Best of Week

I would have to choose the TED video (the one we all saw in class) as my favorite classroom activity for the week. This was the video that featured Ted Rives and his amazing "slam-poetry" speech about mockingbirds.

I remember seeing it for the first time and sitting dumfounded at the computer for at least five minutes thinking "WTF??". I remember watching that video and thinking it was just some sort of looney artist with an unusual talent for making these sorts of whimsical, spontaneous speeches.

So I had to admit this guy had some incredible creative abilities. His clever wording, even when it didn't make sense, seemed to flow with a lifelike energy that i have witnessed rarely, if ever, in ordinary speeches. His ideas were thoughtful and inspiring. His elegant style of rhyme; combined with a strange, inconsistent mishmosh of phrases, made the speech even more meaningful. It made the entire speech appear as if it was simply free and unconstrained. Free and flowing just like any mockingbird's song.

It also made me wonder if this man made his speech with the intention of actually reproducing the mockingbird's style. Mockingbirds themselves can learn up to 200 songs by mimicking other sounds and reproducing them (as Ted mentioned), so they will oftentimes create a "mixed bag" of the regular noises that they hear: Owls, songbirds, cats, whistles, car alarms, etc. Ted himself seemed pretty keen on creating this sort of "mishmosh" poem for our lives and ideas, so I'm wondering if he put the whole thing together in a similar style to a real mockingbird.

So I listened to that video several times and realized how rich it was in craft. But it was not just the craft that impressed me. The content in Ted's speech was simply inspiring. I'll admit difficult to understand for the most part, but i believe that Ted's "mockingbird ideology" was akin to the thought of ideas and understanding spread throughout the world. I believed his idea of having "mockingbird cacaphony" was also a representation for the great gathering of ideas that were held at TED.

The way i connect this video to my life comes from a quote where Ted says,"When all the little mockingbirds fly away, they'll sound like the last four days."

Of course, he's refering to the four days in which TED was held, but what he's saying is that all these ideas from TED will hopefully take wing and spread to other parts of the globe. He's saying that these ideas will hopefully be applied someday in the near future. And with that said, i personally hope that my thoughts and ideas will someday spread and take wing just like those from TED. I hope that the thoughts and ideas from Academy will someday spread and influence the world. I remember how Mr. Allen said he could just imagine us presenting all our brilliant ideas at TED sometime in the future. So it's made me think of how WE acadamites, can change the world.