Everything is improvisation — including this TED Talk | Reggie Watts
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You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu, and I feel like there's no way I can really do today's talk justice with a simple introduction. That's because it comes from musician and comedian Reggie Watts, who is a true treasure in his improvisational work and in his artistry. He's so creative, and he gives a cross between a talk and a performance that

that you'll just have to hear after the break. Support for this show comes from Mint Mobile. My daughter is actually on a Mint Mobile plan. And you know when you discover a new binge-worthy TV show or a song that just becomes an earworm that you play on repeat and you have to share it with your friends? Well...

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It's clear that Palo Verde doesn't just generate energy, they generate positive change. Learn more at paloverde.com. And now, our TED Talk of the day. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Certainly it's a pleasure to be back here, all of you guys here. Certainly it's a special show here, TED. You know, TED is one of those places that makes me feel like I'm somewhere, and that means something these days. Now, people ask me, why start like that?

I don't really have an answer, but all I can say is that I'm really motivated by something called improvisation. Many of you are familiar with improvisation because you've heard the word and sometimes that's enough. But what is it really? Improvisation. Why am I speaking like this? How do I really sound? I don't know. But I try as much as I can to be as truthful about who I am in the moment, even if I'm using different voices.

I know that there are times when some of us are wondering what is truth and what isn't. But here's a quick summary. Truth is the intersection of two different things that are constantly colliding for no other reason than the fact that they need to collide in a moment of perception. Why does perception come into it? Because that's super cool and no one loves perception more than people who are conscious. LAUGHTER

So I've been dealing with improvisation all of my life. It's hard for me to write things down. Ted was so gracious to allow me to come up here on the stage when they keep asking, can we see that script? I'm sorry, I don't have that. But after I perform it, then you'll have that.

But they've been so kind to just trust me and let me come up here and do my thing. And I guess I wanted to explain a little bit about improvisation in the way that I think of it as I'm doing it, which is improvisation to me is something that some people are very fearful of when they think about going up and just speaking on the fly. But in actuality, you're doing it all the time. A conversation that you're having with a friend is improvisation, unless it's scripted and that would be a weird friendship. But I suppose those do exist.

Improvisation is something that I love very much because it is the center of existence to me. And for me, that allows me to reformat any situation at any given time. Because I do think about situations where you might feel imprisoned in some way. Perhaps you did something strange and it wasn't thought of as very cool, and then you end up in prison. You always have your mind, and you can always recontextualize anything at any given time.

And so I think that's how I lead my life. I like to, you know, there's a scene out of the airplane movie. I don't know if you guys remember this movie, Airplane, by the Zucker Brothers, right? There was a moment where one of the air traffic controllers was handed a piece of paper and the person said, what can you make of this? And they say, well, I could make a hat, a brooch, a pterodactyl. And that's how I lead my life. I...

Anything can be anything at any given time. You don't have to accept things for face value. And so because of that, I do things that I really enjoy that may not necessarily exist, but I try to bring them out if I can. So I'd like to show you an element of improvisation that I would like to show you, as I've just said. All right, so we're at this station right here, and I'm going to start by doing something like this. Hmm.

Now because this is looping, it gives me time to think about what I want to do next. So I think I'll probably add, who knows, maybe a bass-like thing.

Let's see if I can remember what a bass looks like. Okay, now that'll tell me what it sounds like. Now maybe I'd like to subdivide. And then I might just stop.

What is interesting about improvisation is that you can constantly do it all the time. So if you're ever in a situation where you really hate where you're working, just realize that you're constantly improvising. Even when you have to go to reach for a pencil on the desk,

you're still thinking about how you're going to pick up that pencil. Sometimes it's a huge ordeal. You know, you have to actually lift your hand from where it was resting on your lap, and you have to avoid the desk, because if you just directly raised your hand, you would just come in contact with some wood, and then you'd have to move around that and navigate it, and then you'd have to grab that pencil and know where it is and generally the feel of it so that you're familiar with it and you know that you're grabbing the right thing if you happen to not be looking at it while you're just kind of gracefully handing someone something from another desk. So...

With that, I would like to demonstrate how that comes into being by doing this.

So again, that's an example of a way that you can sample the environment around you. So this is what I expect all of you guys to be doing at the end of this session. All the things that you're hearing, just remember them and reflect them back in a way that you think is creative, as though you've been given a box of Legos that have been dismantled and no longer a part of any particular package that you bought previously, so the instructions make no longer any sense, and just dump them on the ground and see what you can come up with. ♪

And now back to the episode. Now, because of that principle, I have adapted three out of six of the, yeah, three out of six of the former principles that I used to talk about at TED Talks. And this is my seventh TED Talk.

usually skip the last two and I'm going to include these two right now by going back two measures in time and reallocating that space in a way that might be a little bit more comprehensive to some of you who are wondering what exactly is happening. I don't know if you remember this song but I think it'll come back pretty quick.

Yeah, yeah, right. This, um, right.

All the people at TED doing all that they do when they're doing it well, when they're doing it do. Like technology, yeah, it's real cool and stuff. I love my entertainment and my design as well. Yo, I'm launching satellites to monitor the methane. Everyone's looking, they're looking at all the methane. You can't complain if you're monitoring the methane. The methane's the method of the madness, you know. Light a match, see what happens with it.

That methane, you never know. Sometimes it makes you go insane. The methane is the answer. I think it may be. I don't know. Listen, what you're taking me is wrong. I don't know.

So now you can improvise anytime you want. Have a good time. Thank you.

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Hi, I'm Bilal Sadoo, host of TED's newest podcast, The TED AI Show, where I speak with the world's leading experts, artists, journalists, to help you live and thrive in a world where AI is changing everything. I'm stoked to be working with IBM, our official sponsor for this episode.

Now, the path from Gen AI pilots to real-world deployments is often filled with roadblocks, such as barriers to free data flow. But what if I told you there's a way to deploy AI wherever your data lives? With Watson X, you can deploy AI models across any environment, above the clouds helping pilots navigate flights, and on lots of clouds helping employees automate tasks, on-prem so designers can access proprietary data,

and on the edge so remote bank tellers can assist customers. Watson X helps you deploy AI wherever you need it, so you can take your business wherever it needs to go. Learn more at ibm.com slash Watson X and start infusing intelligence where you need it the most. That was musician and comedian Reggie Watts speaking at TED 2024. If you're curious about TED's curation, find out more at ted.com slash curation guidelines.

And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This episode was produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Autumn Thompson, and Alejandra Salazar. It was mixed by Christopher Fazi-Bogan. Additional support from Emma Taubner and Daniela Balarezo. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.

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