It’s hard, I imagine, to be a genius and funny. She is both and I’m an even bigger fan now. Loved learning the meaning behind my favorite title.

She's right. I had a cancer scare which made me rethink my whole life. I felt the urge to create, to draw and right. I felt that that was the right thing to do before I died.

To the people who snub their noses to this video, it is in essence, not about believing in the supernatural as a whole. It is about letting go and exploring different options in life. Well, Mrs Tan had a few preconceptions on what makes her life move when she visited that village. However, she had to let go of them in order to understand the villagers. She did and she was enlightened. However, this narrative is only about her. You are the ones to decide what drives your lives. 5 star'd :)

The Joy luck club is one of my favorites. It’s been about 5 years since I’ve read it but I still think about that book often.

Btw has anyone else noticed, that she gave a presentation of 20+ minutes while continually talking, without having a presentation paper or the powerpoint having any sufficient amount of text to remember text for? Pretty impressive right? Perhaps now the critics will see that creativity/randomness is pretty associative with memory and other skill as well ;)

When i watched joy luck club, i could see myself in some characters. May be the characters are all universal. We can trace ourselves back to our original being. The movie gave me joy, it gave me hope and it taught me lessons that i still continue to imply. Now that i want to write a book about my own personal feelings, how do i feel in things i am in, the question of why i am here? What is my purpose, why things are the way they are, joy luck club came to my mind. I wanted to see how Amy has written it, i wanted to get a sense of how writers write a thing. I stumbled upon this video and I got my answers. I could not expect more. Thank you very much. It was a pleasure meeting you this way at this time of my life. Bipin Thapa. Minnesota, USA

I enjoyed this because of her ability to share how she creates and her openness to not judging situations. I also like her questioning of whether something is a coincidence or whether it has always been then and we just focus on it.

Wonderful, witty and deep. 'How do I create something out of nothing' and 'while writing you notice disturbing hints from the universe' and many other noteworthy moments in the lecture. Thanks for posting this. Enjoyed the nature, nurture, nightmares formula she talks about

i found her entire speech mirrored my life in a very direct way, while being general enough to apply to anyone. i suppose if you aren't creative in the same type of way, and you aren't asking the same questions that she is asking, then you are creating for entirely different reasons and that's why you aren't going to get anything out of it. if you create for a sense of purity or self expression, then hearing someone talk about transcending cultural barriers isn't going to resonate with you.

pure genious, a conection between truth and happiness

I can't believe how funny this woman is. I love her ideas about belief and investing oneself to make a creative discovery. She is one of the first people I have heard really talk about synchronicity--where random things seem to align themselves in a way that seems to signal a pending epiphany.

Amy Tan' s generational charactors are wonderful.

wonderfully funny lecture now I know why I love her books so much, they make me laugh and make my whole day better. what a lovely gifted person

it's also a little like sailing a boat. you have to put up your sails to catch the wind. and once you are used to sailing, you get better at it. i always try to keep a few sheets to the wind! creativity is what moves my world and makes me, me.

She is funny in a very serious way. Simply genius.

I teach Tan for students.... teaching and listening to her is a rare honor thanks for the uploading brother.

Fantastic talk Amy ....really sharing beautiful insights.

Very Brilliant and keen understanding of universal truth and courage to share so creatively and with humor

I love her sense of humor!

I didn't understand it, but she's one of my favorite authors and is adorable.

Compassion is the end result of Amy Tan's creative effort that led to her great popularity and success, as she draws the conclusion in the very end of her TED talk on her ability to create a story. But, it is fun to follow her through the process of arriving to this.

12years old gem

I love her soooo much! What an interesting and beautiful person.

Does anyone know the venue for this talk? I can't even find it on the TED website. I want it for a citation list for my fiction writing class.

14:00 makes me think back to cellular memory. The hypothesis that all individual cells in our body can store memory and therefore memories can be passed down through generations via DNA, or as people put it back in the day, "through blood". Since scientists have discovered that individual neurons are where memories are truly stored, and neurons are only a very specific type of cell, this theory is not so unlikely, but it's hard to actually prove. Luckily for skeptics, this theory is easier to believe than that her grandmothers ghost whispered it to her.

@17:00 my guess is serendipity occurs when the subconscious mind is communicating ideas by analogy. it makes use of real world events that go on around us to help us solve our creative problems; we experience this as an extra jolt of meaning. (some people then mistakenly ascribe this to 'synchronicity' or some other supernatural cause)

this is perfect for my research paper, YAY!

i wished i could have attended her lecture in fresno when she came. now, i'll have to wait another hundred years.

