Taylor
when I say Taylor you say gang Taylor
Taylor Taylor Taylor Taylor Taylor
Taylor Taylor Taylor Taylor Taylor thank
you so much
thank you for being here these are not
the eyes these are the lenses the mind
lives here inside the visual cortex
which is the reason that we don’t see
things the way they we just see things
the way we are you’re not some fly or
fly trapped in a jar you are everything
not just a star supervision see you on
the other side the necessity to see
yourself on the other side of your
problems of any problems of all problems
is a power that we all have that we were
gifted with upon our creation to have
the vision to see through the obstacles
the brick walls pass the hindrances the
obstacles through the people that would
when you look at me you see someone who
is popular a money maker relatively
healthy hello handsome but what you
don’t probably see is a little boy from
the south side of Chicago who his mommy
did love him so she broke his nose and
blacked his eyes and took all the skin
off the back of his right hand when he
was six years old with the iron some
people see a privileged kid that may
have bullied in the school or bully
someone they know or ostentation
boyfriend broke their heart because we
don’t see things the way they are we see
things the way we are my mother never
looked at me with loving eyes and
because she did not activate certain
parts of my brain with her gaze I
couldn’t see the synapses firing behind
her eyes in her real eye in her brain
that would have activated certain neural
patterns and some naps at synapse I so I
the first one very difficult for a
little kid dyslexia dyslexia dealing
with the miss ordering of letters in the
lexicon the second one dysgraphia the
inability to translate images from my
mind through my hands onto a canvas be a
dyscalculia the inability to remember
numerical sequence anything past three
numbers I’m lost
so you can imagine how difficult this
was in school and when you’re six years
old and you should be at a first grade
level and you’re not and the teacher
says what’s wrong with you boy and your
oxy says restaurant with you boy and the
neighbors say what’s wrong with you boy
and you have no answer it’s difficult it
feels impossible at around the same age
five or six my mother started to engage
with me from a physical standpoint we
started with spankings and moved to what
we call whippings and then it that’s
where all I could do is try to defend
myself cover up as much as I could until
she got tired of hitting my hands and
say uncover so I had to take the
brutality face on and when you’re a
little kid and your face is falling all
the time and you have to make excuses
and say oh some boys beating me up oh
that’s because some boys beat me up Oh
some boys caught me on the way to the
store and beat me up
Oh on my way to school I got beat up
though when you have a mother like I
have who is very good gory
and incredibly intelligent and could
tell a story better than anybody
it silenced the cries of a little boy on
Southside Chicago with language
challenges those challenges became my
constant I began to see things
differently I had to I was forced to I
studied until I was eight years old till
I forced myself to read from the board a
second grade without stuttering from
Friday to Monday morning I told myself I
was going to not study not that I didn’t
stomach so I’m stuttering now while
developed a very rare skill called
circumlocution when I was able to bypass
my frontal lobe which is responsible for
me tearing out words do certain gestures
and using my breathing techniques and my
xiphoid process to meet her out the
words so that was the first thing I
conquered writing was still difficult my
handwriting was atrocious because of my
dysgraphia so I would do a plus student
effort to be a D student wasn’t easy and
my father who worked all the time he
didn’t see that the D evolution of his
son from a Scholastic standpoint was
from his wife because he was in love and
he couldn’t see that his wife was
destroying his son because we don’t see
things the way they we just see
the way we are so my father who would
have been my protector became what is
known in the clinical world as the
unprotected parent so I grew disdain for
but there’s a certain vision that you
can have that you can choose not to look
at yourself through the eyes of your
abuser your attacker your oppressor you
can choose to turn these off and turn
equals a soul that’s blind you can be
vision impaired but see more than a
person who’s had the gift of sight the
entire life so I began to see myself as
beautiful every time something broke
inside of me I collected it every time I
cried out for mercy and those cries
weren’t an answer something to me broke
but I saved it I gathered it I swept it
up I stapled it I glued it all back
together and sadly and the first time I
heard that I was beautiful I told it to
myself and when I did that another world
opened up and I’d had another condition
called synesthesia synesthesia is when
two or more senses meld together to make
one new sense so this is pretty much how
I see everything that I think except
there are like a billion images in their
letters if I learn a new language or
come in contact with new language that
language implements itself into this art
and that’s how I make music the melody I
just sang I made it up on the plane this
morning
and I can do five of them here if I
needed to because everything that I come
in contact when my mind has a sound it
has a melody to it so I actually can see
sounds so the things that were my
inhibitors became my gifts because I
told myself I was beautiful so that
meant everything that I had had value
everything about me had value and if it
has value it can be a resource and I can
become resourceful with resources and I
could build my own self I could make it
the person that I want it to be I could
make someone that was brave and strong
and courageous and outgoing imagine when
you are unconfident you stumble you trip
a lot so you’re called clumsy you’re
uncertain how to move things in your
general vicinity they call you slow but
those metered steps and those
intentional movements served me well in
doing what I do for a living now which
is writing and creating music and those
broken parts me learning how to put
those broken parts together allow me to
have superior problem-solving skills
which is creativity and now I work with
something most creative people in the
world
Kanye West Beyonce
John Legend I don’t ravine with Khalifa
Taylor guy amber rose and we get
together to find solutions to the broken
things we see in our world with our
supervision
I saw another meet on the outside the
other side of my issues and my problems
I saw a giant where a dwarf would have
existed super vision I turned on my
superpower the only one I had I
activated it this one we all have some
people can jump out the gymnasium that
wasn’t me I didn’t have that power but I
had super vision and now I supervise
others and with that vision me and my
friends that I just mentioned we go
around the world looking for people who
are resourceful who have been broken and
learned to fix the broken parts and turn
into something magnanimous something
beautiful something useful and there’s
some companies that we have found and as
others we were looking for we are
certain that there’s millions the body
believes everything you say see those
broken parts as beautiful as valuable as
a resource because those of us who have
been broken we have the ability the
uncanny ability to fix things and
resurrect and write things we don’t see
things the way they we just see things
the way we are you’re not some firefly
in a jar
you are everything not just good music [Applause]