Photo: James Duncan Davidson

Pico Iyer is a man without a land. He is 100 percent Indian in blood and ancestry, but he was born and grew up in England; he has lived the last 48 years in the U.S., where he sees his doctor and dentist, but for the last 25 years he’s spent as much time as possible in Japan. But many people he knows are even more international and, in a similar way, home-less. These people have one place they associate with their parents, another with their partners, a third with the place they happen to be at the moment, and a fourth with the place they dream of being. “Their whole life is going to be spent taking pieces of many different places and putting them together in a stained glass whole,” says Iyer. “For more and more of us, home has less to do with a piece of soil than a piece of soul.”

Years ago Iyer was in his parents’ house in California when he realized the house was encircled by 70-foot flames. Three hours later, his house — and everything in it but him — had been reduced to ash. The next morning at his friend’s, Iyer realized all he had to his name was a toothbrush he had just bought. He says, “My home would have to be whatever I carried around inside me.”

It was a terrific liberation.

Photo: James Duncan Davidson

According to Iyer, the number of people living in countries not their own now numbers close to 220 million. That’s more than four times the population of Canada and Australia combined. Soon, says Iyer, it’ll be the fifth largest “nation” on Earth. “Travel,” he says wistfully, “Is a little bit like being in love. Suddenly all your senses are marked ‘on.’ You are alert to the secret patterns of the world.”

And yet. The joy of traveling is perhaps only matched by the joy of staying still. After Iyer’s house burnt down, his friend told him about a Catholic hermitage he promised would be unlike any other experience Iyer had had before. Skeptical but intrigued, Iyer drove three hours north along the coast. When Iyer stepped out of his car at the top of the mountain, the air was pulsing with a silent energy. At his feet was the great blue plate of the Pacific. All around him were acres of wild brush.

Iyer’s mind became serene as he went to his room and wrote for four hours straight. He says, “It was the freedom of traveling, but also profoundly felt like coming home.” During the day, he walked and sent postcards, and sat in silence. Iyer says it was some of his most important work. Thus he prescribes to the audience: Sit 30 minutes every morning without devices. Be still. After all, “Movement is a fantastic privilege … but it ultimately only has meaning if you have a home to go back to.” Which can be anything or anywhere, he says. Because “home is in the end not just the place where you sleep, but the place where you stand.”

So how did Hansen happen upon such fascinating methods? By embracing a major limitation — a hand tremor that made it impossible for him to do the pointillist drawings he loved.

The theme of transcending constraints and roadblocks was a major theme at TED2013. While Hansen said in his talk, “Embracing the limitation can actually drive creativity … We need to first be limited in order to become limitless,” filmmaker Martin Villeneuve echoed the sentiment in his talk about making a sci-fi movie for $2 million. He said, “If you treat the problems as possibilities, life will start to dance with you in the most amazing ways.” And TED’s own Lisa Bu shared how she found her true calling when her dream of being an opera singer died. In a powerful moment of her talk, she said, “‘Coming true’ is not the only purpose of a dream. Its most important purpose is to get us in touch with where dreams come from, where passion comes from, where happiness comes from. Even a shattered dream can do that for you.”

Fascinated by this message, I asked Hansen a few questions at TED2013.

The power of limitations has been a real theme so far this conference. Why do you think this hasn’t traditionally been a part of the conversation about creativity?

I think due to the economy, we’ve been running into a spike of constraints while at the same time being more culturally fascinated with creativity than ever. One of the speakers, Danny Hillis, said “It’s hard to get people to focus on plan B when plan A is working so well.” Now we are in a place where lots of “plans As” are no longer working. Being forced to reevaluate is allowing us to see this connection between limitations and creativity that has always been right in front of us. Within this process, we are bringing curiosity back — curiosity about new possibilities that we hadn’t explored when plan A was working so well. And we are discovering better alternatives, as I’ve witnessed here from a lot of speakers so far at TED.

I’m curious — have you had any ideas for works since being at TED?

There’s really not an off button — I’m always running ideas in my head. A lot of ideas have surfaced in conversations with other attendees about possible collaborations that I’m really excited about.

I’ve been contemplating a text art project where I ask people to share their stories about limitations with me. I’ve had so many people come up to me and share their stories that I feel inspired to take this project on a bigger scale. I want everyone who looks at this piece to be able to find a story that they can relate to in looking at their own limitations.

So let’s say you’re a writer/artist/musician and you’re feeling a bit blocked. What are some things you can do to get the juice flowing again?

Creativity is simply connecting information, so we have to be in a relaxed mental state that is open to seeing these connections, but aware enough to capture them. Getting to this mental state is different for everyone, so I always suggest people experiment and find what works for them. Whenever I feel creatively stumped, my first instinct is to do something to get myself relaxed. I usually go on a long walk, like two hours long, because it takes at least 45 minutes for me to get out of my head and into the ether.

In order to be in the creative flow, it’s really important to be process driven and hold the results loosely. Sometimes it’s better to keep pushing through it. If you’re a writer, keep writing — even if it’s gibberish — and eventually it will flow again. Sometimes it’s better to destroy and start over. Or, if what you’re working on is too broad, impose a limitation to spark your creativity.