@OceanAndSilence The internet is actually relighting my interest in the world, in education and becoming a better person. I'm learning new stuff every day, i think it's amazing if it wasn't for the internet I wud be sat wtching 'dumbed down' TV...rather than having my mind opened to all these fascinating lectures, talks all sorts of things!

22:30 Creativity is a pooch incarcerated in Amy Tan's bag for the last 22 minutes.

its when creativity has to be tampered with hindsight so as to suit the norms of societal propriety tha creativity takes activism takes a back seat

I wonder how long those rocks stayed up like that?

i love this lady!!

After watching this video I must say Amy Tan ticks all the boxes - for me.

Haha, I read her suff in my sophomore year for English. Never knew how funny it be to see someone you studied who isn't dead.

Amy Tan is AMAZING!

nice. sounds very much like the processes i a function and her comment of focus is helpful. life is interesting.

An excellent example of ambiguous convolution.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY Amy Tan :)

I love TED videos!

Unforgettable writer.

I think of it as a bubble. Once it pops, the fun don't stop.

I like this.

this is wonderful

basically creativity comes from love, her dog is nothing but a loving creature. Even depression is a matter of lost love, gaining or losing love, i guess creativity is hand in hand with love.

The best way to explain this is to dumb down consciousness to the level of electrical activity in the brain that is aware of its own electrical potential within its own ref-frame. It is this process of each one of us having our own ref-frame that gives the brain the concept of mind with each one of us having our own unique view of life from the centre of our own ref-frame. This is an invitation to see an artist theory of the physics of time!

I know. So rare to see more intelligent and thought out responses on youtube:) OK going to watch the vid now ;)

Awesome!

@RicRagsLive Meditating gets you to understand your own insignificance really lol. From the way you said that I take it that you've done a bit of it yourself. There's three different kinds: insight, concentration and loving-kindness. I've done quite a bit of it the past 6 months. You've hit the nail on the head by saying that it decreases mental noise. You get to observe all mental and external phenomena with great concentration and that increases your understanding of everything

Maybe I should read one of her books.

Would it be possible to reupload this in better quality? I only see a bunch of pixels

this sums up my entire philosophy of life.

@crudhousefull Yes I've meditated every day for the past 5 years. What I have enjoyed about it is it begins to take shape in your day to day life. What I mean to say is you can see things differently even when your eyes are open not just during the meditation. The labels and conceptualizations of meditation can drop away and you are left with stillness and space. I hope you are having a great day!

TELL HER to make Sagwa again i loved the show, still miss it

+KAI GETTES. Plus some people have a keen sense of gravity, minuscule digital pressure and balance where they can balance almost anything. Particularly impressive to me having not the slightest hint of any of these skills.

i copmletely agree with what she says about how we become creative out of a need of survival. this savage desire to find meaning and make things out of it is such a strong one.

@RicRagsLive So very very true. I was waiting for you to catch the fact that I haven't been meditating for the past couple of months lol. Meditate just once and you reach the equillibrium point and stay there for at least two or three days in my experience. Main plan today is to meditate. First day is the hardest after stopping for awhile. Sort of like working out huh? So impressive that you boxed. I remember karate as a kid and a Tae Kwon Do girl broke my leg LOL

This is highly sophisticated talk, dry sense of humor and witty. Not for everyone tho.

6:36 oh man, comic sans makes its way into the conversation

is any1 here from english 9

beautiful

@RicRagsLive I've actually been meditating off and on for the past 15 years, and been to a couple of retreats where you don't even speak for the duration of the stay. What you are experiencing superb, but that state of contentment and happiness is one of the traps of meditation. It's a temporary point that stunts the speed to whatever we might perceive as enlightenment. It's great if you're working and you don't have too much time for contemplation, dangerous because it's addictive

Amy Tan is one of my favorite authors, but I have to agree with the comments here that criticize the coherence of this presentation. Most of her points and personal illustrations find such coherence in her book The Opposite Of Fate. Of course she has much more time to develop those ideas in that memoir than she has in these few minutes..

this is true to an extent. and it appears that some people can do nothing, but repeat exactly what they and others have already done. but like you ask, "can anything really be new?" i ask, "isn't everything a little new, if not but just for the time in space in which it occurs?" all things are new again. and if it's not new for any other reason than it is the first time that someone else gets it, then that is a kind of new too! like that song "Fever." do you know the original or the cover?

@thissitesuxmytwat01 lol, look at the description.it kinda comes into perspective at the end... not too difficult to get.

