I suppose I should post something tonight.
I've been feeling kinda bad the last couple weeks because of how sparse and lacking in quality my posts have been. Especially because I keep seeing my pageview count continuously increasing. Don't get me wrong, I love seeing that. But I love it more when I know I've posted something good recently, and frankly, I don't think I have written anything worthy of the number of pageviews I've gotten since my last post.
On the other hand, I'm so glad you like my blog! I'm so glad you keep coming back, and I really wish I had more time and energy to keep up with it like I used to.
On Tuesday this week, I happened to watch this TEDtalk by iO Tillet Wright. It came up in my facebook feed because of course I follow ted.com on facebook. To be honest, I wasn't that interested in the content to begin with. If you follow me regularly at all, you'll notice that the TEDtalks I tend to cover involve design, video games, technology, or psychology. I seem to be passing out of my political phase.
But after a minute of listening to iO's talk, I realized I was hooked, and I was interested. Suddenly it didn't feel like your typical gay discussion (granted, I haven't had very many of those, but I did go to a very liberal college). I was never really big on having that discussion anyway. I've made my decision about where I stand in the matter, and I haven't really taken it further than that--or even really thought about why I made my decision the way I did. At the time, it just made the most sense.
She's a very good storyteller, and I've always been taught that the stories we connect with best are the ones that are told from the smallest psychological distance (and by that, I mean, if I tell you a story from my own life, from my point of view, you're more likely to identify with it than you would be if I chose to tell you a story about "people like me", even if you and I are not alike at all). The psychological distance allows you to project your own consciousness into the story much more easily. It makes feeling empathy much easier.
I thought iO's story was interesting, and I found myself identifying with bits and pieces of it--more than I thought I would. Over the course of the talk, iO manages to take the gay/straight binary and turns it into a grayscale, and applies it to everyone. Also, the art comes out towards the end. (The secret appeal of this talk for me? She's a photographer.)
Personally, I think it's worth every minute. You may not learn anything in particular, but I do appreciate the way she made me consider things a little differently.
Let me know your thoughts on the vid. hmm? Post in the comments? Post on fb? eh? Maybe you can light up my writing drive again. =)
Happy TEDtalk Thursday everyone! Goodnight.
P.S. creative writers? I feel like "psychological distance" was the wrong term. Anyone remember the correct term I'm attempting to describe? That would save me many hours of digging through my notes. =) This is really gonna bug me.
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