Photos: James Duncan Davidson

More than 22 million text messages are sent across the world every day … many in truly terrible English. It’s the end of the world as we know it, many decry. The decline and fall of written language means the end for us all, right? Not so fast. Linguist John McWhorter has a great new theory on what’s really going on in modern texting. Far from being a scourge, texting is a linguistic miracle.

Spoken human language has been around for about 150,000 years, but it wasn’t until much later that written language came about; as he puts it: “If humanity has existed for 24 hours, writing came about at 11:07 pm.” This distinction is crucial what it comes to the so-called degradation of written language — because texting isn’t written language. It much more closely resembles the kind of language we’ve had for so many more years: spoken language.

When you write, you can do things you can’t do in speaking. McWhorter elocutes a passage from Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. It’s precise, detailed and crisp — and “no one would ever speak that way. At least not if they were interested in reproducing.” Casual speech is quite different: looser, telegraphic, less reflective. Texting ignores punctuation and capitalization, but does anyone think about these things when speaking?

Formal oration, a kind of speaking that sounds like writing, has always been common. But why not try to write like you speak? Now that we have incredibly fast technology to keep up with the pace of speech — mobile phones, rather than typewriters or handwriting — that’s actually possible. What is texting? McWhorter suggests: “fingered speech.”

Texting, like any language, has its own distinct rules and structures. Take the example of “lol.” “Lol” once meant “laughing out loud.” But anybody who texts today knows that these days it has a subtler meaning. Consider the exchange:

Susan: lol thanks gmail is being slow right now
Julie: lol, i know.
Susan: i just sent you an email.
Julie: lol, i see it.

Let’s be honest, there’s nothing funny about this. As McWhorter says, “lol” here acts as a marker of empathy and accomodation, what linguistics call pragmatic particles, and which exist in many languages.

McWhorter cites a passage from 1956 bemoaning the decline of language in young people … and then three more, all the way back to 63 AD: a pedant lamenting everyone’s terrible Latin. (That “terrible Latin” eventually became French.) As he says, “There are always people worried about the decline of language. Yet somehow the world keeps spinning.” There’s no need to worry, he says firmly. People are even benefiting from texting, from this entirely different language. Being fluent in spoken language, written language and writing-like-speaking language is an unconscious balancing act that allows each “speaker” to expand his or her linguistic repertoire.

So no scourge is imminent. McWhorter says, if he could fast-forward to 2033 — besides first checking to see if David Simon had written a sequel to The Wire — he would immediately want to see texts written by 16-year-old girls to see what’s become of this linguistic miracle.

John McWhorter’s TED Talk has been posted. Watch it here»

Young-ha Kim

Young-ha Kim: Be an artist, right now!

In today’s talk, given at TEDxSeoul and TED’s first ever in Korean, Kim says, “You think, ‘I’m too busy. I don’t have time for art.’ There are hundreds of reasons why we can’t be artists right now. Don’t they just pop into your head? … Perhaps you think art is for the gifted or for the professional trained. Or perhaps you think you’ve strayed too far from art.”

When we were kids, says Kim, we were constantly creating art — drawing on the wall, making up dances, singing nonsense lyrics, putting on plays for our family, making up stories, building sandcastles. But as we get older, this impulse dulls. Not only because we hear judgment from others, but because we start taking formal lessons and it becomes less about having fun and more about doing something well.

“Art is about going a little nuts … Kids do art for fun. It’s playing,” he says. “If you continue to act like an artist as you get older, you’ll increasingly feel pressure. People will question your actions.”

So what happens? According to Kim, we suppress our artistic spirit. We learn to be critics, rather than taking the risk of making. Kim calls us “dictators with a remote control,“ yelling at the people on reality-TV dance and singing competitions for a flat note.

To hear more about this tragedy — and what we can do to overcome it — watch this hilarious talk. An especially amazing image in it: Kim writing fast and furious, so that the artistic devil cannot catch him and fill his head with doubts.

Young-ha Kim is one of the most popular writers of his generation in Korea. The author of five novels, four short story collections and numerous essays, Kim’s work mixes high and low genres and focuses on the meaning of Korean identity in increasingly globalized world.

How popular is Kim in Korea? Not only has he won many a literary award, but two of his books have been turned into feature films with a third on the way. In fact, at the Jeonju International Film Festival taking place in spring 2013, there will be an entire program of short films based on Young-ha Kim’s short stories. Fans have even created “Kim Young-ha Bingo,” where you read 50 pages of any of his works and mark off the themes he touches on in those pages — from art references to paranoia.

Here, some excerpts from Kim’s works, to get you better acquainted with this writer. Even though he is more interested in making sure you start typing than read what he’s created.

From his debut book, I Have the Right to Destroy Myself

I’m looking at Jacques-Louis David’s 1793 oil painting, “The Death of Marat,” printed in an art book. The Jacobin revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat lies murdered in his bath. His head is wrapped in a towel, like a turban, and his hand, draped alongside the tub, holds a pen. Marat has expired — bloodied — nestled between the colors of white and green. The work exudes calm and quiet. You can almost hear a requiem. The fatal knife lies abandoned at the bottom of the canvas.

