what would the world be like if every
single person had the potential and the
power to start a quiet revolution a bit
about myself I’m a musician I’m a
scientist
I’m sixteen years old when I was five I
was looking through some picture books
one day in my room when I realized all
of a sudden that I had discovered her to
read this prompted my parents decision
to home-school me I didn’t set foot in a
classroom until I was 12
being homeschooled people ask me a lot
of questions when they found out that I
wasn’t in school are your parents
teachers do you just stay in bed all day
eating sweets watching tell you in your
pajamas and occasionally how did you
learn a little bit before I was meant to
start or I would have been the right age
to start the first year when I was 12 we
made the decision that I should go to
secondary school homeschooling had
worked really well for primary school
but it was time for me to go to school
unfortunately the school I wanted to go
to had no space in first year luckily
they did in second year so 12-year old
Sarah goes to school experiences a case
of wild culture shock for about two
weeks settles in gets on really great
the teachers like the big nerd cheese
makes loads of great new friends and
lives happy ever after that’s – thanks
coming to my talk so I was 12 have you
ever looked around at your life one day
and realized that the word
extracurricular is a bit of an oxymoron
because you’re actually doing more stuff
in your free time than you are in your
school time this happened to me I play
the violin in the piano and at one stage
I was a member of three separate
orchestras in second year I was given
the opportunity to join the Trinity
Walton Club an initiative that was set
up for the first time in 2014 and
consists of at the time 60 students
going to Trinity every weekend to learn
science technology engineering and maths
an incredibly advanced level because we
all love the subject so for my Sasha
days of going for my violin lesson then
over to Orchestra and then going to
Trinity to do some physics back for
quartet and the music theory lessons and
then home to do some studying the two
areas of science on the Arts
irrevocably interconnected in my mind
now as a society we like to tend to put
everything that you know there like the
left brain activities we have stuff like
science we have stuff like physics we
have all these these like analytical
things that have absolutely no
creativity and then whatsoever we put
them over here
and we put everything that HEIs creative
we have arts poetry music painting
that’s all over here suddenly I had a
massive area the size of this spot and
it was just everything all connected in
my head I think partially this had to do
with me being homeschooled people talk
about being homeschooled as an effort to
think outside the box and you know oh my
god that’s so cool you’re like
completely defying society’s
expectations for you I wasn’t I just had
my own set of expectations when I lived
in my own box which just didn’t happen
to be the same as everyone else’s so did
you know when you’re sitting on an
airplane and you’re really really really
happy with your life you couldn’t be
more chill because you’re going on
holidays to Spain or somewhere a next
thing a gust of wind or something hits
the airplane and you’re like whoa that’s
called turbulence the best way we have
to grow to visually represent this at
the moment isn’t a mathematical formula
it isn’t a set of physics graphs it’s
Vincent van Gogh starry night painting
when photography was invented we for the
first time didn’t have to paint pictures
of people to remember who they were what
their life their work and their love was
we could now capture a single moment in
a picture
people say that a picture tells a
thousand words I believe that sometimes
one sentence can make a thousand
pictures in the mind of listener I’m
going to ask you now to open your
imaginations because we’re going to go
on a journey years 1948 and you’re in
Russia you’re standing on a corridor
outside your apartment you’re wearing a
half of your suitcase packed in your
cochon and you’re ready to leave at a
moment’s notice it’s in the middle of
the night you know you should be asleep
it’s that time of the evening or
practice a morning when it’s so late
that time
doesn’t have a meaning anymore because
it’s just stretching but you can’t sleep
because you know that I’ll finish you
could be arrested your name is dmitri
shostakovich
and you wrote a piece of music that has
the potential to start a revolution 11
years previously in 1937 Shostakovich
wrote a piece of music his fifth
symphony which you’re all going to
listen to exactly when you get home
today because I told you do this piece
of music saved his life
Stalin was getting a little bit annoyed
with him because he wasn’t fulfilling
the expectations of washes good soviet
composer at the time could have been and
Shostakovich wrote this piece and it
saved his life and that of his family
the reason Shostakovich was waiting in
the corridor 11 years after this in 1948
was because he had two little children
who are asleep in their beds and he
didn’t want the rest of him to be
dragged away he possibly never to be
seen again to wake them up shortly
before his death Shostakovich wrote his
fifth there is eighth string quartet he
wrote this piece in Memorial of himself
because he figured that no one else
would do it for him he told his own
story this is what we do through photos
this is what we do through physics
through poetry to music we see the world
through our own lens and we aim to
display this and to show it to everyone
else so the everyone else can know how
