On the road again: TED@PalmSprings, day 3

I enjoyed yesterday quite a bit, but I thought today's sessions were in general better. I found almost all of them thought provoking and quite a few of them very moving. I won't try to recap them all--I'm too tired, sorry--but I do want to highlight two.

Elizabeth Gilbert gave an excellent talk that centered on the demons that plague writers (and, she assumed, as do I, other creative types) as they try to work. In her case, it was the fact that it is most likely that her next book is nowhere near as big a hit as her current one, the major bestseller, Eat, Pray, Love. She discussed the ways the ancient Greeks and Romans viewed creative muses and ultimately suggested that if we accept--or pretend, depending on what you believe--that your muse, your genius (in the ancient sense), is something outside yourself, then you can relax a bit more. I don't know that the solution is at all useful, but her exploration of this problem resonated with me, as I'm sure you would expect it would.

The last session of the day brought the awarding of the TED Prizes. One went to maestro José Antonio Abreu, who organized in Venezula a way, el sistema, of bringing music to kids poor and rich alike. Today, the result is over a hundred youth orchestras, with hundreds and hundreds of children involved and stars that have gone on to major musical jobs. One of those, Gustavo Dudamel, is the conductor of the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra and will soon be the music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Abreu's wish is to bring el sistema to the U.S. as a way to engage more children in music--and help more children. It's an admirable and achievable goal, and I think the TED community might really be able to help with it.

After the award, we went live via satellite to Caracas, where Abreu said a few words and then Dudamel conducted a very large youth orchestra in two amazing, powerful, deeply moving pieces. At the end, we all stood and applauded for minutes. I was blown away by the quality of the playing, the power of the pieces (neither of whose names I got), and the intense passion of both Dudamel himself and all the young people in the orchestra.

As often happens at TED, I left that session with my heart full and my head a bit confused over what to make of everything and how I might fit into it all. I consider that confusion a good disruptive force and more than enough reason to come here.