@crudhousefull I find that as well. pretty much any experience during meditation is a double edged sword. You need to have them to move forward but you cannot become attached to any of them. it's not really about experience on the level of mind. It's not really about anything at all. Although I do believe it is all important in the process of letting go.

concerning morality i only approach it from a pathological, perspective view i basically don't worry about it and let whatever emotions i have dictate them, because last time i tried to rationalize morality it kind of devalued everything and removed reason to live until i realized that rationalizing things like that is a form of concept creation that only destroys things

Hey, Amy Tan, I have TLE too! I wish that everyone did, it would make the world a much nicer place.

@Gorillagal247 What I could say is that the Internet is like a land fill, a dump, a scrapyard where is more than 90% junk, but, if you search right you will find amazing things!

@RicRagsLive I'm not going to attempt to give any more advice lol, you seem to be pretty aware of what's going on. Real nice meeting people on the net that meditate though (just as in real life), gives me such hope for humanity...though usually I'm depressed at the potential outcomes in a hundred years.

@koolglitch - there is that guy from pirates of the carribian too

@Gorillagal247 Great comment and I hope we all open our minds to the fact that we are all part of mankind, a home we call earth and a family who share the same problems and joys.

@RicRagsLive Well...people like Dostoyevsky (sure I spelt that wrong) and Tolstoy were very candid and honest about how they viewed the world and they were really well received. You're honest, so you're starting off on the right track I'm guessing. Wow I didn't know that about JK Rowling. Being a bum does increase your brain activity lol, so does meditation etc. I'd like to write (did a bit of writing a while back), but I need to increase my vocabulary again. The corporate world sucks

@Gorillagal247 yeah tv is poopie. getting out there first hand is the best way to go about it.

@crudhousefull Meditation is excellent. Although I always got the impression that it gives you the ability to decrease your mental noise and connect to something bigger than yourself. Maybe that's where all of this creativity comes from in the first place? I don't think there is anything wrong with recognizing your own talents but bragging or getting wrapped up in them as if they are actually serious I do think is a little silly.

Dude...she wasn't giving a dissertation to a panel of dry academics. Give her credit for going on stage and sharing her insights on creativity!

nice poem

@darlingzooloo you're right about that absoloutely right :)

Hilarious! String theory, lmao. 😆 😂

seems simple enough. she's not trying to answer the question 'where does creativity hide,' she's posing it! and suggesting that, at least in her case, it comes from a mysterious universe.

@xrashadx I understand your disapointment with the headlines, but in my view, I thought her talk about ambiguous things somehow defined creativity in the aspect that it is just as undefinable as anything else.

score!

yes

@Gorillagal247 That's how it is with me as well. I do dabble in hijinks and entertainment. However, the internet does alot more. I got to learn alot more about the cultures of our world and the way many people think and act. I managed to mature more as a person because of the internet.

I get it. Very simple.

Jajajaja, gracias genia!

@RicRagsLive Finally an honest writer. I find it so funny when people's egos get inflated because of something they wrote. Thoughts come naturally with very little to do with the vessel. Good for you

In this video, what does childhood drama have to do with creativity?

Her idea was that creativity comes from nothingness. So it might as well come from a dog in a bag. I have done a lot of writing in the last few years, and am amazed at how these ideas come from nowhere. Just popping into my head to fill in the blanks. I mean the stories seem to write themselves and I just do the typing.

The Chinese men in her novels are inspired by Fu Manchu.

omg clone trooper helmets 1:01

@crudhousefull Thanks for the great reply to my comment! I feel the same way. I am a guy who writes. I would love for what I write to be well received by a large group of people. But I really can't say that it is because of some special creativity I have that everyone else doesn't have. It comes from empty space and I think anyone can tap into that. JK rowling was a bum on welfare and she wrote Harry potter. hehe

Well, IMHO you didn´t miss that much. It may be that I´m not a believer, or that I´m a dry academic (or both), but I find her ideas too supernatural and fairytale-ish for my taste. And that is coming from a composer! When I create art, I tend to view myself as a reflector; my creations are really the combination of everyone else´s impact on me. That may also be viewed as philosophical, but I think it is more rational at the same time, than Tan´s suggestions. What do you think?

@crudhousefull Your advice was good so don't sell yourself short. I really don't know much. I just like to write comments on youtube. hehe Don't be depressed. It's something I learned in a boxing class. Don't waste time with negative reactions. (I was frustrated that I screwed up the combination and made a growling noise, when I did the teachers punched me.) The negative reaction left me wide open for more problems and it didn't help me do better. Every moment is perfect exactly the way it is.

"It seems so obvious, and yet it is not."

or it could be 'everything can be pieces of an absolute truth, but there are no absolute beings to understand or grasp the whole truth.'? anyways, this is amazing. im going to get her books too.

Oh my goshhh

(i was kidding btw. i'm asian too and i totally connect with this talk)

"nothing is true, everything is permitted"

i agree