I thought I’d start with one good
searching and by way of an introduction
this is kind of about me yeah about a
few years ago when I was living in
France trying to work out what the whole
being a life thing is about I’m just
searching for an angle I’m just
searching for a voice I’m just searching
for a way to fit in I’m just searching
for a reason to rejoice when I am just
trying to treat breathing as a choice
and smiling as a must and just mining
for a diamond in the rough
I guess I’m just trying to find
happiness yeah pretty much I’m just
trying to be happy and I am just
searching for a true fact for one that I
can really understand it feels kind of
like like searching for a ruby in the
dirt or for a church in the city of the
Damned and really I’m just trying to be
a man a good one
I guess I just wish I had a plan a good
one really I’m just trying to be a good
son I’m just trying to be a good son I’m
just trying to make my peace with the
struggle progress is gradual needless to
mumble it’s like my life is a Street
full of rubble and I haven’t got time
just to lean on the shovel last night I
felt sleep in my duffle with a head full
of schemas and a cheek full of stubble
that’s good keep writing describing the
puzzle I needn’t remind you the mind is
a muscle flex and release flex and
release make hay while the Sun burns
read through the trees Western resume as
soon as it rears its head in the East
I’m just trying to make sense of my
dreams
searching for strength who so for a
lesson to teach also for a place to lie
down they have quite a collection of
tensions to ease I’m just trying to flow
on the temperate sea
years of wisdom hope affection please
just trying to cherish this westerly
breeze as it Pinkins my nose and
caresses my cheeks I’m just trying to go
the whole length of this beach without
once wondering what’s it all for
and when will it cease and who first
tried pecking with elegant beaks and
wearing gray feathers instead of a
fleece was it the heavens the eggs or
the geese these are the questions that
fetch me from sleep stressing me out
like big chunks of celery wedged in my
teeth I’m just searching for things that
are constant I’m just searching for
things that are real I’m just trying to
make sense of my problems just trying to
sum up the things that I feel things I
desire things I believe in trying to
treat breathing as being intrinsically
freeing and smiling as winning
graciously I’m just trying to keep
grinning basically I’m just searching
for ways to express the bittersweet
taste on my tongue and the similarly
melancholy ache in my chest run and not
feel hate for the angel of death I’m
just searching for ways to impress
tourists and my mum my dad were the
friends that I found I’m just trying to
make them proud I’m just trying to make
them proud really I’m just trying to be
a man a good one I guess I just wish I
had a plan a good one really I’m just
trying to be a good son I’m just trying
to be a good son thanks
[Applause]
Thanks
I’m enjoying my read but I’ve been told
I’m not allowed to leave it I’m out of
the camera maybe at some point I summon
the bravery and okay something slightly
more intellectual now sort sort of and
this this poem was a commission for an
organization in bath called five by five
by five equals creativity and they asked
me to to write this to kind of like to
sort of sum up their their general ethos
also the ethos of their patron his again
Robinson who he he’s like an educational
theorist a leading one and he he did it
he did a TED talk in particular that’s
got like 14 million views which was kind
of the starting point for this poem and
I let it speak for itself but it’s
basically about creativity and education
and the need for kind of the imagination
and stuff to be at the heart of the way
that we we educate our children and and
I guess it’s also about the fact that
that isn’t really the way things are
being done at the moment it’s could
people fall in love
people fall in love make love and have
babies babies grow up great speeds for
instance say you were a toddler in the
80s by now you’re probably working in a
job that gives you brain freeze gagging
for a pay increase scrabbling for cash
enough in order to ensure you can
assuredly procure for your family its
basic needs life it’s a hard slog but
you’re a fighter you’ve made it to
middle age at least even if it does sort
of feel like increasingly you waste a
lot of days and weeks but making
reasonable money from what you’re good
at from the thing you must love from
what best corresponds with your nature
please it sounds like the stuff of some
make believes we aren’t oh special
God doesn’t pay for the streets when you
heard the university’s had opted to
raise their fees it made you want to cry
like a two-year-old you got tripped and
grazed his knees and in any case the
girl ain’t even going to get a place if
she doesn’t get the grade she needs but
kids should be angling for A’s and B’s
instead was this jeez Louise
report cards filling up with ADHD z’ and
