TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) is an annual event that presents individuals doing extraordinary work in these three areas. I have posted several wonderful videos and the one below featuring multimedia director and performer Natasha Tsako is another standout.

Natasha is a Swiss born artist living in Miami and performing there and around the world. Her appearance at TED last year featured excerpts from her one-woman show, UP WAKE, that integrates sound, computer generated images and a live stage performance. Her performance is amazing and her empowering concluding comments on the video are powerful. I have extracted them so readers can appreciate their depth. Enjoy!

“A bitterwseet, funny, tragic world with existentialist shades of Samuel Beckett and especially Marcel Marceau.     “Octavio Roca, Miami New Times

There is a revolution
It’s a human and technological revolution
It’s motion and emotion
It’s information.

It’s visual, musical, sensorial, conceptual, it’s Universal

It’s beyond words and numbers:
It’s happening.

to create intelligent, meaningful and extra-ordinary work.

It’s now.

Natasha Tsakos
president and founder of ZERO llc
Learn more about Natasha at natashatsakos.com

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, February 26, 2010

What sort of species is this? What are we made of, really?

Here is what you already know: We are preternaturally jaded and fearful, burned-out to the core. We are ever at the mercy of our myriad dreams of destruction and death, ravaging us like salivating demonhounds in the night. And not in the good way.

Poll after poll, study after study says the human animal is a fragile, troubled creature. Our bodies are a million ways amazing, but they are no match for the ruthless machinations of time and industry, freeway crashes and health care collapse. We are held together by rubber bands and duct tape, shot through with 10,000 prescription meds, therapies and surgeries, as we offer a thousand nervous prayers for that unsettling chronic pain to please, please, please subside, just a little.

Poisons abound, in our food, furniture, the very air we breathe. We are crammed like a Texas Wal-Mart with so many chemicals and toxins, afflicted by so many ailments and mental illnesses that it would take a book the size of Freud’s fetish dungeon to list them all.

What’s more, we keep creating new ones, inventing and defining amazing ailments to suffer from. You ever seen a copy of the DSM-IV? A medical encyclopedia? The ingredient list on a bag of Chee-tos? Sweet diabetic Jesus. Is anyone truly healthy, even keeled, just right? Don’t ask your doctor.

It’s not just us. Oh how we despise and mistrust our leaders, our own government, as well. Here’s a poll: fully 86 percent of us think our government is broken at a very deep level, and fully 86 percent of us are exactly right. “What sort of insane system is this?” we like to wail into the Void. “Who the hell came up with such a nefarious scheme? Oh right.”

But wait. What have we here? Aww, goddammit. That’s right — it’s the flipside, the other half, the perky everlasting upswing to your ever-depressing downward spiral. Who the hell let all this eternal sunshine in here? Guess we’ll just have to make the best of it.

And that’s exactly what we do. For here is another set of polls and surveys, studies and insights that reveal, happy birthday and wouldn’t you know it, that we are one hopeful, perpetually optimistic creature of joy and positivism, always looking on the bright side, always hoping for a better outcome, the yappy little dog wagging its tale at the approaching hurricane.

Here is the selfsame aforementioned poll, revealing that, despite how 86 percent think government is totally busted, 81 percent also think it can be nicely fixed. Yes, really. Continue Reading »

The Universe speaks in many languages, but in only one voice.
The language is not English, or French or Chinese or African.
It speaks the language of hope.
It speaks in the language of trust, the language of strength and the language of compassion.
It is the language of the heart and the language of the soul.
But always it is the same voice…
The voice of our ancestors speaking through us.
The voice of our inheritors waiting to be born.
It is the small, still voice that says we are One.
No matter the blood, no matter the skin, no matter the country.
We are One.
No matter the pain, no matter the darkness, no matter the loss, no matter the fear.
We are One.
Here, gathered together in common cause,
We agree to recognize this singular truth and this singular rule…
That we must be kind to one and other…
Because each voice enriches us and ennobles us
And each voice lost diminishes us.
We are the voice of the Universe.
The soul of Creation,
The fire that will light the day to a better future.
We are One.

~ Rev. Naomi Shifra

Precious rainbows in the sky, rejoice and glimmer within mine eye.

The ancient knowledge you withhold of worlds forgotten, worlds of old.

Your beams of light penetrate my mind, and curiosity seeks another time to find a curtain so tightly woven with all secrets waiting to unravel, unfold.

Behold, the sun comes peeking through, each moment rising for a greater view.

And as its light shines within the secret curtain begins to dim.

To reveal the truth known by all, in the depth of minds the search begins.

As rainbows colors come together, one white light, a crystallization.

In this moment of elation I truly know we are creation

by Denice Lewis

Tip of the Day:
Seth Godin, the innovator, writer, and blogger extraordinaire, persuaded 70 other innovators, writers, and bloggers to participate in a project he calls What Matters Now.The idea is simple: Each of us suggests one word — literally one word — that all of us should think about in 2010, and then takes one page to explain why and how that word matters. The result is an intriguing, inspiring, and at times downright moving collection of unconventional wisdom that is available free to everyone. [ more ]

From CharityFocus.org and Daily Good.