Transcriber: Jeeyae Lee Reviewer: Denise RQ
That music always makes me want
to punch someone, but in a really happy way!
(Laughter)
I watched a bunch of TEDTalks last night to try and see exactly
how is this supposed to go, and most of the speakers
They always started off with a joke.
I haven't written one, so this is your loss!
What I'd like to talk to you about today
is the rise of what I call ambiguous micro-stories
and also how our stories are getting shorter and shorter and shorter.
And we're moving from a place
of 'it was the best of times, it was the worst of times',
to a place of 'The times were ok'.
(Laughter)
And the reason for this is we have a generation
which is reaching an adulthood now
that is essentially growing up consuming their environment
and decreasing it in smaller and smaller chunks.
From their news and their media,
and now storytelling as well.
Before I carry on with that,
I'd like to talk about someone that's incredibly important to me.
And that person is you.
Because you are the main character in the projects I've been busy with now
for the past four years,
called 'I wrote this for You',
which is essentially a combination of photography
and very, very short stories
that I created with a friend of mine in Japan, named John Ellis.
We've been friends for about six years and have never met!
Which people are interested in for some reason, I don't know why.
But essentially, we created these very, very, very short stories.
And one of the very important things we do with these stories
is we leave out a lot of detail.
And there is a reason for this.
By leaving out things like gender, age, race, location,
people apply the story to themselves.
So, I'd never write a story this short, although that that's been close before,
but, essentially, by leaving out the details,
people apply those stories to themselves.
There's no story I can tell you
that is as powerful as the story you can tell yourself.
Since the blog's inception, it takes the form of a blog,
it's reached tens of thousands of people, it's been read millions of times.
The address gets written on Bibles in Alabama,
I have friends in Singapore, Canada...
It won 'Best Photographic blog'
at the National Blog Awards here in Capetown,
It is the most nominated blog
to win 'Best blog' at the International 2009 Web Blog Awards.
I'm a finalist with 'Best Blogger to Follow'
at the International Open Webawards,
which is awesome!
(Laughter)
And I have thousands of people who say it's big deal, every day!
Which brings me to the title of my talk, 'You and I, we are the same!'
I think some people don't like that idea
that we are not the beautiful and unique snowflakes
we are told we are, but I found the sense of comfort,
that we all share similar emotions.
And as a storyteller, I like to play on the two opposite ends of emotions
which are happiness and joy and sadness and missing
and I like a traditional storyteller.
But a traditional storyteller has the luxury
of an entire book or an entire movie
to get to the point of the story.
and the point of a story, is more often than not
a single sentence.
I tried to write that sentence, five days of the week now for four years.
This is how long Fight Club is on the Internet.
'This is your life, and it's ending 1 minute at a time'.
That's the point of that story.
I also believe that a story should be accessible from any point
in which you interact with it, which is why the URL
is pleasefindthis.blogspot.
'pleasefindthis', when you hear about it,
'OK, well, I should probably find that!'
It's asking very politely.
The name of the project 'I write this for you'
implies there's something special waiting for you.
The first thing people read when they get there
is 'I need you to understand something',
'I wrote this for you and only you'.
Some readers don't get it.
They may think they get it, but they don't!
'This is the sign you've been looking for'.
'You were meant to read these words'.
And they see something like this.
This one's called 'The Translation Service'.
'And when I asked you how you'd been,
I meant I missed you more than I'd ever missed anything before'.
Or 'The Big Blue Sea':
I don't care how many fish there are in the sea.
I don't want a fish. I want you'.
And some people don't get this.
And I think those people haven't grown up in this digital space
where identity is entirely optional.
So, if you can be anyone, 'you' is essentially everyone.
So, it's amazing!
We are in this community
that consists of millions of people that are millions of miles apart,
but at no point in human history we've been this closer to each other.
This is some work by a guy called Frank Warren
who started the PostSecret project.
He was kind enough to give me permission
to show some of these slides of his work, at least.
People send him anonymous confessions on postcards.
This one reads:
'I have a necklace I bough at the place I cheated on my husband.