E’s doctor doctor I have a trepidation
my daughter doesn’t really match with
education you sir need a batch of
medication from here on in it’s just
damage limitation two people fall in
love and make love thus producing a
princess a little madam my point being
the life and death cycle of humans
begins with a fit of passion surely then
we should all be splintering the utter
trying to innovate a different pattern a
system not explicitly constructed to
render creativity inexplicably distant
conspicuously absent people fall in love
make love and have babies that’s
providing hard proof that miracles can
happen which is good to know because
that’s what we all are going to need if
we reinvigorate the listless
interactions currently driving entire
classrooms – dribbling distraction in it
true the children’s brains are
predisposed to his vigorous expansion it
seems a pinch peculiar to pickle them
like brenston they take their
curiosities and cram them in the
standardized jars our kids have reared
like battery hen 6-4 individualist
conformity the very worst of both worlds
swiveling in tendon and when they’re
growing we throw him off a cliff into a
chasm and what about the teachers
helplessly afflicting stupefaction on
the kids in their command the poor
things no it is in any of their four if
the system gives them no scope for
wisdom and acts as if it thinks them as
ignorant as plankton leave it to the
drizzle of indifference to dampen any
lingering scraps of their natural-born
instincts for independent action people
fall in love it’s an age-old in a bid to
be saved Souls merge bravely giving up
the safety of their well defined
outlines to desires melting pots they
collaboratively tie themselves in knots
and the odds are firmly on that pretty
soon they’ll be hitting Google up for
baby names and buying lots of tiny
velvet frocks as well as flat-pack IKEA
climbing frames and cuts the riddle then
naturally submitted for dismantling has
to be exactly what planet will this
infant be inhabiting in precisely which
paradigmatic realms will this little one
be languishing the world is in crisis
all its resources due to pillaging a
dwindling with the ring vanishing we’ve
been indiscriminately gambling on
destiny for too long and that is us
there isn’t imminent as part of our
immediate predicament it’s happening the
fact is if we are to avert the fatal
fate towards which we giddily are
galloping we’ll need to ease up on the
systemic shackling of free Thor
experimentation originality okay if I
may
I think I’d like to finish off by
reeling off a short list of applicable
platitudes the truth is in the seeking
we are what we as is the future we are
feeding learning comes the influences
instinctively as sleeping every single
inch then is inimitably fleeting thus
this in every instant is for ceasing for
gripping and for squeezing of course
it’s all just a little piece of history
repeating that goes without whispering
or shrieking scribbling or chipping or
tweeting but surely with a little bit of
innovative scheming we could rustle up
some rituals that enrich the thing with
meaning we haven’t got to reinvent up
the principles of wheeling we only need
to tweak our definitions of succeeding
we only need to listen to our hearts and
synchronize our visions of tomorrow with
the rhythms that they’re beating we only
need to do what people do and fall in
love with ourselves we human beings are
unique in a productive versatility of
feeling and we do crazy things like
writing symphonies and reading our
realities are molded by the fictions we
believe in that’s what makes us
different from a Gibbon or a tree chimp
a kitten or a sleek Minka chicken or a
seizure and everything hinges on our
capacity to dream anyway you get the
picture there’s some things we need to
think
[Applause]
Thanks Thanks um one more okay
I was hoping you’d say yes okay well and
well I’m aware that that one is like
kind of more of a protest in a
celebration and so I’m going to finish
with more of a celebration um just send
you a sentence for smelling and thirsty
this is thanks so much for having me
it’s been a real privilege and honor to
be a part of an event like this and yeah
without further ado this is a poem could
love and it’s about left barren badly
everybody say love
louder on the count of four love two
three four everybody feel loved
quietly on the counter for when to
[Music]
everybody say love everybody say love
peace and I believe you can drink love
straight if you’ve got the right goblet
I believe that I believe you can take
love to work if you’ve got the right
Tupperware and you can eat that for
lunch as long as you keep some space in
your stomach spare I believe you can
make love blech you just need to pluck
up the courage to say something
heartfelt and honest I believe we can
all find the answer to what is love we
just need to quit asking our logics the
science is hardly as hard as for rocket
she haven’t even got to go to classes at
college merely give your souls eyes