we feel and what we did with our lives
Dmitri Shostakovich was many things he
was the man who wrote an opera but a
giant disembodied tap-dancing nose
dancing across the stage for tuned half
fairies you should YouTube – it’s quite
funny
he was a father his father Shastra coach
is just go to senior works for dmitri
mendeleev who you might know as the guy
who arranged the periodic table of
elements his daughter and his son both
became very well known concert pianists
and his daughter became a biologist
science and maths
music but most of all
Shostakovich was a quiet revolutionary
this is what a revolution does it’s not
a big idea it’s not a massive massive
massive thing that happens it’s a small
word an idea every single one of the
individual notes in Shostakovich is
symphony we live in the universe plot
twist in this universe there are
galaxies there is our solar system
there’s earth earth is made up of
continents composed of countries
composed of counties composed of cities
compose families composed of people
people are made up of billions upon
billions from billions of atoms every
single one of you in this room right now
the person you’re sitting beside your
seat this microphone we’re all made up
of the same stuff if you don’t believe
me if you think but physics and music
and poetry have absolutely nothing to do
with each other when you leave here
today I want you to go outside be still
for English breathe it’s good I want you
to look up at the night sky and I want
you to look at the Stars when I look at
the Stars I see our past
I see our present and if you look hard
enough you can see our future in the sky
you can see the culture of and the
society of every single person who ever
lived on this planet that we call home
you can look far back enough in time
that you are seeing planets that might
not even be around anymore you’re seeing
stars that possibly don’t exist but we
won’t know about it star is when you
look at them you’re seeing gigantic ball
of gas an incomprehensible distance away
that would take 100,000 lifetimes and
then some to get to
we’re not gonna get there well we can
hope when I look at the Stars
I see the intersection of poetry of film
of music of culture
I see Star Wars I see Star Trek I see et
I see Dvorak’s the planets and halts the
planets and I see our future sometimes
whether you’re in Russia in the 1940s or
yes in Arlington 2017 you need a bit of
hope when you look up the Stars you’re
seeing the inspiration for centuries for
millennia because of this I truly
believe that one act quiet revolution
can change the world so I want you all
to go be absolutely inspired at the
baddest human optimism the human
potential for discovery for creation for
survival and endurance and no matter
what anybody tells you never forget that
words and ideas can change the world
thank you very much
[Applause]
single person had the potential and the
power to start a quiet revolution a bit
about myself I’m a musician I’m a
scientist
I’m sixteen years old when I was five I
was looking through some picture books
one day in my room when I realized all
of a sudden that I had discovered her to
read this prompted my parents decision
to home-school me I didn’t set foot in a
classroom until I was 12
being homeschooled people ask me a lot
of questions when they found out that I
wasn’t in school are your parents
teachers do you just stay in bed all day
eating sweets watching tell you in your
pajamas and occasionally how did you
learn a little bit before I was meant to
start or I would have been the right age
to start the first year when I was 12 we
made the decision that I should go to
secondary school homeschooling had
worked really well for primary school
but it was time for me to go to school
unfortunately the school I wanted to go
to had no space in first year luckily
they did in second year so 12-year old
Sarah goes to school experiences a case
of wild culture shock for about two
weeks settles in gets on really great
the teachers like the big nerd cheese
makes loads of great new friends and
lives happy ever after that’s – thanks
coming to my talk so I was 12 have you
ever looked around at your life one day
and realized that the word
extracurricular is a bit of an oxymoron
because you’re actually doing more stuff
in your free time than you are in your
school time this happened to me I play
the violin in the piano and at one stage
I was a member of three separate
orchestras in second year I was given
the opportunity to join the Trinity
Walton Club an initiative that was set
up for the first time in 2014 and
consists of at the time 60 students
going to Trinity every weekend to learn
science technology engineering and maths
an incredibly advanced level because we
all love the subject so for my Sasha
days of going for my violin lesson then
over to Orchestra and then going to
Trinity to do some physics back for
quartet and the music theory lessons and
then home to do some studying the two
areas of science on the Arts
irrevocably interconnected in my mind
now as a society we like to tend to put
everything that you know there like the
left brain activities we have stuff like
science we have stuff like physics we
have all these these like analytical
things that have absolutely no
creativity and then whatsoever we put
them over here
and we put everything that HEIs creative
we have arts poetry music painting
that’s all over here suddenly I had a
massive area the size of this spot and
it was just everything all connected in
my head I think partially this had to do
with me being homeschooled people talk
about being homeschooled as an effort to
think outside the box and you know oh my
god that’s so cool you’re like
