All hail the bookshop guys

This is a note of appreciation for the bookshop guys here in TED at Palm Springs.  Brendan, Paul and Mark are doing a fantastic job – part literary haven, part neighbourhood hang-out – they have created an engaged and welcoming space for all of us.  I gather that thanks are due to Neal Sofman, the owner of the West Portal Bookshop, who has been running the bookstore at TED for a number of years, and who is at Long Beach right now.

So what’s so great about it?  Well, there’s the stock.  All the speakers (assuming that missing box arrived from Long Beach) are represented, and their subject matter supported by a broader base of books by other authors.  OK, there are one or two bizarre inclusions, but where would we be without a little randomness?  And in any case, that’s what enabled the bookshop guys to run their private competition.  But mostly there’s the guys themselves.  They are so engaged with being here at TED, with the talks, with the conversations and with all of us.  Of course, that can’t help being a good commercial move – at least if my book purchases are anything to go by.

Life isn’t perfect.  Last year the very wonderful people at Wired magazine paid for us all to ship shedloads of books home by FedEd, a gift I made very good use of.  Sadly, this year they decided to do other things.  Dear Wired Magazine, please, please bring back your amazing shipping gift next year.

This is no time to be picky.  This is the time to say thank you, Brendan Sofman, thank you Mark Jobson, thank you Paul Signorelli – and have you finished reading that book I left with you yet?

Juxtapositions

I’m getting a bit hung up with language – with loss of meaning from misuse and overuse, and with heightened meaning from words newly cast. Imagine how thrilled I was to hear Daniel Libeskind’s talk this afternoon. For him, architecture is based on wonder. He spelt this out with a series of distinctions that powerfully described his architecture – words that were supported with images of some of his iconic designs.

The pairs of words are not necessarily direct opposites, and the meaning he ascribes to them is not necessarily what you might assume. My personal highlights are:

  • expressive vs neutral
  • emotional vs cool
  • political vs evasive (political meaning of the people, un-abstract)
  • raw vs refined
  • pointed vs blunt (many of his buildings are literally pointed, but he means it metaphorically as well – focused on reality)
  • communicative vs mute
  • risky vs safe

His words and his buildings reek of energy and attitude. A delight.

The wonderful workings of the mind

Our day in Palm Springs started with the quiet brilliance of Oliver Sacks. This wonderful, kind, insightful man has caused us to think differently about people whose brains work differently from the average – from what we tend to call normality. Today he told us the story of an old lady with hallucinations caused by Charles Bonnet Syndrome. The hallucinations are the result of hyperactivity in parts of the brain left inactive by failing sight or hearing, a natural extension of brain function being left with not enough to do.

This condition affects about 10% of people with visual or hearing loss. Shockingly, less than 1% acknowledge it – concerned, as this old lady was, not to be labelled as insane, or to find out that some other degenerative condition is bearing down on them.

Oliver Sacks’ work and his writings communicate the fascinating normality of the many different ways our brains work, and the impact they have on us. These are ideas that need to be spread.

Bill Gates posted

I’ve just been told that Bill Gates’s TED talk from yesterday has been posted on the TED website here. He talked about two of the challenges that his charitable foundation is working to address. Look out specifically for the moment when he releases mosquitoes into the crowd from the TED stage. A serious reality check.

Genius

Are you a troubled genius? Are you suffering from self-doubt? Are you facing the dilemma – can I keep generating creative output? Will my flow of ideas and my ability to communicate them dry up? Today Elizabeth Gilbert has given us the solution. In a gripping talk, she has re-defined genius. More correctly, she has taken genius off our shoulders and put it back in its proper place.

According to Elizabeth, genius was originally a kind of good angel of ideas, living in the wall rather than sitting on your shoulder, and visiting you to cast its inspiration upon you when it felt like it. This externalising of the source of inspiration removes from us the pressure of having to be inspired. As Elizabeth put it, all we have to do is keep on doing what we do – writing, composing, producing. The genius will do the rest.

Our adoption of the label and nailing of it onto individuals has burdened them with the responsibility to keep holding that weight up – not very reasonable; not very humane. We re-purpose words and lose meaning as a result. Perhaps reaching back to the origins of our language will help see some of the challenges that we face freshly, and open up new possibilities and new sources of energy for us.

∞ Site by Infinity Web Design ∞
01223 233247
LinkedIn
Email