glasses of polish and search the way
that people do for car keys and wallets
ie start with your pockets it won’t be
there but don’t despair remain calm as
you forage through the truest love’s
love a game of hide-and-seek so just
take your time the keys to play the part
of the novice being a human being is
bizarre be astonished unfasten the
clasps of your locket
by which I mean let flabbergasted air
pass past the gargoyles guarding your
locked lips and if the mood moves your
arms and your coccyx well then by all
means extemporary dance naked but for a
garland of olives green garlic stuffed
olives excuse me I digress as usual all
I’m trying to say is that love is a
trillion times ten times as high
technical and useful as any conceivable
future pairs of spooky sci-fi spectacles
by Google
I believe you can dance on the surface
of love’s legs and so the wise owl
flying by the full moon the silver
lights views are bewildered by Rouge and
still have dry shoes if you spill the
right moves moreover you can glide
similar to penguins on ice into love’s
boundless ocean never to re-emerge
love’s a real cheap date Israeli a debit
to reimburse you can pay the price of
Love’s devotion and never need a purse
in fact it probably even helps if you
haven’t many pennies for dispersed more
often than not money makes the world’s
natural pure wedding scheme reverse on
another footnote affection had an
eloquence that never needed words as
much as I would like to think the book
of love novella would have said it’s
peace inverse I know the lyrics it
delivers and more like those whispered
by the larynx of the leopard when it
serenely purrs more like the mesmeric
rustling of the leaves the gentlest
breeze disturbs I believe that love can
find a field of more hills where once
lay a mountain range of obstacles
demanding to be stressfully traversed I
believe love will free from the flesh
and bone confines of yourself like
melodies escaping from the slender beaks
of birds
forgive me I’m waffling long story short
inform the length of the tongue of a
young giraffe so the length of a thumb
has been cut in half I believe love is a
love is a backrub in a bubble bath not
wanting to be around the shrubbery green
and lush I mean to put it in the shows
of a couple of pecan nuts
ever since I learnt love from the mother
whose tea I sucked
I’ve believed being humans a wonderful
piece of luck
I believe peace is truth and love is the
key to stuff thus I believe in nothing
but peace and thanks
you
[Applause]
you
searching and by way of an introduction
this is kind of about me yeah about a
few years ago when I was living in
France trying to work out what the whole
being a life thing is about I’m just
searching for an angle I’m just
searching for a voice I’m just searching
for a way to fit in I’m just searching
for a reason to rejoice when I am just
trying to treat breathing as a choice
and smiling as a must and just mining
for a diamond in the rough
I guess I’m just trying to find
happiness yeah pretty much I’m just
trying to be happy and I am just
searching for a true fact for one that I
can really understand it feels kind of
like like searching for a ruby in the
dirt or for a church in the city of the
Damned and really I’m just trying to be
a man a good one
I guess I just wish I had a plan a good
one really I’m just trying to be a good
son I’m just trying to be a good son I’m
just trying to make my peace with the
struggle progress is gradual needless to
mumble it’s like my life is a Street
full of rubble and I haven’t got time
just to lean on the shovel last night I
felt sleep in my duffle with a head full
of schemas and a cheek full of stubble
that’s good keep writing describing the
puzzle I needn’t remind you the mind is
a muscle flex and release flex and
release make hay while the Sun burns
read through the trees Western resume as
soon as it rears its head in the East
I’m just trying to make sense of my
dreams
searching for strength who so for a
lesson to teach also for a place to lie
down they have quite a collection of
tensions to ease I’m just trying to flow
on the temperate sea
years of wisdom hope affection please
just trying to cherish this westerly
breeze as it Pinkins my nose and
caresses my cheeks I’m just trying to go
the whole length of this beach without
once wondering what’s it all for
and when will it cease and who first
tried pecking with elegant beaks and
wearing gray feathers instead of a
fleece was it the heavens the eggs or
the geese these are the questions that
fetch me from sleep stressing me out
like big chunks of celery wedged in my
teeth I’m just searching for things that
are constant I’m just searching for
things that are real I’m just trying to
make sense of my problems just trying to
sum up the things that I feel things I
desire things I believe in trying to
treat breathing as being intrinsically
freeing and smiling as winning
graciously I’m just trying to keep
grinning basically I’m just searching
for ways to express the bittersweet
taste on my tongue and the similarly
melancholy ache in my chest run and not
feel hate for the angel of death I’m
just searching for ways to impress
tourists and my mum my dad were the
friends that I found I’m just trying to
make them proud I’m just trying to make
them proud really I’m just trying to be
a man a good one I guess I just wish I
had a plan a good one really I’m just
trying to be a good son I’m just trying
to be a good son thanks
[Applause]
Thanks
I’m enjoying my read but I’ve been told
I’m not allowed to leave it I’m out of
the camera maybe at some point I summon
the bravery and okay something slightly
more intellectual now sort sort of and
this this poem was a commission for an
organization in bath called five by five
by five equals creativity and they asked
me to to write this to kind of like to
sort of sum up their their general ethos
also the ethos of their patron his again
Robinson who he he’s like an educational
theorist a leading one and he he did it
he did a TED talk in particular that’s
got like 14 million views which was kind
of the starting point for this poem and
I let it speak for itself but it’s
basically about creativity and education
and the need for kind of the imagination
and stuff to be at the heart of the way
that we we educate our children and and
I guess it’s also about the fact that
that isn’t really the way things are
being done at the moment it’s could
people fall in love
people fall in love make love and have
babies babies grow up great speeds for
instance say you were a toddler in the
80s by now you’re probably working in a
job that gives you brain freeze gagging
for a pay increase scrabbling for cash
enough in order to ensure you can
assuredly procure for your family its
basic needs life it’s a hard slog but
you’re a fighter you’ve made it to
middle age at least even if it does sort
of feel like increasingly you waste a
lot of days and weeks but making
reasonable money from what you’re good
at from the thing you must love from
what best corresponds with your nature
please it sounds like the stuff of some
make believes we aren’t oh special
God doesn’t pay for the streets when you
heard the university’s had opted to
raise their fees it made you want to cry
like a two-year-old you got tripped and
grazed his knees and in any case the
girl ain’t even going to get a place if
she doesn’t get the grade she needs but
kids should be angling for A’s and B’s
instead was this jeez Louise
report cards filling up with ADHD z’ and
E’s doctor doctor I have a trepidation
my daughter doesn’t really match with
education you sir need a batch of
medication from here on in it’s just
damage limitation two people fall in
love and make love thus producing a
princess a little madam my point being
the life and death cycle of humans
begins with a fit of passion surely then
we should all be splintering the utter
trying to innovate a different pattern a
system not explicitly constructed to
render creativity inexplicably distant
conspicuously absent people fall in love
make love and have babies that’s
providing hard proof that miracles can
happen which is good to know because
that’s what we all are going to need if
we reinvigorate the listless
interactions currently driving entire
classrooms – dribbling distraction in it
true the children’s brains are
predisposed to his vigorous expansion it
seems a pinch peculiar to pickle them
like brenston they take their
curiosities and cram them in the
standardized jars our kids have reared
like battery hen 6-4 individualist
conformity the very worst of both worlds
swiveling in tendon and when they’re
growing we throw him off a cliff into a
chasm and what about the teachers
helplessly afflicting stupefaction on
the kids in their command the poor
things no it is in any of their four if
the system gives them no scope for
wisdom and acts as if it thinks them as
ignorant as plankton leave it to the
drizzle of indifference to dampen any
lingering scraps of their natural-born
instincts for independent action people
fall in love it’s an age-old in a bid to
be saved Souls merge bravely giving up
the safety of their well defined
outlines to desires melting pots they
collaboratively tie themselves in knots
and the odds are firmly on that pretty
soon they’ll be hitting Google up for
baby names and buying lots of tiny
velvet frocks as well as flat-pack IKEA
climbing frames and cuts the riddle then
naturally submitted for dismantling has
to be exactly what planet will this
infant be inhabiting in precisely which
paradigmatic realms will this little one
be languishing the world is in crisis
all its resources due to pillaging a
dwindling with the ring vanishing we’ve
been indiscriminately gambling on
destiny for too long and that is us
there isn’t imminent as part of our
immediate predicament it’s happening the
fact is if we are to avert the fatal
fate towards which we giddily are
galloping we’ll need to ease up on the
systemic shackling of free Thor
experimentation originality okay if I
may
I think I’d like to finish off by