I’ve already tried to make a copy of this painting several times. The most difficult part is Marat’s expression; he always comes out looking too sedate. In David’s Marat, you can see neither the dejection nor the relief of the man who has escaped life’s suffering. His Marat is peaceful but pained, filled with hatred but also with understanding. Through a dead man’s expression David manages to realize all of our conflicting innermost emotions. Read more »

Marilyn Monroe and Lady Gaga’s Korea (excerpted from Words without Borders)

Marilyn Monroe came to South Korea in February of 1954. While honeymooning in Tokyo with Joe DiMaggio, she had boarded a military plane and was en route to Seoul even before the marriage was fully consummated. At the airport, she was swarmed by hundreds of GIs who had been awaiting her arrival. When she came down the gangway, Monroe was dressed in a flight suit. Reporters noted that “half of the buttons on the top were undone, offering tantalizing glimpses of her chest, which got the troops even more riled up.” According to Korean news reports from the time, the GIs were disappointed to see her immediately board a helicopter bound for the frontlines and asked her when she would return, to which she “turned on the charm like a mother comforting a child” and replied, “I’ll be right back.”

By February of 1954, the Korean War, which had lasted for three years, had already been brought to an end under the pretext of a ceasefire, but tens of thousands of American soldiers were still stationed in South Korea. Monroe gave dozens of performances, visited wounded soldiers in field hospitals, and posed on top of tanks. In archival photos, the soldiers’ excitement as they greet her is palpable. In colorless, dirt-covered barracks, Monroe alone stands out in color, as if someone had come along later and Photoshopped her into the pictures. Before thousands of soldiers seated on a low hill devoid of even a single tree, she spreads her arms wide and sings in time with a piano. The images look like they could have come from a 1960s rock festival. Read the rest of the essay »

From his latest book, Black Flower

With his head thrust into the swamp filled with swaying weeds, many things swarmed before Ijeong’s eyes. All were pieces of the scenery of Jemulpo that he thought he had long ago forgotten. Nothing had disappeared: the flute-playing eunuch, the fugitive priest, the spirit-possessed shaman with the turned-in teeth, the girl who smelled of roe deer blood, the poor members of the royal family, the starving discharged soldiers, even the revolutionary’s barber — they all waited for Ijeong with smiling faces in front of the Japanese-style building on the hill in Jemulpo.

How could all of these things be so vivid with closed eyes? Ijeong was mystified. He opened his eyes and everything disappeared. A booted foot pushed on the nape of his neck, shoving his head deep into the bottom of the swamp. Foul water and plankton rushed into his lungs. Read more »

Ice Cream (excerpted from the Asia Literary Review)

“Can you smell the petrol?” Mina asked him. Eugene tilted his end.

“I’m not sure, but something’s off.”

“C’mon, we’ve been eating these bars for ages.”

“This one doesn’t taste right. I’m telling you, it stinks of petrol.” She was already washing her mouth out. Eugene put the remainder of the ice-cream bar in his mouth. “Are you nuts?!” she cried. He ignored her, swirling it around with his tongue, trying to detect the smell. He then spat out the mouthful.

“You’re right. It does smell like petrol.”

It all began when the International Monetary Fund seized control of South Korea like an occupying army. The football team were hopeless, the economy desperate and the entire nation felt as if it were on its last legs. Read the rest of the story »

The Man Who Sold His Shadow (excerpted from Words without Borders)

Here’s a question we all ask ourselves at least once when we’re young: Where does that starlight come from? It’s been there before I was born, and before my grandmother, and her grandmother were born. So just how far is that star from Earth? The curiosity of children is insatiable. They’ll grab a flashlight and aim it at the stars and think, “This light will get there someday, won’t it? When I’m dead, and my grandchildren are gone, and their grandchildren as well.” Whimsical thoughts, of course. Not a chance that light so faint will still be sparkling thousands of light-years from now. That’s our universe: a place where light much stronger than this vanishes without a trace.

And another childish question: Does a bird in mid-flight have a shadow? How can such a small, light thing be burdened by something as clumsy as a shadow? But birds certainly do have a shadow. Sometimes, just sometimes, when I watch a flock fly by I have a feeling that something dark and black is flitting past. It’s subtle enough that you’ll miss it if you’re not fully concentrating on it. When the moon covers the sun, we have a solar eclipse. What do you call it when birds do that? Read the rest of the story »

Honor Killing (a story on a napkin in Esquire)

She was twenty-one, with fair, beautiful skin. Even when bare, her face glowed, always radiant and dewy. This was precisely why the dermatologist’s office hired her as the receptionist. Her job was simple. All she had to do was write down the patients’ names, tell them in a friendly voice, “please take a seat until we call your name,” find their charts, and hand them over to the nurses. Her glowing, translucent skin created high expectations, encouraging the patients to pour their trust in the office, which bustled with a sudden increase in patients. Read the second paragraph of this very short story »