Session 1: ReBoot-interstitial, Ben Zander

To know Ben Zander is not just to love him but to get antsy excited when he's around because music and excitement are coming soon.

Ben's talking. No, he's gonna sing. We're singing happy birthday to a random person named Ross who happens to have a birthday soon.

"Now let's do it again and better." Where does the emphasis lie? (lay?) ahem. belong. Where does the emphasis belong. [Author's note: stupid editor. I told you to lie down and be quiet while I'm blogging. Lay down. Lie down. Dammit, down!]

Happy Birthday to YOU.


.....aaaand SIGNAL LOST! Long Beach is singing without us.

Awesome save! A random PalmSpring-er just jumped up and lead us in singing happy birthday to YOU to one of our own. Awesome-awesome-awesome. [Later we'll meet him, he's the outstandingly enthusiastic John Bates, seen here.]

...and the feed is back! We sang again with Ben leading not just to Ross but to the possibility of the infinitely impacting a person in the celebration of their life.

As Ben Zander would do things, it wasn't just a stirring version of happy birthday but a challenge to always sing those words that way.

Ben then said that we have these choices in life: resignation, anger or possibility.

TED is a celebration of possibility and it's the 25 birthday of TED, so with
Richard Saul Wurman (founder of TED) and Chris Anderson (curator and current owner) on stage, we sang happy birthday together. I am not going to admit to getting teary-eyed, but Richard did so I'll deflect attention to him being moved. I'd say it's Ben who moves us when he gets up every year, but it's not just him. It's him calling out to what's in us.

Cheers to possibility and possibly blogging sans edit for 4 days.

xoxochelo

If you want to know more about Ben Zander, read about him, listen to him on TED, read "the book I co-wrote that my wife wrote", or best of all, go see him in action. Before TED is over, his wife will have is in rapt attention too.