completely defying society’s
expectations for you I wasn’t I just had
my own set of expectations when I lived
in my own box which just didn’t happen
to be the same as everyone else’s so did
you know when you’re sitting on an
airplane and you’re really really really
happy with your life you couldn’t be
more chill because you’re going on
holidays to Spain or somewhere a next
thing a gust of wind or something hits
the airplane and you’re like whoa that’s
called turbulence the best way we have
to grow to visually represent this at
the moment isn’t a mathematical formula
it isn’t a set of physics graphs it’s
Vincent van Gogh starry night painting
when photography was invented we for the
first time didn’t have to paint pictures
of people to remember who they were what
their life their work and their love was
we could now capture a single moment in
a picture
people say that a picture tells a
thousand words I believe that sometimes
one sentence can make a thousand
pictures in the mind of listener I’m
going to ask you now to open your
imaginations because we’re going to go
on a journey years 1948 and you’re in
Russia you’re standing on a corridor
outside your apartment you’re wearing a
half of your suitcase packed in your
cochon and you’re ready to leave at a
moment’s notice it’s in the middle of
the night you know you should be asleep
it’s that time of the evening or
practice a morning when it’s so late
that time
doesn’t have a meaning anymore because
it’s just stretching but you can’t sleep
because you know that I’ll finish you
could be arrested your name is dmitri
shostakovich
and you wrote a piece of music that has
the potential to start a revolution 11
years previously in 1937 Shostakovich
wrote a piece of music his fifth
symphony which you’re all going to
listen to exactly when you get home
today because I told you do this piece
of music saved his life
Stalin was getting a little bit annoyed
with him because he wasn’t fulfilling
the expectations of washes good soviet
composer at the time could have been and
Shostakovich wrote this piece and it
saved his life and that of his family
the reason Shostakovich was waiting in
the corridor 11 years after this in 1948
was because he had two little children
who are asleep in their beds and he
didn’t want the rest of him to be
dragged away he possibly never to be
seen again to wake them up shortly
before his death Shostakovich wrote his
fifth there is eighth string quartet he
wrote this piece in Memorial of himself
because he figured that no one else
would do it for him he told his own
story this is what we do through photos
this is what we do through physics
through poetry to music we see the world
through our own lens and we aim to
display this and to show it to everyone
else so the everyone else can know how
we feel and what we did with our lives
Dmitri Shostakovich was many things he
was the man who wrote an opera but a
giant disembodied tap-dancing nose
dancing across the stage for tuned half
fairies you should YouTube – it’s quite
funny
he was a father his father Shastra coach
is just go to senior works for dmitri
mendeleev who you might know as the guy
who arranged the periodic table of
elements his daughter and his son both
became very well known concert pianists
and his daughter became a biologist
science and maths
music but most of all
Shostakovich was a quiet revolutionary
this is what a revolution does it’s not
a big idea it’s not a massive massive
massive thing that happens it’s a small
word an idea every single one of the
individual notes in Shostakovich is
symphony we live in the universe plot
twist in this universe there are
galaxies there is our solar system
there’s earth earth is made up of
continents composed of countries
composed of counties composed of cities
compose families composed of people
people are made up of billions upon
billions from billions of atoms every
single one of you in this room right now
the person you’re sitting beside your
seat this microphone we’re all made up
of the same stuff if you don’t believe
me if you think but physics and music
and poetry have absolutely nothing to do
with each other when you leave here
today I want you to go outside be still
for English breathe it’s good I want you
to look up at the night sky and I want
you to look at the Stars when I look at
the Stars I see our past
I see our present and if you look hard
enough you can see our future in the sky
you can see the culture of and the
society of every single person who ever
lived on this planet that we call home
you can look far back enough in time
that you are seeing planets that might
not even be around anymore you’re seeing
stars that possibly don’t exist but we
won’t know about it star is when you
look at them you’re seeing gigantic ball
of gas an incomprehensible distance away
that would take 100,000 lifetimes and
then some to get to
we’re not gonna get there well we can
hope when I look at the Stars
I see the intersection of poetry of film
of music of culture
I see Star Wars I see Star Trek I see et
I see Dvorak’s the planets and halts the
planets and I see our future sometimes
whether you’re in Russia in the 1940s or
yes in Arlington 2017 you need a bit of
hope when you look up the Stars you’re
seeing the inspiration for centuries for
millennia because of this I truly
believe that one act quiet revolution
can change the world so I want you all
to go be absolutely inspired at the
baddest human optimism the human
potential for discovery for creation for
survival and endurance and no matter
what anybody tells you never forget that
words and ideas can change the world
thank you very much
[Applause]
Please follow and like us: