Ahmed Best's Formula for Feeling the Future: The Emotional Engine, Einstein, and Godzilla
The Long Now Foundation
At the Long Now Foundation's Valentine's Day 2025 event at San Francisco's Herbst Theatre, Ahmed Best argued that the future is not only something to think about. It is something to feel, and to share. Best has worked as a Stomp performer, as the actor behind Jar Jar Binks, and as a Stanford d.school lecturer and co-founder of the AfroRithms Futures Group. His claim is that feeling is a form of communication that works beyond words. People already carry private feelings about what the future will be like, he said, and the task is to convey those feelings to one another so that communities can act on them together. He offered a three-part "formula" for doing this, illustrated it with a live staging exercise and a very personal story, and then discussed his upbringing, his path into Afrofuturism, and his current projects in a conversation with host Lisa Kay Solomon.
Framing the Evening: Futures in the Body, Not Just the Head
Long Now board president Patrick Dowd opened by saying that thinking about the future is usually treated as an intellectual exercise. The evening, he said, was meant to show how being in our bodies and using all our senses can enlarge our imagination of what is possible.
Lisa Kay Solomon, a fellow board member and futurist in residence at the Stanford d.school, introduced Best. Her introduction traced his story from a boy in the South Bronx watching Star Wars to, at 23, becoming what she called cinema's first CGI character, working with George Lucas to play Jar Jar Binks in The Phantom Menace. She also mentioned his Stomp performances, a talk at a SynBio conference on the future of bioengineering, his role as Jedi Master Kelleran Beq in The Mandalorian, and voicing "Darth Jar Jar" in a Lego Star Wars production. She quoted two of his sayings: "just because no one has done it before doesn't mean it can't be done" and "don't let others future all over you."
Solomon also shared a memory from Stanford. She once took Best to the Papua New Guinea sculpture garden on campus. At one carving that students walked past without noticing, he declared that it was not just a sculpture but a drum, and he started playing it until a crowd gathered. For Solomon, the anecdote showed how Best helps people see what is already around them differently.
Opening With a Song: Feel as Communication
Best did not open with a lecture. He sat at the drums and led the audience in singing Al Green's "Let's Stay Together," pushing them to sing louder. Then he asked repeatedly whether they could "feel that."
He explained that as a young performer and musician, "feel" was always what he was chasing: making the drums, the music, a play, or a movie feel good. Over time he came to see feeling as a form of communication in itself. He can tell someone how he feels or felt, but he can also give them a feeling without having the words for it. Working as an artist, educator, writer, producer, actor, and director, he noticed that everyone has an idea of what the future feels like, and that people generally keep that feeling to themselves.
"Feel the future," he said, is a call to action. It concerns what we do with those feelings and how we convey them to our communities, so that we can feel the future together and do something about it. He stressed that everyone has agency over the future. We get to tell and feel what the future will feel like, and no one gets to do that "to us or for us."
The practical question was how to communicate those feelings in a way that actually moves people, whether loved ones or strangers. His answer was a formula: the emotional engine, plus Albert Einstein, plus Godzilla, the King of the Monsters.
Stomp and the Language Beneath Words
The first term of the formula came out of his first professional job in Stomp, the New York found-object and body-percussion show. Best described Stomp as fundamentally about communication. The show taught audiences to "speak Stomp." He demonstrated with call-and-response clapping that the Herbst audience answered right away, and said that in whatever country he performed, audiences would answer the same way.
Then he did a playful rhythmic trick that made the audience laugh. The point he drew from it was a question: why did they laugh, and how did they feel the humor when nothing had been said? Later, when he began writing and directing, he noticed that every story he told, on stage or on screen, contained something "deep and personal" that resonated with people. He began calling that the emotional engine.
Defining the Emotional Engine, and Rejecting "Protagonist"
Best defined the emotional engine as "the driving emotional force that moves the person that we are following forward towards change."
He was deliberate about the wording. He said he does not like the word "protagonist." As an actor, he described himself as an "emotional athlete" who embodies the story. "Protagonist," in his view, pulls him out of his body and into his head, where he starts theorizing about how to tell the story. "Following," by contrast, is an action. It is something he can do, and it is embodied. The person we follow is the person whose emotional engine we are connecting to.
Finding Your Engine Through Your Top Five
To find your own emotional engine, Best suggested picking your top five narratives, whether books, movies, plays, or songs. These should not be the five "best" works you know. They should be the five you will watch every time they come on. His example was Ghostbusters: he knows every word and frame, and if it comes on, he is watching it.
He then worked out his own engine live. His five were Othello, Enter the Dragon, Krzysztof Kieślowski's Blue, The Lord of the Rings, and The Empire Strikes Back. He summarized each one:
- Othello: a jealous officer convinces his general that his wife has slept with a trusted friend, and the shame of being deceived and betrayed drives the general to kill his wife and himself.
- Enter the Dragon: a martial artist recruited by the secret service infiltrates a criminal mastermind's private island, confronts his sister's killer, and reclaims the island for the Shaolin monks from whom it was stolen. He joked that people think the film is just Bruce Lee kicking people, but "it's deep."
- Blue: a woman loses her husband and daughter in a car crash, discovers her husband's affair, and ultimately finds her voice. Best said Blue is the best of the Three Colors trilogy.
- The Lord of the Rings: an unlikely group sets out to destroy the ring, the journey tears them apart, and they realize the quest was to save not only the world but each other.
- The Empire Strikes Back: a talented young warrior sets out to rid the galaxy of an evil empire and discovers that the villain he has vowed to kill is his own flesh and blood.
On Empire, he recounted the Cloud City reveal and joked that Vader's line "Search your feelings, you know it to be true" sounds like "You know it be true." That, he said, is how you know Darth Vader was Black.
The common thread, he concluded, is loyalty. In every one of these stories, loyalty is what moves the person we follow toward change. He added a rule: there is always an obstacle to the emotional engine, something that makes staying true to it harder. For him, that obstacle is betrayal. Loyalty and betrayal are what matter to him, and they are what he wants audiences to feel when he talks about the future.
Einstein: Space-Time and the "When-Where"
The second term was Albert Einstein. Best explicitly told any physicists present that he was using E=mc² as a metaphor and that the physics would be oversimplified on purpose. In his loose framing, the equation showed that time is relative to one's position in space, bore on gravity (he mentioned gravitational waves), and led toward quantum mechanics, which he set aside. What he wanted to use was space-time: the idea that you cannot have time without space.
He tied this to acting. From his study of the Meisner technique, he took the principle that "the when leads you to the who and what." Because of Einstein, he said, it is really the "when-where" that leads to the who and what. The question becomes: when and where in the life of the person we are following, driven by their emotional engine, does the story meet them?
He applied it to the room. The audience's "when" was the moment they wanted to know what Feel the Future was about. Their "where" was a beautiful San Francisco theater, "listening to a skinny kid from the South Bronx." For Luke Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Back, the "when" is the point where he truly wants to become a Jedi, and the "where" is the rebellion, in the middle of the fight on the ice planet Hoth. He joked about how many limbs get cut off in Star Wars.
He also passed on a rule he learned in film school. In space-time on screen or stage, the foreground generally reads as the past, the midground as the present, and the background as the future.
A Live Demonstration of "Quantum Entanglement"
Best then brought volunteers onstage to show how space-time and relationships can carry feeling without dialogue. Again flagging that he was speaking metaphorically, he said he loves the idea of quantum entanglement, in which bodies, ideas, or objects are connected across distance so that moving one affects the other. Once we "entangle" people in space-time, he argued, we automatically have feelings about them.
The audio captures the demonstration only partially. The volunteers were placed in the past (foreground), present (midground), and future (background) positions. Best told the audience that the person in the present was married to the person in the past, but that the person in the future was the love of their life, the one they were more strongly entangled with. He then directed movements. The present figure walked upstage toward the future and looked back at the person in the past. Later the figures shifted so that the person in the past held out a hand while the other simply looked, and the pull toward the future was visible. At each step he asked the audience how they now felt about the person being left behind.
His point was that the story changed "without even any words," purely by moving people through space-time and setting up how they were entangled. He dismissed the volunteers with a joke that they would be getting a call from their union rep.
Godzilla: Pressure, Not "Raising the Stakes"
The third term was Godzilla. Best said the version he loves is the classic one he grew up with. Every Saturday after karate class he rushed home to watch Shaw Brothers kung fu movies, followed by a Godzilla film. The films always followed the same pattern. You met Japanese characters making friends, loving each other, overcoming struggles, forming families, and having children. Then Godzilla showed up and reduced Tokyo to rubble.
He realized that when he talked about these films, he was not really talking about Godzilla. He was talking about who Godzilla affected and what he destroyed, and he was feeling for the families who had to rebuild their lives and their city while still living under the threat.
From this he drew a critique of the screenwriting cliché "raise the stakes," which he asked everyone to stop saying, at least for the night. He described it as something executives say to screenwriters to sound "screenwriter-y." In his view it no longer means anything, because stakes are relative to each listener and the phrase puts you in your head rather than your body.
His alternative: Godzilla is pressure. It is pressure on your emotional engine and on your space-time, and it is pressure you can feel. Everyone knows what pressure is for them; it does not have to be a 100-foot lizard, but that is what it feels like. He argued that pressure matters when trying to convey how we feel about the future because it makes us vulnerable, and he called vulnerability "the magic" and "the good stuff," though scary. He then said, "This is always hard," and moved into a personal story.
The Brooklyn Bridge
When his son was nine (he is now 16), the boy asked for a father-and-son trip to New York, having grown up on Best's stories about Stomp, living in Brooklyn, and biking over the bridge into the city. They stayed in Bed-Stuy. One day his son asked to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge.
Best described the approach: a concrete path that leads up to wooden slats, then to the cables and arches framing the city he loves. His son ran ahead up the concrete, and Best followed. When he reached the wooden part, he froze. His son turned around and said, "Come on, Dad," and he could not move.
In that moment, he said, he realized he had not walked across that bridge in 20 years. Twenty years earlier, he had thought the bridge would be the last thing he ever saw. When Star Wars came out at a time he expected his life to change for the better, it changed for the worse. He faced an intense amount of pressure from the world, and at 26 he did not want to live anymore. He described it as the only time in his life when he could not see the future.
Standing there two decades later, he talked himself into it: it is just a step, you have been stepping your whole life. He described himself as "standing right in front of Godzilla." He took one step, then another, and kept walking toward the spot where he had wanted to end his life. On that earlier night, he said, he remembered seeing nothing: not the Statue of Liberty, not Brooklyn, not Manhattan. This time he saw everything. He held his son, took a photo, and thought that 20 years ago he almost did not have him, "the love of my life," the person he is most entangled with.
Relative to the rest of the world, he said, he had not thought his story mattered. He kept it inside for 20 years and was not vulnerable. Then he tweeted the photo and told the story because he could no longer hold onto it. According to Best, millions of people retweeted it, and he could not describe the amount of love he received. In the middle of that moment, his son touched his face and asked if they could get something to eat because he was hungry, and they walked across the rest of the bridge.
Best said he remains entangled to this day with the many people who shared the same kind of story with him because he had shared his vulnerability. His conclusion: telling an emotional story is only the tip of the iceberg. You need to add intense pressure to your emotional engine so that it increases your vulnerability "until you have no choice … but to be who you really are."
Earthling Culture and the Call to Action
Best then broadened the frame. Every life on the planet, he said, has a right to its dignity. That is not a dignity we grant it, but dignity from its own point of view, and that point of view is how we must feel for the future. The formula is to be used not just for ourselves but for every life. He called this "Earthling culture" and his "prime directive," and described it as how he builds the future he wants to have agency over.
He made the call to action concrete. After the talk, anyone willing should put a hand over their heart, find someone else doing the same, exchange emails, and within one week share their vulnerable "feel the future" with that person. Feeling the future cannot be passive, he said. We will not get through this alone, and there is no way forward through change that happens by yourself.
He closed with his own feeling for the future. Every stage he has ever been on feels like home, and for Valentine's Day he had wanted the evening to feel like people he loves, who care about the future, sitting in his home listening to him play drums and sing Al Green. He thanked the audience for making that come true.
Growing Up With Hip-Hop in the South Bronx
In the conversation that followed, Solomon asked about Best's New York upbringing. He shouted out the South Bronx (and his zip code, joking that New Yorkers always do that). He said the neighborhood had little money but was a "hotbed of culture." He described himself as "as old as hip-hop" and said hip-hop started on his block. He watched B-boy, DJ, and rap culture as people figured them out.
That left a lasting impression: if you had an idea, you could go figure it out. New York then, he said, was a place where even if you weren't very good at something, people would tell you there was "something" there and encourage you to keep going. His parents were also artists, which added to that environment of seeing new things before they became global.
Solomon brought up his story about hip-hop's pioneers not being trained musicians. Best linked it to the idea of "being the signal," which he teaches. In futures language, he explained, signals are messages that often come from underserved communities, become trends, and then tip into ways of the future. Neighborhoods like his are often where those signals begin. His example was Grandmaster Flash, who DJed on his block and, according to Best, was an electrician by day. Flash realized that a switch between two turntables would keep the party going, and that switch became the DJ mixer. As Best remembered it, one week there were five amps and five turntables, then Flash arrived with two turntables, an amp, and a switch, and hip-hop and music changed.
From George Lucas to Afrofuturism
Asked how he came to futures work and Afrofuturism, Best said he had always been a futurist without using the word. Working with George Lucas showed him it was something you could actually do. He recalled sometimes riding to set with Lucas in the mornings while Lucas talked about what things would be like in 20 or 40 years. That showed Best that you could take visions of the future, make something, and move the future toward it. Because a performance like Jar Jar had never been done before, Lucas was pushing to change cinema. Best claimed that movies had not changed in 100 years and that "every single film technique ever created is in The Phantom Menace," which he offered as a measure of how future-forward Lucas was. He wanted to live in that world.
