I found Amy Tan’s TEDTalk to be very interesting for multiple reasons. One of these was her ability to mix together extremely serious themes and elements such as her father and brother both dying, but at the same time, she is using comic sans as a font with the little explosions introduce the words onto the screen. It reminds me of when I was making computer presentations in middle school, and it is funny to think of using that style while giving a speech for a prestigious organization like TED. But I think that is exactly why she used comic sans and explosions, she was making an attempt at absurdist humor, which I very much enjoy. It is those moments where life sucks but we just have to laugh in spite of it all.
The title of the video, “Where does creativity hide?” is interesting, as she is leaning towards the idea that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Going through traumatic experiences can really help us unleash our creative potential, even if it is still going through a traumatic experience. This goes back to absurdist humor. After going through something and getting past it mentally, we can even laugh at it. I think this is not only true for creativity, but for living in general. You learn a lot more from bad experiences, failures, and losses than you would if you just won all the time and had an easy life. It makes you experience a lot of different feelings, and something she said (and that I agree with) was that the feelings are some of the most important parts of writing a good story.