These TEDx Talks

Instead of the usual Music in the Morning tidbit (as I woke up today and automatically skipped breakfast--my favorite part of the day) I've decided to post up a couple of my favorite TEDx talks. FYI, the x in TEDx means that the talks were independently organized, which I absolutely love. Ateneo had a TEDx event recently, and I'd really, really love for DLSU to be able to do something like this. I'd really love to hear about what other people have to say about life. Today, I thought I'd share five of my favorite TEDx talks and short descriptions of why I like them. I know that this might take up a bit of time, if you're reading this post but I swear this'll be definitely worth it. It's extremely, extremely inspiring and these talks are full of interesting ideas that you don't have to necessarily agree with but at least, I think you have to consider because they get at exactly how you live your life and what you're going to do and what you're doing. I could listen to these things all day.

1. Tavi Gevinson: Still Figuring It Out

For those of you who might not know who Tavi is, she's one of the youngest and most successful fashion bloggers ever. Her blog, The Style Rookie really paved the way for the rest of Tavi's career and she currently runs an online magazine, named Rookie Magazine. And the great thing about this talk and Tavi in general, is that she goes beyond fashion and really, really thinks. It's refreshing to see someone so successful in the fashion industry talking about these good shows and what it means for a female character to be strong and how feminism isn't a black and white thing all the time. The thing I love about this talk is that she highlights that it's okay to contradict yourself sometimes--like you can be a nerd who's into fashion or you can be a girl and curse. I had a lot of trouble reconciling those things as well (especially growing up in the Philippines where people like saying things like "Kababae mong tao" which pretty much translates to "Why are you doing that, you're a girl?") and I really like that she tried to get to that in this talk, not by providing the answers but by opening up room for questions.

2. Sarah Kay: Stop Rushing
If you've been reading this blog for a while, then you might know that I'm a huge Sarah Kay fan (a hooj shoutout to Akire, who introduced them to me); her poetry just really hits home and doesn't have that over-exaggerated quality that I find a lot of spoken word pieces have. Ironically, this is the one talk that I cannot agree with completely. This is probably because I live life jacked up on caffeine and rushing all the time, but I see what she's talking about--that instead of going for quantity, go for quality of work. And yeah. Very inspiring. The spoken word poem she recites at the end made me cry too. Not pretty, Natalie Portman cry either, but ugly, so fucking emotional type crying--so yeah.

3. Jacob Barnett: Forget What You Know

This kid--if I were 11, I would be head over heels in love with this kid. Jacob Barnett is a mathematician and a child prodigy--he's already at Princeton University (in his second year); he's also autistic and was told that he would probably never learn to talk. While I'm just not the best person at science (sorry, 2nd grade self, you are not a scientist in the future) I really, really love what Jacob talks about here. He tells us not to let learning structures hinder our learning. Personally, I feel like I need structure to learn most of the time and I suppose that's okay. And when the structure fails, he says it's time to think of things on your terms, in a language you understand. Very, very inspiring. The video gets a bit hard to get through because Jacob talks so fast but stick through it; it'll be worth it I promise.

4. Phil Kaye : Why We Tell Stories
Phil Kaye is another one of my favorite spoken word poets, and he's the co-founder of Project VOICE. The thing I love about Phil's performances is that he's not afraid to let it roll out into something lengthy. He isn't afraid of fleshing out the story. And I think this is also why I love this talk. He speaks about how we tell stories to reconcile what is constantly becoming the past--our lives--and that we do these things to be able to go one despite all the uncertainty. And that's something I definitely agree with. But yeah. Watch watch watch!

5. Anis Mojgani: Equal Parts Science & Magic

Anis (poetry slam champion--the credentials go on and on and on) talks about how he feels insanely special to be able to do what he loves and support himself doing it but at the same time, he feels that there is nothing inherently special about himself and poetry in itself. In general, I like Anis's poetry but the thing I don't like about it is that he uses words like "universe" and "noble" and "golden" a lot which are so big and vague that I have difficulty relating to them sometimes but it works, because he is who he is. Maybe it's his voice, I dunno. I love this talk because he dispels the "special smart writer" type image and just talks about his childhood and how he's awkward but noble. So much feels.