He decided to make a podcast about Afrofuturism. His brother-in-law, Aram Sinnreich, then chair of Communications at American University, pointed him to Dr. Lonnie Brooks. Best called Brooks from his Prius on the way to Sunday brunch, meaning to talk briefly, and they talked for three and a half hours. He described Brooks as a kindred spirit he was "quantum entangled" with. Together they started the Afro Futures podcast. That led to their card game, AfroRithms from the Future, and then to the AfroRithms Futures Group, which plays the game and also uses it as a consultation tool to engage people through Afrofuturism.
Best said he loves Afrofuturism because art is at its center, in contrast to what he described as European futurism, with science at the center. As an artist, he found he could move the future through art. He called Brooks, who was in the audience, probably the best Afrofuturist scholar in the world. Solomon said she and Best originally met through a Long Now presentation Brooks had done, and recommended it.
Solomon praised the podcast's range of guests: artists, scientists, programmers, graphic artists. She mentioned an episode with Nettrice Gaskins, whose work she later saw throughout a Smithsonian exhibition on the future, as an example of the podcast spotting a signal. Best called Gaskins an amazing artist and professor whom everyone should know. He said the best part of the work is introducing such people to audiences who then seek them out. Solomon added that she drew on guests from the podcast for a futures series she ran during the pandemic.
Playing the Future Into Being
Solomon described the joy she has seen when Best runs the game, including at Stanford and at South by Southwest. Best explained that in AfroRithms from the Future, a community of today creates a universe and a planet. The group's motto, he said, is "a reverence for the past, an awareness for the present, and creativity for the future." He noted there is much more to the "Einstein" part than foreground, midground, and background. The game uses present emotions, feelings, and tensions to build a planet of tomorrow.
After playing, he said, people respond very positively because they now see the future as something they can create. Most people feel powerless about the future and worry about the immediate rather than the long term. But, he argued, someone is already thinking about how they want you to feel 25 years from now, and imagining the future is not a practice most of us are used to. We talk about the past a great deal, and there is "a whole industry" around being in the present. Yet as far as he knows, humans are so far the only creatures that can perceive the future (whales might, he joked, and he'll accept it once they tell us). Turning that ability into a practice is one of the reasons they created the game.
What Keeps Him Optimistic
Returning to his story of despair, Solomon called Best one of the most optimistic people she knows. She mentioned that he texts her during dark days with messages about the "Department of Awesome," and asked what keeps him going.
His first answer, which he admitted sounded cheesy, was love: the stronger those bonds, the more optimistic we can be. Pessimism and fear, he said, are easy. He cited the idea of "ancient neurons," which he attributed to neuroscientist David Eagleman. Because early humans were prey animals for a long time, it is easy to excite those neurons with fear and dystopia. But Best argued it is just as easy to excite them toward optimism. He quoted James Baldwin, who, asked whether he was an optimist, said of course he was, because he was alive. As long as we are alive we can do something, Best said, and doing nothing is not being alive.
He described imagining a Department of Awesome in government, a running idea with colleague Drew Endy, as itself an activity. As a director, he said, he likes calling "action" himself, a job usually done by the first AD, because he likes setting things in motion; moving generates ideas. He quoted his father: "a bullet can't hit a moving target, so keep moving." When he feels stagnant, he gets up and does something, because doing nothing "is not an option, especially now." The action does not need to be big. Dancing in your room and singing are rebellious acts, he said, noting that governments have been changed over music, and he quoted Bob Marley: "One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain." It does not take much to be an optimist, he concluded. Just keep moving.
Earthling Culture as Clothing, Studio, and Garden
Asked about his current work, including his interest in bioengineering and synthetic biology with Drew Endy and others, Best described several projects built around Earthling culture.
The first is a clothing line called Earthling Culture. He believes wearing your beliefs makes a message easier to spread, and that embodied forms like clothing, food, dance, and art make feelings infectious. He wants to see people wearing shirts carrying the ethos that every life is entitled to its dignity.
He illustrated the idea with Endy's recurring question: what does the banana slug want? It may seem frivolous, but to the banana slug it means a lot. Acting-class exercises, like being a can of condensed milk, seem silly, he said, but they train you to take extreme points of view. From the slug's point of view, he joked, "I don't like any salt." Dignity and respect are big ideas: you don't have to agree with him, but you must respect him, because without respect there is no empathy and no living together. He extended this to lives and intelligences we don't understand, including intelligences we create. Those too, he said, must be considered as lives with dignity, as defined from their own point of view.
He is also starting a creative studio called Geo Summit, intended as a place where works of art become actual things: clothing lines like Earthling Culture, films, and spatial web projects.
He described a project for the Getty's PST Art initiative called the Multiplanetary Garden. He made it with Jesse Gilbert, Oguri, Lightning Shadow, his wife Raquel, the dancer Malea, Lonnie Brooks, and Drew Endy. It rejects the idea that Earth is a dystopia we must abandon to find another planet to garden. Instead, Earth becomes the garden and the "protopia." Humanity does not leave until it has figured out Earth and Earthling culture, because otherwise it will carry its baggage to the stars. When we do find a planet, Best said, we should ask it whether we may be there and whether our presence dignifies it; if not, we go elsewhere, even if the planet is habitable. The piece used dance and visuals to celebrate that idea. Solomon responded that we can't get better at things we don't practice, and Best agreed that dignity and respect must be practiced day to day.
Audience Questions: Sparks and 2050
An audience member named Tina asked how to identify a spark, how a spark can ignite a movement, and what Best's first spark was. Best said he identifies sparks by listening, specifically to the person who is not talking. It is easy to listen to the loud thing, he said, which is why he got off Twitter: you end up responding to all the noise. The quiet person may have a wonderful idea but may not do well in that particular room. As a director and teacher, he tells actors to listen even when they have no lines, because listening can be felt. He looks for "the quiet spark."
His own first spark came from his mother, who studied fashion design and jewelry making at the Fashion Institute of Technology and whom he described as almost too brilliant an artist. A classmate of hers needed children for a kids' fashion show. Around age four, Best walked the runway, "feeling it," and decided he had to be on stage. He said a photo of it exists somewhere on a contact sheet.
A second audience member, Natalia, asked what the future will be like in 2050. Best said it depends on what we do now, and noted that 25 years is not that far away. He wants 2050 to feel like there will be another 25 years after it, which he considers very possible. He argued that such questions are often really about trust: whether we can trust there will be a future. The hardest thing about the present, he said, is not knowing whom to trust at the macro level, even though we trust those close to us. He hopes 2050 will feel vulnerable and honest, with people comfortable practicing vulnerability with each other, and said that if we start doing that, we will have a 2050 everyone can thrive in.
He described the optimistic 2050 he is building toward: one where your kitchen is your garden, everyone is seen and respected, and poverty is eradicated. He called poverty one of our biggest man-made problems and one that is easy to solve; we simply don't do it. "We need some Earthling culture," he said, and Solomon added that we also need practice.
Solomon closed by reminding the audience of their promise to put a hand over their heart and find a partner. She thanked Best, calling him her "future warrior" for how quickly he answers every call to action.
Good evening and welcome to the Long Now Foundation. My name is Patrick Dowd and I am the board president of the Long Now Foundation, which is an intergenerational community dedicated to fostering long-term thinking and creative projects.
Our program this evening, Feel the Future, is a really important one because a lot of times when we think about the future, it's something that's really in our heads. It's an intellectual exercise. But what we'll experience tonight will remind us just how much being in our bodies and sensing with all of our senses can help us to enlarge our imaginations about what's possible in the future.
Our host tonight is my amazing fellow board member Lisa Kay Solomon, who is a futurist in residence at the Stanford d.school. Please enjoy and thank you for being here.
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Well, actually just a few decades ago in the South Bronx, a young boy sat in a movie theater watching his first film, Star Wars, never imagining he would one day make cinema history in that very galaxy far, far away.
That young boy was Ahmed Best, and today I'm honored to introduce you to the revolutionary artist, educator and futurist that he is today. Born in New York and inspired by the cosmic horizons of Star Wars and Star Trek, Ahmed has transformed his childhood dreams of intergalactic adventures into a career dedicated to expanding our visions of the future. At just 23, Ahmed broke new ground as cinema's first CGI character, working closely with George Lucas to play the groundbreaking Jar Jar Binks in The Phantom Menace.
Pioneering the future of that historic performance was just the beginning of Ahmed's award-winning work that sits at the intersection of art, science and possibility.
Ahmed is as comfortable mesmerizing audiences with his physicality in Broadway performances like Stomp as he is presenting at a Symbio conference on the future of bioengineering, or playing Jedi Master Kelleran Beq in the more recent Mandalorian series. And let's not forget his epic performance voicing Darth Jar Jar in the latest edition of the Star Wars movie Rebuild the Galaxy Lego Edition. Ahmed doesn't just help you imagine and experience possible futures, he helps you see what's around you today differently and encourages you to jump in fully. I promise you you're going to see what I mean in just a few minutes.
As Ahmed often says, just because no one has done it before doesn't mean it can't be done. Don't let others future all over you.
One of my favorite memories is taking Ahmed to the Papua New Guinea garden on Stanford's campus. As we got close to one of the intricate carvings nestled in the woods, barely noticeable to the students walking by, Ahmed quickly exclaimed, "This is not just a sculpture, this is a drum. This is an amazing drum." Well, you can imagine what happened next. He started playing and everyone started gathering around. That's just what he does.
Ahmed's extraordinary talent is only outpaced by his generous, infectious, hopeful spirit and even bigger heart. It feels particularly fitting to be having him join us tonight on Valentine's Day at this special Long Now performance. In short, Ahmed doesn't just use the force, he is a force. Please join me in welcoming a true pioneer, a visionary and my very dear friend, Ahmed Best.
They said since... Y'all know this one. Come on. Let me hear you. Since we've been together. Yeah, there you go. Come on. Loving you... Sing, y'all. ...is what I need.
Be the one you come running... I'll never be untrue.
Come on, sing it louder. I can't hear y'all. Louder. Together. I'll sing backgrounds for you. Loving you when, when. Sing, come on. Sounds good. Come on. Love. Let's stay together.
Yeah. Sounds good. Yeah. Sing. Come on. Loving you when, when. Sounds good. Come on. Yeah. Yeah. Happy outside. Good. Yeah. When we're good, happy outside.
Man. Y'all sound good. Y'all sound real good. Y'all feel that? Y'all feel that? You feel it? You feel it? Y'all feel that?
I was starting out as a young performer, young musician, feel was always something that I was trying to achieve, right? I was always looking to make the drums feel good, make the music feel good, make the play feel good, make the movie feel good. And I recognized that feeling was a form of communication. Like I can talk to you about how I feel. I can talk to you about how I felt. I can give you a feeling even if I don't even have the words, right?
And as I continued feeling as an artist and as an educator and as a writer and as a producer and as an actor and as a director, I recognized that when we start talking about the future and we start imagining the future, we all have an idea of what the future feels like. And we generally keep that feeling to ourselves. Right?
Feel the Future is a call to action. It is what we do with those feelings and how we convey those feelings to our community, to one another, so we can feel the future together. And we can do something about it. You see, we all have agency over the future. We all have agency over the future. We get to tell and we get to feel what the future gets to feel like, and no one gets to do that to us or for us.
But how do we communicate those feelings in a way that is impactful? Right? How do we get those feelings to each and every single person that we know, that we love, that we care about, or maybe that we see, to move them, right? To feel the way we feel.
There's a formula that you can follow to do that. And the formula goes like this. You need the emotional engine plus Albert Einstein plus the King of Monsters, Godzilla. And that's how you feel the future. The emotional engine plus Albert Einstein plus Godzilla. That's the formula.
Okay, so let's start with the emotional engine, right? So, my first gig, I was in the show called Stomp in New York City. Thank you. And Stomp was a found object percussion, body percussion show, but it was really about communication. We taught you how to speak Stomp, right? So, if I went like this, you would go... Right, exactly. And no matter what country I was in, I would do that and they would go... So, even if I did something like this... Right? Now we're speaking a language. Even if I went like this... Ah, I got you all.
But what made that interesting was even when I did that, you laughed. You felt the humor in it. Right? Why? How did you feel that humor?
And when I started writing and I started directing, I recognized something. I recognized that in every narrative, in every story I told, be it on stage or on screen, there was something deep and personal in every one of them that resonated within us. Deep and personal. And I started calling that the emotional engine. Right?
And I define the emotional engine as this: the driving emotional force that moves the person that we are following forward towards change. Now, there are a couple of words that I'm not going to say. I do not like the word protagonist. Right? I don't like it. As an actor, I am an emotional athlete. I embody the story. And the word protagonist takes me away from my body. It puts me in my head. And then I start thinking of ways to tell the story. If I say following, following is an action. Following is something that I can do. Following is embodied.
So, the person that I want to follow is the person whose emotional engine I am connecting to, right? The driving emotional force that moves the person we are following forward, forward towards change.
How do we find it? You pick your top five narratives. They can be books, they can be movies, they can be songs, right? But you pick your top five, and your top five aren't the five that are the best that you've ever seen. No, it's like the five that every time it comes on, you're going to watch it. Like if Ghostbusters comes on, I'm watching Ghostbusters. Right? I know every single word of that, every frame. I know who I'm going to call. I'm watching it. Right? That's your top five. Anytime it comes on, you're watching it.
So, what are my top five? We're going to find my emotional engine right now. My top five are Othello, Enter the Dragon, Blue, Lord of the Rings, and The Empire Strikes Back. Those are my top five. So, what are those movies about? What are those plays about? What are those shows about?
Othello: when a jealous officer convinces his general that his wife has slept with his trusted friend, the shame of being deceived and betrayed causes the general to kill his wife and himself. That is Othello.
