When I was at Readercon, Nicole Taylor and I battled with public transport (slow slow bus in the burbs and then navigating America’s oldest subway system) to see Amanda Palmer do a ninja gig that was her audition tape/first practice for the TED talk. It’s amazing to see how she developed and honed her talk and I wonder how many times she practiced it, improvised with it and tuned it.

This talk made me cry… it’s been a crying kind of day :-)

I’m so glad I got to see both versions. Sometimes my heart is full of so many things, so what comes out is not my best articulation… far from it. Amanda Palmer’s talk reminds me that when you have something to say, an philosophy and experience to articulate, practice helps, weaving in new experiences as they arise, continually exploring, speaking and connecting together narratives. That to speak well, you must first speak, listen, respond, speak, listen and keep having conversations. It is only through speaking that she has polished this gem, it would not be such a fine talk if she had just bottled it up and waited until she had the perfect words.