I wear it when he tells me I'm fat, ugly and stupid,
to remind me that someone once thought I was beautiful'.
[I like to remember my Dad as a boy, so I won't remember him suffering.]
'I hate my co-workers'. As we all do.
(Laughter)
In Frank's own words:
'Since a 4x6-inch card is not big enough to hold a complete story,
writers must use just a handful of words and images
to share a tale they might have kept concealed for decades.
This forces them to include only the most crucial elements.
The reader is then free to fill in the details,
drawing upon their own experiences, values and imagination
to better understand the human story on each card'.
Other people who are kind of pioneering this new form of micro-story
are Jerry and Emily from 'A softer world'.
They also kindly gave me the permission to share some of their work.
This one reads: 'It isn't easy to stage a convincing alien abduction,
but if it were easy, would I really be Father of the Year?'
So, they don't ever have any characters.
They don't have a Garfield or a Superman or a Batman.
And people read these stories
and they make up the story themselves or they find the story inside it.
This is a work of a friend of mine in New Hampshire,
an artist called Cassandra Warren.
This one reads: 'And then you will speak in the dark'.
I'd also like to just talk about how, besides the community of people
I speak to everyday
how I've managed to interact with communities around the world,
A man called Matthew May who's written a book
called 'In Pursuit of Elegance', amongst other things,
loves my blog, because he loves the fact that I leave out information
to make it what he calls 'more elegant'.
He introduced me to a woman called Stephanie Allen,
who is a VP at Fox Searchlight pictures in California,
who has a relationship with Stacy Peralta.
He's the director of 'Dog Town', 'Z boys', 'Riding Giants',
and 'Crips and Bloods: Made in America',
who has kindly agreed to donate skateboards
to the Uganda Skateboard Union,
Which is an organization close to my heart,
and they teach kids skateboarding in Uganda.
(Applause)
This is Daniel Rodriguez, he's a musician I work with in Minneapolis.
He takes the entries and turns them into songs.
He shares them with kids as a part of a project called 'Youth Frontiers'.
When the Philippines flooded earlier this year,
I'm quite big in the Philippines, for some reason, I don't know why,
I was literally reading tweets from teenagers
stuck on the roofs of their houses
and I was able to retweet emergency information from them
to people who could help them,
which was amazing for me,
and the blog gave me that opportunity!
This is an entry I wrote in 2007 called 'The Passenger', and it reads:
'You always made me feel bad for asking me for a lift.
Now I pick up hitchhikers wherever I go.
I take them right to their door. Even the prostitutes'.
A year later, I received this comment:
'The "Even the prostitutes" part makes me sad.
I want to save the world. But I can't.
I'm giving up the whole prostitution thing and going back to homelessness.
I can't help anyone. I can't even take care of myself'.
I responded:
'You just managed to write a succinct paragraph of text.
And showed a genuine understanding of human suffering and emotion.
This means you can read, write and understand the people around you.
You are far more able than many people in this world to take care of yourself.
You just have to believe that.
Ask someone for real help.
I can only try to make you feel better from behind the keyboard
But you need real people on your side of the screen to help
and I swear by all that I hold holy and every single fiber of my being
they are out there, waiting for you to ask.
If you want to save the world, start with yourself.
Please, I sincerely beg you, hold on'.
A year later 'Whoever you are. Thank you.
You have no idea how much that reply meant to me,
all those months ago.
From an ex-prostitute, on her way to save the world'.
And then in September...
(Applause)
'Hello again. I'm the one on her way to saving the world.
I don't want to refer to myself as an 'ex-prostitute' anymore.
I'm in college now, on my way to saving the world!
I am going to be a social worker, and devote my life to helping others.
I thought about an English major briefly because I love reading and writing,
and because I know, firsthand, thanks to you,
that words do have the power to change the world.
And they have. Thank you.
Take care of yourself. Be at peace.
Shanti, shanti, shanti.
(Applause)
Never before in human history have we been able to touch so many lives
from so far away...
And never before have we been able to change those lives for the better
with the simplest of stories.
Thank you.
(Applause)