Enter the Dragon: when a martial arts expert is recruited by the secret service to infiltrate the private island of a criminal mastermind who invades the killer of his sister and reclaims the island for the Shaolin monks for whom it was stolen. Y'all didn't think Enter the Dragon was that deep, right? Enter the Dragon is deep. You think it's the Bruce Lee saying "Wata!" and kicking people in the neck. It's a lot. It's deep.
Blue: when a woman loses her husband and daughter in a car crash, she ends up discovering the affair her husband was having and ultimately finds her voice. Krzysztof Kieślowski, see all three colors. Blue is the best one.
The Lord of the Rings: when an unlikely group comes together to destroy the ring of destiny, the journey ends up tearing them apart, only to realize the quest was not only to save the world but each other. Lord of the Rings.
The Empire Strikes Back: when a talented young warrior sets out to rid the galaxy of an evil empire, he discovers the villain he has vowed to kill is his own flesh and blood. Y'all can't tell me when Darth Vader was chilling in Cloud City and he just chopped off Luke's hand and he's like, "Obi-Wan never told you who your father was." He said, "You told me enough. You told me you killed him." "No, I am your father." And then Luke goes, "That's not true. That's impossible." And then this is how you know Darth Vader was Black. He goes, "Search your feelings, Luke. You know it be true." I swear to God, he says it. Go back, watch it again. I was like, "That is a Black Darth Vader." True.
What do those movies have in common? What is the driving emotional force that moves the person that we are following forward towards change? Loyalty. Every single one of those films and plays, that moves the character forward towards change, the person that we're following towards change, they are moved forward through loyalty.
There's always an obstacle to your emotional engine. There's always an obstacle. There's always the thing that makes that loyalty harder to stay true to, that blocks that loyalty, that they have to move through. There will always be an obstacle to your emotional engine. Always. There is always a hurdle you have to climb over for your emotional engine. For mine, it's loyalty and betrayal. That's what's important to me. That's what I want you to feel when I start talking about the future. Emotionally, I want you to feel the loyalty and betrayal.
Albert Einstein. Albert Einstein came up with the best inch of equation, I think, ever. Which was... right, E equals MC squared. Now, E equals MC squared did a bunch of things. If there are any physicists in the house or any physicists watching in cyberspace, it's a metaphor. All right? Don't get mad at me because the physics is oversimplified. That's the point.
E equals MC squared did a couple of great things. Number one, it proved that time is relative, right? Relative to positioning, relative to where you are in space, right? It also proved that gravity exists, especially now that we're talking about gravitational waves. And then it did this other thing called quantum mechanics that we're not going to talk about right now, but we're going to just leave that right there. Right?
For this, the thing that we want to talk about is space-time. Space-time. E equals MC squared said you cannot have a time without space. You cannot have... They're together.
Now, when I was studying the Meisner technique of acting, there was one thing that I really, really enjoyed from Meisner, which is: when leads you to who and what. The when leads you to the who and what. But because of Albert Einstein and because of space-time, it really is the when-where that leads you to the who and what. Right? It's the when-where. It's the space-time.
Right? When-where, what does that mean? When-where in life of the person we are following, through their driving emotional force that moves them forward towards change? When are you all in this room? You are when you wanted to know what Feel the Future was about. Where are you? You're in this beautiful theater in San Francisco listening to a skinny kid from the South Bronx. That's the when-where.
When-where in life, when-where do we meet Luke Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Back? When he wants to really become a Jedi. That's when. Where? In the rebellion. Right? Where he joins the rebellion and he's right in the middle of the fight, right? He's on the ice planet Hoth, he finds the huge big giant snow monster, cuts his arm off, revenge for getting his hand cut off. There's a lot of limbs cut off in Star Wars. I don't know what that's about. Right? That's when-where in Luke Skywalker's life.
In general, when we are talking about space-time, this is what I learned in film school. In general, the foreground, right there, is the past. The midground is the present. The background is the future in space-time.
Now, now that I've given you the rules, we all have a feeling about these people in space-time right now. Again, for the physicists in the room, it's a metaphor. Quantum entanglement. I love this idea that you can connect bodies, ideas, stars, objects over great distances, and the movement of that one object affects the other.
So, once we entangle our space-time, we have a feeling about it. If I said that the person in our present is married to the person in the past, but the person in the future, but that's the love of your life. Yeah? That's the person who you've been connected to that has done everything right. But that's your stronger entanglement.
Now, walk upstage. Now, look at the person in your past. Now, we have a feeling about that person. Now, we feel away. That changes the story. Without even any words, just knowing that. Right?
Now, walk to the past and face the audience. Right? And now, all you have to do is hold your hand out to her. Just look at... Just take a look at him. Just look. You don't even have to move. Just look. She automatically wants to go to the future. Now, how do you feel? Right. Now, we have a feeling about the person who's left in the past.
We can convey these messages in space-time about how we feel emotionally without any words, just by moving them through space-time and entangling them through quantum entanglement. Right? Thank you to all my actors. Thank you. Well done. You will get a call from your union rep.
Finally, Godzilla. Wait for it. Yeah. Cool. All right. So, there have been many Godzillas. There have been a lot of Godzillas. There's Godzilla versus King Kong. There's Godzilla King of the Monsters. There's Godzilla 2000. But this is the Godzilla that I grew up with. This is the Godzilla that I love. This is the Godzilla that has my heart. I love Godzilla.
Every Saturday after karate class, right, I'd rush home and I'd watch the Shaw Brothers kung fu movies. And then after the Shaw Brothers kung fu movies, there would be a Godzilla movie. And every Godzilla movie was the same. You would meet these wonderful Japanese people. You would see them making friends and loving each other. They all had struggles that they had to overcome and go through, but then they would start going through and overcoming them. And they would find love, and they would create families, and then they would have children, and then Godzilla shows up and completely decimates everything. Turns Tokyo into rubble. Everybody's distraught.
But I realized something. Every time I watch Godzilla, I'm not talking about Godzilla. I'm talking about who he affected. I'm talking about what he destroyed. And I'm feeling for the families that have to rebuild, put their lives back together, and put Tokyo back together, and be families even with the threat of Godzilla.
So, what is Godzilla? I would love it if everyone stopped saying this. I would love it. "Raise the stakes" doesn't really mean anything anymore. It's something that executives say to screenwriters when they want to sound screenwriter-y. Right? But raising the stakes is relative to everyone we talk to. Everyone who has an idea of stakes
has a different idea of what that is. It puts you in your head. And like I said, I'm an emotional athlete. I'm an embodied storyteller. I want to be in my body. So, we can stop saying raise the stakes. Right? At least for tonight.
What is Godzilla? Every time Godzilla shows up, what does Godzilla do? Godzilla is pressure. Godzilla is pressure on your emotional engine. Godzilla is pressure on your space-time. Pressure you can feel.
We all know what is pressure to us. It doesn't have to be a 100-ft lizard. But to us, that's what it feels like. That's pressure.
Why is pressure so valuable when we are trying to tell people how we want them to feel about the future? Because it makes us vulnerable. Vulnerable is the magic. Vulnerable is scary. Vulnerable is what we have to be. Vulnerable is the good stuff. It's the really, really good stuff.
