#TED2016

By Heidi Seaborn

I wear black leather.
Burberry biker jacket and black
biker boots, trimmed in blood red.
That’s what one wears to TED
to blend into this society of the extraordinary.
Sonic astrophysicists, space archeologists, social scientists,
billionaire philanthropists, paleontologists, data scientists,
computer theorists, linguists, hip-hop
artists and a not-so-lonely stranger enthusiast.
Where is my ist? My list,
the tick, tick, tick of who I am summed up
in a hyphenated title—brain hacker/musician,
futurist/author, government leader/disrupter!

Create the perfect dinner party–who would you invite?
Around this TED table: a mega-film producer,
former politician turned foundation head and best-selling author,
a professor who lectures on reinvention,
a computer scientist slash artist, and me,
a poet. Two syllables and no syllabus.
Curriculum vitae scrolls credits, awards, what serves
as introduction while we dig into beet and arugula salads,

find the common thread of our non-virtual reality.
The great leaven that tethers ambitions
in that moment as one sits just to the left of the TED stage.
That moment before the life now rehearsed and rehearsed
is lit up, projected, streamed live, taped, edited, spliced, shared,
packaged, promoted, played in theaters, on NPR, public television,
on phones around the world, replayed @ TEDX in 195 countries.
That life story becomes a TED Talk
and the rest is history as a swarm of drones hum overhead,
flicker like fireflies on a lazy summer night.