March 2, 2015

ted talk in vancouverI did a TED talk in Vancouver recently. It was about Louis Armstrong and the thousands of hours of audio tapes that he recorded over the years. I hadn’t known, but Armstrong was a huge taper – he taped himself talking and hanging out with people. The tapes are bawdy – lots of talk about sex, marijuana, and dirty jokes. They are now stored at the Queens College Library, and I’ve had great times over the past year going out there and listening to them. It was an interesting experience doing the TED talk. I got a nice pair of shoes out of the deal as swag. A lot of people have asked when they can see the talk online. I actually asked them not to make a video of it. If you know anything about me, you probably know that a big part of my live-cinema work is that it’s not documented. I’m a big fan of the ephemeral. Hope you can see this piece at some point in-person.