This is always hard.
So, a few years ago when my son was 9 years old. He's 16 now. But when he was 9 years old, he asked me to take him on a father and son trip to New York City. See, I gave him all my stories about Stomp and growing up in New York and living in Brooklyn and biking over the bridge to the city.
So, I said, "Yeah, okay." And he and I went to New York. We stayed in Bed-Stuy. And one day he said, "Daddy, I want to walk over the Brooklyn Bridge." And I said, "Okay. Okay, let's walk over the bridge."
So, we get on the train, we get to the Brooklyn Bridge, and if you've never walked over the Brooklyn Bridge before, there are a path that's concrete. And then it leads you up to these wooden slats. And then it leads you to the spider web and the arches that frame the city. Right? It's the city I love. It's the city I grew up in.
So, we get to the concrete path, and my son starts running as fast as he can to the concrete to get to the wooden slats, and I follow him. I'm following him, and I'm running, and I'm following him. And then I get to the wooden part, and I freeze.
And my son turns around, and he says, "Come on, Dad." And I couldn't move. In that moment, I realized that I hadn't walked across that bridge in 20 years.
When I was... was where my son made me face my biggest shame. My biggest fear.
See, 20 years earlier, this bridge I thought was going to be the last thing I would ever see. At a time where I thought my life was going to change for the better. It actually changed for the worse. Star Wars came out and I faced an intense amount of pressure from the world. And at 26 years old, I didn't want to live anymore. I couldn't take it. It was too much.
It was the only time in my life where I couldn't see the future. And here I was, 20 years later, looking at my little boy saying, "Come on, Dad."
I remember thinking, "It's just a step. I mean, just take a step. You've been stepping your whole life, you know? You wouldn't stop. You can step. Just take a step. Just step onto the wood. Just go step to it."
I was so scared. I was standing up right in front of Godzilla and I couldn't even move.
So, then I did it. I took a step. And I took another step. And I kept walking. And as I was walking, I knew I was going to come up to the place where I wanted to end my life. And I got there.
And on the night that it happened, I don't even remember seeing anything. You know? I don't remember seeing the Statue of Liberty. I don't remember seeing Brooklyn. I don't remember seeing Manhattan. I just don't remember seeing anything.
But this day, I saw everything. And I grabbed my little boy and I held him and I took that picture.
And all I could think of was, "Man, 20 years ago, I almost didn't have you." The love of my life. The person that I'm entangled to the most.
See, relative to the rest of the world, I didn't think my story mattered. I held onto it for 20 years. I kept it inside. I wasn't vulnerable.
But then I tweeted this picture. And I told the world, I was like, "Fuck, I just can't hold onto this anymore. I have to just let it go." And it went everywhere. Millions and millions of people retweeted it. And I cannot tell you the amount of love I got back.
And then my little boy, he looked up at me, touched my face, and he said, "Daddy?" And I said, "Yeah, baby." "Can I get something to eat? I'm hungry." Okay. And we walked across the rest of the bridge.
And to this day, I am still entangled to all of those people who have the exact same story as I did. And who told me those stories just because I shared my vulnerability. And I realized that telling an emotional story is just the tip of the iceberg. It's just the beginning. You need to add intense pressure to your emotional engine that it increases your vulnerability until you have no choice, no choice, but to be who you really are.
Every life on this planet has a right to its dignity. Every life. And it's not the dignity that we give it. It's the dignity from its point of view. The point of view of every life is how we have to feel for the future.
We use these tools and we use these skills and we use this formula not just for us, but for every life on this planet. To give every life its dignity. That's Earthling culture. That is my prime directive. That is how I build the future that I want to have agency over. That's how I share my feelings for the future.
So, I want everyone who is willing to do this. When this is over, yeah? And you're out in the lobby or wherever or at dinner, put your hand over your heart and find someone else with their hand over their heart, right? And exchange emails. Exchange emails. And in one week's time, share your vulnerable feel the future with them.
It is a call to action. Feeling the future cannot be passive. We will not get through this thing alone. We have to get through this together. We have to. There is no way forward through change that happens by yourself.
I'll give you my feeling for the future. For today, Valentine's Day, when I thought about being on this stage, see, every stage that I've ever been on is home to me. This is home. And I wanted today to feel like people who I care about, who I love, who care and love about the future, are in my home listening to me play some drums and singing an Al Green song.
So, I want to thank you all for making my feel the future come true today on Valentine's Day. Thank you all.
So, so beautiful. We promised to you you would feel the future tonight. How many feelings did we feel? What a Valentine's Day to remember. Thank you. I'm feeling it. Feelings are big. You asked us to start by getting deep and personal. Yes. So, we're going to go there right away. I loved how much you brought up your background in New York, a fellow East Coaster. Yeah. Love that. Can you take us a little bit through some of what it was like to grow up in New York? And particularly the kind of experiences you had, things you saw in an early age that helped lay the foundation for who you've become.
Yeah, you know, the Bronx. Shout out to everybody in the BX. New Yorkers, we do that. We do like we shout out the borough and then we talk about our zip codes for some reason. I have no idea why. We're just like, "Yeah, South Bronx, maybe 10473. That's what's up."
I really loved growing up in the South Bronx. Even though we didn't have very much, it was this hotbed of culture. And, you know, growing up when I did, I'm as old as hip-hop. And hip-hop started on my block in New York. So, I watched as this brand new musical art form was being created, right? I watched B-boy culture. I watched DJ culture. I watched rap culture just figuring it out. Like I watched everybody figure it out. And it was really impressionable to me because I knew that if you had an idea, if you wanted to create something, you can actually go figure it out. And New York at that time was that kind of a place, right? Like even if you weren't very good at something, you could go do it somewhere and people would go, "Okay, look, that wasn't good, but there's something. Like, you have a little bit of something. Keep going on that path, right?" And so, that was very formative for me, especially having parents that were artists, right? So, there was really this beautiful place to see and experience new things and signals, right? before they became, you know, what they became globally.
One of my favorite stories I've heard you talk about is literally watching the birth of hip-hop and how some of the folks that started really a generation of music were not musicians. They were other things that— Yeah. —then spent their evenings experimenting.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, one of the things that I talk about, especially in our class, is this idea of being the signal, right? So, in future parlance, signals are these, you know, messages that usually come from underserved communities that all of a sudden become trends, and those trends then tip and become, you know, ways of the future. And most of the time the neighborhoods where I grew up is where those signals start, and hip-hop was one of those signals, especially like DJ culture was one of those signals. And I remember Grandmaster Flash, famous DJ, hip-hop pioneer, who used to DJ on my block. And Grandmaster Flash was an electrician by day. And he was the person who figured out all you need is a switch to go from one turntable to the next and the party could keep going on. And that switch became the DJ mixer. So, it was like it felt like one week there was like five amps and five turntables, and then Grandmaster Flash showed up and it was two turntables and amp and the switch. And boom, hip-hop changed, music changed.
And I want to talk about how you got into futures, and specifically Afro Futures, which is, I know, something you're very passionate about, and I want to give a huge shout-out to our dear friend, Dr. Lonnie Brooks, who's in the audience here today. Right there. My brother. Another long-time collaborator of the Long Now Foundation, and Anthony Weeks, who's in the audience today who helped bring it to life. Anthony. But you co-founded AfroRithms Group.
Yeah, the AfroRithms Futures Group. So, I had always been a futurist. I never really called myself a futurist, but I realized it was something that you can do through George Lucas, through like, you know, working on Star Wars, cuz George Lucas was very much a futurist. And every time we would talk, like, there was times where I would like ride to the set with him every morning, and we would talk and he would talk about, like, 20 years from now it's going to be like this, 40 years from now it's going to be like this. And I was just like, "Oh, wow, like, you can actually take your ideas and visions of the future and make something, right? And move the future to that thing, right?" And that's what he was doing with Star Wars, in front of and behind the character. And because when I played Jar Jar, it had never been done before, he was really pushing the envelope and trying to change cinema, right? He's always the guy going, you know, but we can do this, right? And so, that was really infectious being part of the team that changed movies, right? Cuz movies hadn't changed in 100 years. But every film technique up until today, every single film technique ever created is in The Phantom Menace, like, all of them, right? That's how future forward George was.
So, I loved that, and I wanted to live in that world. So, I wanted to do a podcast about Afrofuturism. And so, my brother-in-law, Aram Sinnreich, who was at the time the chair of Communications at American University in DC, was like, "Oh, you should talk to this guy, Dr. Lonnie Brooks." So, I remember this, I was on my way to brunch on Sunday, and I was like, "Oh, let me call this guy, Dr. Lonnie, and have like a real quick conversation and talk to him about this podcast, right?" So, I'm in my Prius, and I'm talking to and I call Lonnie, and three and a half hours go by. We did not stop talking. And I knew I had found like a kindred spirit. Like, we were quantum entangled. He was one of those people, you know? He's one of those brothers.
And I was like, "Okay, we're going to do this thing." And then he and I started the Afro Futures podcast, which then in turn turned into our game, AfroRithms from the Future, which is our card game about futures. And then we started the AfroRithms Futures Group, where not only do we play our game, but we also use it as a consultation tool, and we talk to people through Afrofuturism. And Afrofuturism I love because art is at the center of Afrofuturism, right? It's not like European futurism, where it's like science at the center, right? So, because I'm an artist, it really spoke to me that I can move the future through art, and that was centralized through the practice. But I personally believe that Lonnie Brooks is probably the best Afrofuturist scholar in the world. And I've learned from him every time we talk. I just love him so much.
Yeah, another shout-out. Another enormous-hearted human. And I will say that we met actually because of the Long Now presentation that they did. It is a piece of art and history, and just cannot recommend going back to see that talk. It's extraordinary. And I also love the podcast, and like you, it's not surprising the podcast has artists and scientists and computer scientists, programmers, graphic artists. It was really fun to hear you have a conversation with Nettrice Gaskins, and then go to the Smithsonian. They had a museum of the future, and her work is everywhere. So, again, I think your signal that this is someone who is communicating and embodying a whole new set of possibilities through her accommodation of art and computer science.
Yeah. Yeah, Nettrice, that's the homie. She's an amazing artist, amazing professor, but she's one of those people that I believe everybody should know, you know? And the best thing about what we do in the AfroRithms Futures Group and with the Afro Futures podcast is we get to talk to those people and introduce them to an audience that might not know them, and then they find them out. They figure them out. They search them out.
Yeah, during the pandemic, I started a future series, and you were part of it, and I invited some of the guests that I learned about from your podcast series. Again, just a tremendous resource. And I also want to talk a little bit about what you've done with the game, because I have had the great privilege. We hosted you at Stanford to play the game a couple times. We went to South by. The joy that I see unleashed when you play the game with people, it's unlike anything I've ever seen.
I just really love playing AfroRithms from the Future because we get to create a universe and a planet through a community of today. So, we always say like we have a reverence for the past, an awareness for the present, and creativity for the future, right? This is a lot. There's so much more to the Albert Einstein than, you know, foreground, midground, background. That's part of it, right?
And I love that we can use present emotions and present feelings and present tensions to build a universe and a planet of tomorrow. And then whenever we come back after the game, right? Everybody responds to us in such a positive way because now they look at the future as something that they could create. That's something that they can actually do. You know, a lot of times when we talk about the future, most people just kind of feel powerless. Yeah. You know, everybody is worried about the immediate future and not the long-term future. But you're going to get there, and somebody's thinking about it. Like, right now, somebody's thinking about how they want you to feel 25 years from now, right? And it's not a practice that we're used to. It's not a practice that is talked about that we do. We talk about the past a lot, right? And you know, there's a whole industry about the now and being in the present, right?
But we can perceive the future. As far as I know, we are the only creatures on this planet so far, right? Whales could probably do it really good, but as soon as they tell us, I'm down. But, you know, we can do this. We have this ability. So, turning that ability into a practice is one of the reasons why we created the AfroRithms from the Future game.
You were so vulnerable with us, Ahmed, about how difficult it was for you to
be at a part in your career that you felt was opening up, and then to get a response that you didn't expect. And I'm just so glad that you made yourself vulnerable to feel the love back, because, you know, the millions of lives you've transformed, and I know you often go to Comic Cons and feel the love, and people dress up and tell you about what you have meant to them.
But you truly are one of the most optimistic people that I know. And even in my darkest days, I'll get a text from you. It's time for the Department of Awesome. Let's go. Where are we going? What are we doing? So, I just wanted if you could share a little bit, cuz I think we could all use a little jolt of optimism and just, you know, stronger sense of resilience at this moment. Like, what keeps you going?
This is going to sound really cheesy. I love you. And that's why I text you. And the stronger we can hold those bonds of love, the more optimistic we can be. It's very easy to be pessimistic. It's easy. It's very easy to be afraid. It's something that has been, you know...
I love this term ancient neurons. I think it was David Eagleman, the neuroscientist who said these things about ancient neurons. It's really easy to excite our ancient neurons when it comes to fear. Right? When it comes to dystopia. Right? It's easy to do, you know? We were prey animals for a lot of our years as early humans. Right? Which is where those ancient neurons come from. But, it is just as easy to excite those ancient neurons towards optimism.
And you know, I love the James Baldwin quote when he was asked if he was an optimist. He was like, "Of course I'm an optimist. I'm alive." Mhm. You know? And we're alive. And as long as we're alive, we can do something. And not doing anything is not being alive. So, even if it's just a text, right? Even if it's like, you know, Drew Endy, who is another one of our colleagues, he and I talk about the Department of Awesome and having the Department of Awesome be like in our government. Even imagining a Department of Awesome is an activity, right? I like saying action as a director, you know? Usually first ADs call action. I like calling action, but I like action. I like moving. I like setting things in motion, right? Because as you move, you get ideas, right? My father has this saying. He says, a bullet can't hit a moving target, so keep moving.
