I’d stuck with it. After I watched it, by this time, it was after three in the morning, I found my mind whirling with a number of potential spin-offs of his idea that might be employed by a particular DonorsChoose classroom I became enamoured of (http://www.donorschoose.org/donors/proposal.html?id=447499) or by a nonviolence-community leadership- poetry organization I’ve long admired (Washington-based Institute for Community Leadership and their Oakland, California affiliate, The Martin Luther King, Jr. Freedom Center) and am thinking I might write them both telling them of those ideas and suggesting they watch him, too).Anyway, with these as with everything else, it’s absolutely your choice whether you want to check any of this out or not. I, personally, screw around so much and watch and engage in so much silly, sometimes mind-numbing insipid dingo stuff that having the chance, every once in awhile, as with these talks, to have my mind expanded and my heart touched just makes me feel better.
http://www.ted.com/talks/wael_ghonim_inside_the_egyptian_revolution.htmlhttp://www.ted.com/talks/suheir_hammad_poems_of_war_peace_women_power.htmlhttp://www.tedprize.org/about-tedprize/http://www.ted.com/talks/jr_s_ted_prize_wish_use_art_to_turn_the_world_inside_out.htmlhttp://www.insideoutproject.net/http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11483
