Translator: Linh Tran Reviewer: Denise RQ
I teach yoga
because I want to help as many people as possible
to express themselves freely with their body.
When our body is filled with energy, it doesn't matter the shape,
our minds and spirits have a chance
of going wild and free as it should be.
I also am an artist and I teach art
so that people could express
truly their human experience, thoughts, and emotions.
And no, I didn't study in the Arts School.
I have a Finance degree.
(Applause)
For six years, I've worked in business.
I traveled, worked in business, met top executives of the world.
I did sales for two years, and I was very good at making money.
And then I wanted to come back to Vietnam
and said to to everyone that I wanted to be an artist.
People was like "This is not a good idea."
But I'm here.
That's exactly the reason why I felt even more emboldened to be here
and share with you my journey
of having art, of losing art, and having it back again.
In the last one year, this has been the routine of every single day.
I wake up in the morning at 4:30 AM.
I wash my face, drink a glass of water and come to my desk.
I sit down.
On my desk, there'll always be
an A4 white blank paper.
So I pick up the pen and look at it.
That moment before creativity begins
for me it's sacred, it's mysterious, it's profound, and terrifying.
It's terrifying because you have nothing.
You have to learn how to have nothing, be utterly naked and vulnerable,
and work your way to create something beautiful,
true, and meaningful.
And so, art. What is art?
To me, art is anything that you express from your core
through something, it can be a thought, it can be a feeling.
Something that is true and honest to your human experience.
And all of this, there is one thing that is unique in us;
it is our human experience.
If that is true to that unique human experience,
and it's expressed outside with a medium
that can be writing, dancing, gardening, arranging flowers, painting, drawing -
that is art.
So how did it all start for me?
It started in the summer of 1990 when I was born.
I've spent a large part of my childhood with my grandfather
who was, at the time, an artist.
I remember the bitter smell of black ink from his paint brush,
I remember the fragrance of wood from the animal toys
that he crafted for me out of a tree trunk;
I remember the voice of him reciting poetry
and that gave me a fascination with art.
I made my first poem when I was 5
sitting on my bed, in a heavy rain;
I was making a poem about the rain and the flat
because we were living in this house
that whenever the rain came, the flood would come in
and all the water would come in the house.
I wrote about the rain, the flat
and my mother's feet swollen for being a long time under water.
I wrote about how I missed my father because he was on along business trip.
My grandfather was immensely happy.
He was so proud, he was so happy,
he arranged for me to perform in front of his old poet club.
So I remember me, five years old, being on stage,
tiptoeing, holding a microphone, reading my poem.
And I remember the old and kind faces of the audience,
I remember the loud applause after that.
And it just felt great, not because of the applause
but because of the chance for me to express what's true and unique from me.
So that's five-year-old Milena
the most pure, happy, creative, and expressive person I know.
She's always with me.
I know that in each and every one of you,
there is one-- this person, this five-year-old self
that's still pure, happy, creative, and expressive.
Everybody here, you have that person within you,
but something changed for me when I went to school.
I entered elementary school,
and I never understood why I had to comment on other people's poems
instead of making my own.
I never understood why all the rice paddies that I drew
needed to look like the ones on the calendar.
Then my mom ended up copying from the calendar
so that I could have good grades.
I never understood why my music teacher would give a slap on my cheek
because I wrote the music notes incorrectly;
she was a little bit uptight on her very nice ao dai
because that was a rehearsal for her teaching demonstration.
I never wrote another poem
until then, when I started elementary school;
and by the time I reached 18,
in my first interview, when I was asked about my weakness
I said creativity.
I wrote my first poem when I was five.
So this happened to us
through our upbringing and education;
we slowly lose our inner artist;
it's scared away by the judgment we receive, by the critique we receive
even from well-intentioned people like our parents.
By the time when we reach 18, when nobody can stop us anymore,
we have learned this skill of stopping ourselves from the joy of art making.
How tragic is that?
We've become
our own well-intentioned parents, and the music teacher who slapped us.
But this is wrong.
For many of us, especially in the society here in Vietnam.
Art is something that is not productive.
Art is a waste of time, art is like a luxury.
Art is for retired people, if you have nothing else to do.
Art is for a very small amount of privileged people
who were born creative.
This is wrong, this is very wrong
because I'm telling you, if you give up on art,
you're giving up on a big thing in our life.
I'm here to tell you that art and life must be inseparable.
Why?
Because first, if we can,
instead of focusing on the artwork, the result
and look at the magic of the creative process of art making
not looking and judging our artwork,
but look at the hours and what you feel
during that creative process, during that creative experience,
this process does something for us,
as well as I can say to you who work from nothing to something;
it does something to us.
First, it enhances our creativity.
Creativity is not something you can get by reading from a book;
creativity is something --
your creative muscle is strengthened as you create,
So if you want to be creative at work, you've got to create something.
Creativity is also a zone that we enter, the more that we create,
the more that we know how it feels to be in that creative zone,
the more we can recreate any other situation in life.
That's first about creativity
The second is about expression.
Once you've learned to express yourself
on the blank page, with the guitar, with your flowers
you will be bolder and be more courageous
and be more true and honest to express all other aspects of your life
whether it's in your family dinner
or bringing a new project at work
giving up the work you hate and follow the job that you dreamed about.
In my case, being a 25-year-old Vietnamese woman,
having no art background, wanting to be an artist
and open up my own art studio and having a career that my parents never understand.
And last, but I think most importantly,
the process of making art can teach us how to live.
There are plenty of experiences in life
and the other TED speakers have shown me how beautiful life is
and how many experiences life can have.
So, the death of a loved one, the lost of a daughter
heartbroken, a broken relationship,
all these experiences come to us, of course together with joy and happiness,
but sorrow and happiness always come
and how do we deal with them?
Many people choose to numb the experience
because they don't know how to deal with it
so they numb themselves by laziness, or being super busy,
or by alcohol, drugs, overeating, over-shopping, all these things.
But my way of dealing with it is to make art.
My grandfather had been in coma for two months, and I could not feel it.
When I came to the hospital and looked at him lying on the bed
with the plastic feeding tube from his right nostril straight to the stomach
and looked at his degraded body and heard the sound,
the dry air that was coming from his collapsed lungs out of his open mouth
I could not feel it, I didn't know how to deal with this experience.
Only when, one night, I decided that I'd want to write about it
I pick up my pen, come back to the page, and I write.
I write about my grandfather, I write what I saw, what I hear, what I see.
And only then, I could cry like I'm crying now today;
only then I could cry.
And so...
A writer that I respect very much,
Natalie Goldberg, who's an American writer and wrote--
Do you know how a pearl was created?
The oyster, when there's a disturbance getting inside it,
like a small grain of sand,
it will release a substance to cover it, and that it becomes a pearl.
To me, it's such a beautiful representation of art.
Art can be created out of disturbance
and because life is art, every single one of us must be an artist,
and every single one of us can learn to become an oyster
creating something beautiful out of all the experiences;
doesn't matter how sorrowful or how happy they can be.
Be an oyster, make art.
To me, art making is the festival of the mind;
to be making art is making love with life.
Thank you.
(Applause)