reeling off a short list of applicable
platitudes the truth is in the seeking
we are what we as is the future we are
feeding learning comes the influences
instinctively as sleeping every single
inch then is inimitably fleeting thus
this in every instant is for ceasing for
gripping and for squeezing of course
it’s all just a little piece of history
repeating that goes without whispering
or shrieking scribbling or chipping or
tweeting but surely with a little bit of
innovative scheming we could rustle up
some rituals that enrich the thing with
meaning we haven’t got to reinvent up
the principles of wheeling we only need
to tweak our definitions of succeeding
we only need to listen to our hearts and
synchronize our visions of tomorrow with
the rhythms that they’re beating we only
need to do what people do and fall in
love with ourselves we human beings are
unique in a productive versatility of
feeling and we do crazy things like
writing symphonies and reading our
realities are molded by the fictions we
believe in that’s what makes us
different from a Gibbon or a tree chimp
a kitten or a sleek Minka chicken or a
seizure and everything hinges on our
capacity to dream anyway you get the
picture there’s some things we need to
think
[Applause]
Thanks Thanks um one more okay
I was hoping you’d say yes okay well and
well I’m aware that that one is like
kind of more of a protest in a
celebration and so I’m going to finish
with more of a celebration um just send
you a sentence for smelling and thirsty
this is thanks so much for having me
it’s been a real privilege and honor to
be a part of an event like this and yeah
without further ado this is a poem could
love and it’s about left barren badly
everybody say love
louder on the count of four love two
three four everybody feel loved
quietly on the counter for when to
[Music]
everybody say love everybody say love
peace and I believe you can drink love
straight if you’ve got the right goblet
I believe that I believe you can take
love to work if you’ve got the right
Tupperware and you can eat that for
lunch as long as you keep some space in
your stomach spare I believe you can
make love blech you just need to pluck
up the courage to say something
heartfelt and honest I believe we can
all find the answer to what is love we
just need to quit asking our logics the
science is hardly as hard as for rocket
she haven’t even got to go to classes at
college merely give your souls eyes
glasses of polish and search the way
that people do for car keys and wallets
ie start with your pockets it won’t be
there but don’t despair remain calm as
you forage through the truest love’s
love a game of hide-and-seek so just
take your time the keys to play the part
of the novice being a human being is
bizarre be astonished unfasten the
clasps of your locket
by which I mean let flabbergasted air
pass past the gargoyles guarding your
locked lips and if the mood moves your
arms and your coccyx well then by all
means extemporary dance naked but for a
garland of olives green garlic stuffed
olives excuse me I digress as usual all
I’m trying to say is that love is a
trillion times ten times as high
technical and useful as any conceivable
future pairs of spooky sci-fi spectacles
by Google
I believe you can dance on the surface
of love’s legs and so the wise owl
flying by the full moon the silver
lights views are bewildered by Rouge and
still have dry shoes if you spill the
right moves moreover you can glide
similar to penguins on ice into love’s
boundless ocean never to re-emerge
love’s a real cheap date Israeli a debit
to reimburse you can pay the price of
Love’s devotion and never need a purse
in fact it probably even helps if you
haven’t many pennies for dispersed more
often than not money makes the world’s
natural pure wedding scheme reverse on
another footnote affection had an
eloquence that never needed words as
much as I would like to think the book
of love novella would have said it’s
peace inverse I know the lyrics it
delivers and more like those whispered
by the larynx of the leopard when it
serenely purrs more like the mesmeric
rustling of the leaves the gentlest
breeze disturbs I believe that love can
find a field of more hills where once
lay a mountain range of obstacles
demanding to be stressfully traversed I
believe love will free from the flesh
and bone confines of yourself like
melodies escaping from the slender beaks
of birds
forgive me I’m waffling long story short
inform the length of the tongue of a
young giraffe so the length of a thumb
has been cut in half I believe love is a
love is a backrub in a bubble bath not
wanting to be around the shrubbery green
and lush I mean to put it in the shows
of a couple of pecan nuts
ever since I learnt love from the mother
whose tea I sucked
I’ve believed being humans a wonderful
piece of luck
I believe peace is truth and love is the
key to stuff thus I believe in nothing
but peace and thanks
you
[Applause]
you
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