You know? And I'm always... I have to keep moving. If I feel still or stagnant, I know I got to get up and do something, right? Cuz doing nothing is not an option, especially now. It's not an option. We have to do something. And you don't have to do a big thing, you know? Like, do a dance. Get up and dance in your room. You know? Dance is a rebellious act. You know? Singing is a rebellious act. Do it.
A lot of, you know, a lot of governments have been changed over music, you know? Bob Marley said, "One good thing about music, when it hits you, feel no pain." You know? That's how you move forward. So, it doesn't take a lot. It doesn't take a lot to be an optimist. Just move. Just keep moving.
Keep moving. We're going to hold that close to us. Keep moving. I want to talk about where you landed around Earthling culture. And I know in recent years you've gotten really excited about the future of bioengineering, synthetic biology, working with Drew and others. Can you share some of what you're working on now related to that?
Yeah, Earthling culture, I'm creating a clothing line called Earthling culture. I think that when you wear your beliefs, it's easier to promote your message, right? And I talk about embodied feelings, right? I think things like clothing, I think things like food, I think things like movement, dance, art, you know? If you embody your feelings, it's really easy for that to be infectious and change the world. So, I just want to see people walking around with a shirt that says Earthling culture on it because the ethos of it, the prime directive of every life is entitled to its dignity, right?
Like, Drew Endy always talks about, "What does the banana slug want?" Right? And it kind of feels like a frivolous exercise, but to the banana slug, it's a lot. Like, it means a lot, right? And one of those things about being an actor, you do all these acting exercises where you like you're a can of condensed milk, you know? Or you're... You know what I'm saying? Like, and it seems silly in acting class, right? But what it does do is it allows you to go to extreme points of view where I can put myself in the banana slug's point of view and go like, "Actually, I don't like any salt." You know what I'm saying?
The idea of dignity and respect is a really big idea, right? And it's so very important cuz you don't have to agree with me, but you damn better respect me. If we don't respect each other, then we can't live together. We can't have empathy for one another, right? And respecting you from your point of view and respecting you as the dignified life that you are, even if it's a life that we don't understand, right? Even if it's an intelligence that we don't understand. Even if it's an intelligence that we create, we have to start thinking about it as a life with dignity and what that dignity means from its point of view.
So, Earthling culture has become an ethos and a prime directive for me, and I want people to wear it. And, you know, I'm also starting a creative studio called Geo Summit. And Geo Summit is going to be a place where works of art can turn into actual things like Earthling culture, like a clothing line, like films, like, you know, spatial web projects. So, just putting this out in the world, this idea of dignity.
I did a project for the Getty for PST Art with my brother Jesse Gilbert and Oguri Lightning Shadow, my wife Raquel, and another great dancer Malea, and Dr. Lonnie and Drew, called the multiplanetary garden. And the idea for the multiplanetary garden is rather than Earth is this dystopia where we have to go out and find another Earth so we can plant a garden. Like, we don't leave Earth until we figured out Earth. Earth becomes the garden. Earth becomes the protopia, right? Once we get Earthling culture, once we understand that as an Earth, then we can go. But until we get that together, we don't get to go out to the stars cuz you're just going to bring all of that baggage with you.
And when we find a planet, we ask the planet, "Can we be here? Are we dignifying you with our presence?" If not, even if it's a planet that we can live on, if not, we go somewhere else. Because we have Earthling culture and that is the dignity and the respect for the life as from the life's point of view. And so, we created this piece that was like dance and visuals just celebrating that idea of Earthling culture.
Yeah, that's so beautiful. I often think we can't get better at things we don't practice. Yes. And often times we're asked to be experts at things we've never had a chance to practice safely. And the idea that dignity and respect are things we actually need to practice. Day to day. Day to day. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, you certainly bring that to everything that you do.
All right, we've got a couple of audience questions here that are really good and I'm excited to share. There's even one that ended up with an XO, which I thought was very Valentine's. So, the question comes from Tina. She asks, "How would you identify a spark? And how do you think a spark can light a movement to ignite it?" And then she also asked, "What was your first spark?"
What was my first spark? Ooh, I probably have a lot of sparks. How do I identify a spark? I listen. I'm a really really good listener. And I listen to the person who's not talking. Yeah. I mean, it's easy for all of us to listen to the loud thing, right? That's why I got off Twitter because it's loud. Right? And then you're trying to respond to all the loudness, right? But it's the person who's not speaking, who you know has a wonderful idea. They just might not be good in that room, right? I listen to that person intensely, you know? As a director, when I talk to actors, especially, you know, when I'm teaching, I'm always saying, "Just listen." Even if you're not saying anything, if you're not saying any words on stage, listen. Know what's going on because you can feel listening.
So the spark that I find is the spark that's quiet. I look for the quiet spark. I remember my mother went to school in New York called FIT, Fashion Institute of Technology. She studied fashion design and jewelry making. My mother's a brilliant artist. She's almost too brilliant. She can like deconstruct everything. So, sometimes she just like, "I can do everything. I don't know what to do."
But I remember one of my mother's classmates was doing a fashion show, right? And she was doing like kids fashion. And she needed kids. And my mom had three kids, so we went in there and did it. And I remember being on a fashion runway. I must have been like 4 years old. And I was like walking the runway and like I was in my like model... like I was feeling it and I was like oh I like this. Ooh, I like this. I really like this. And that's when I was just like yeah, I got to be on stage.
We've got to find a picture of that. Yeah. We need a picture of that. It's somewhere. I know it's somewhere on a contact sheet. That is so great. We have another wonderful question here from Natalia. She said as we're going along future now. She said what do you think the future will be like in 2050? Yeah. That's a good one.
Yeah. That's a good one. It really depends on what we do now. I think in 25 years that's actually not that far in the future to be honest. In 25 years there... I want the future to feel in 25 years like there's another 25 years. And it's incredibly possible.
When questions like that come up often times we're not really talking about the future. Right? We're talking about trust. And how can we trust that there will be a future in 2050? And the hardest part about the now is we don't know who to trust. You know, we don't know who to believe. In the macro sense, right? In the micro sense we trust the people who are close to us, we trust the people that we love.
But in 2050 I would love the future to feel vulnerable. I would love it to feel honest. And I would love all of us to be comfortable with practicing vulnerability with one another because if we start doing that, then we will have a 2050, right? We'll have a 2050 that we can all thrive in.
Now I'm building towards an optimistic 2050 where you know, your kitchen is your garden. You know, I'm building towards a 2050 where everyone is seen. And everyone is respected. And I'm building towards a 2050 where we can really eradicate poverty. Poverty is one of our biggest man-made problems that are very easy to solve. Right? We just don't do it.
We need some Earthling culture. We need some Earthling culture. We do. And we need some practice. Remember your promise? Going to put your hand over the heart. Hand over chest. I just can't thank you enough for spending your Valentine's Day with us, for coming up here, for giving so much to this stage, to this audience, to this community, to the future. We are all very very lucky. Thank you for being who you are. I always call you my future warrior because every time I hit you with an idea or a call to action, you're right on it. And I can't think of a better person to look at this future with. I just love you so much.
Thank you so much. I love you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
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