It has all the makings of a meltdown when you start watching Taika Waititi’s TED talk from back in 2010. He didn’t seem to know what he was doing, what he was going to talk about, or even why he was on the stage. In some ways he looked almost ready to cut and run without finishing the talk. But when he started talking about creativity and art he started to hit his stride a bit. His nerves seemed to settle down a bit and he finally found his voice, which was kind of nice because he started rolling and making his way forward.
There doesn’t seem to be a lot of unifying points to his talk but if you really listen he tells you what he’s talking about and what his vision derives from. It’s all a matter of perspective and how one’s creativity is sparked from different experiences that are taken from his own strange perspective. If you’ve ever really thought about what it takes to create something, no matter if it’s an invention or a story it takes a certain perspective from which to look upon and understand the world around you.
Creativity is a strange and sometimes very hard thing to understand. It’s a process that doesn’t make a lot of sense at times and makes a person seem to be extremely odd and not at all able to make sense. Taika definitely has that going for him it would seem when it comes to being creative, though when it comes to being able to express himself he also seems to feel the need to compartmentalize everything in such a way that it bears some semblance of order even if he continues to ramble on in a way that makes almost no sense to anyone else. That he’s an artist is pretty easy to understand, but listening to him and trying to discern just what he’s saying is a whole different matter that one really has to listen to in order to divine any true message from.
That’s not to say that he has no message. It simply feels as though he doesn’t want to be there and in his own way is attempting to get through the speech as quickly and painlessly as possible. Being one of the many people that doesn’t like getting up in front of others I can understand this, but usually if you’re going to do so in front of larger number of people it’s best to be able to actually stick to the plan and talk about what you feel is important. Taika gets to the point eventually in a very roundabout way, which isn’t horrible but still gives several people in the audience the idea to get up and walk out, which is not something a speaker wants to see but has to roll with at times.
He’s not the worst speaker in the world but he could benefit from developing a stronger presence when addressing a group on a subject that is obviously near and dear to his heart.
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