TCSE: Ted Corpus Search Engine

Recorded at	June 25, 2020
Event	TED2020
Duration (min:sec)	06:24
Video Type	TED Stage Talk
Words per minute	154.37 slow
Readability (FK)	78.22 very easy
Speaker	Daniel Alexander Jones


1	00:12	"I've got people in me."
2	00:15	So sang the late Abbey Lincoln.
3	00:18	I take that lyric as mantra.
4	00:21	"I've got people in me."
5	00:24	Jomama Jones is the person in me I turn to as a guide.
6	00:29	She's my alter ego.
7	00:31	I've been embodying her in performance since 1995, and she comes around when she has some insight to offer folks.
8	00:41	At this time of radical change, I'm glad to be the vessel for her message to you.
9	00:53	Jomama Jones: What if I told you it's going to be alright ... but what if I told you not yet?
10	01:00	What if I told you there are trials ahead beyond your deepest fears?
11	01:06	What if I told you will you fall ... down, down, down?
12	01:12	But what if I told you you will surprise yourself?
13	01:17	What if I told you will be brave enough?
14	01:23	What if I told you we won't all make it through?
15	01:28	But what if I told you that is as it must be?
16	01:34	What if I told you I've seen the future?
17	01:41	Do you like my hands?
18	01:43	They're expressive, yeah?
19	01:45	Now look at your hands -- now go on.
20	01:48	There's so much history recorded through their touches and marks of the future sketched on their palms.
21	01:55	Sometimes hands grip tight, sometimes hands let go.
22	02:01	What if I told you it's all going to come undone?
23	02:07	Hm. Ladies and gentlemen and otherwise described, I am Jomama Jones.
24	02:15	Some call me a soul sonic superstar, and I agree, though even in my past that was from the future.
25	02:24	Let me take you back to girlhood.
26	02:26	Picture this: it was Planting Day, which was a holiday I invented for the Black youth community group I founded.
27	02:34	I dashed home to put on my gardening ensemble when I caught my uncle Freeman red-handed.
28	02:41	He was standing over my piggy bank with his hammer raised high.
29	02:46	He was fixing to steal my coins.
30	02:49	And you see, my uncle Freeman was a handyman.
31	02:53	He could fix anything -- a broken chair, a shattered pot -- even bring grandmother's plants back to life.
32	03:00	He had that magic touch with broken things ... and broken people.
33	03:06	He would take me with him on his jobs and say, "C'mon Jo, let's go do something to make this world a better place."
34	03:12	His hands were wide and calloused, and they always reminded me of displaced tree roots.
35	03:20	As we worked he would talk with folks about the change he was sure was just around the corner.
36	03:28	I saw him mend flagging hopes and leave folks with their heads held high.
37	03:35	His hands stirred the sunshine.
38	03:38	And now he was about to break my piggy bank.
39	03:43	I said "Step back, man, and show me your hands."
40	03:46	You know the irony was he used to give me all the old coins he'd find under floorboards while working.
41	03:54	And I put them in the piggy bank along with the money I earned through my childhood side hustles.
42	04:01	But by the spring of 1970, Uncle Freeman had lost his touch ... along with most of his jobs.
43	04:10	He saw a heavy future of civil wrongs and Black power outages in his palms.
44	04:19	The last straw had come the previous winter when they had gunned down Fred Hampton.
45	04:27	Overwhelmed with fear and rage and grief, Uncle Freeman tried to game his future.
46	04:37	He gripped too tight, and he started playing the numbers.
47	04:41	"Well, one of these numbers is gonna hit, little girl.
48	04:43	You got a quarter for your uncle Free -- " Now some of y'all have that relative.
49	04:48	But I knew right then and there I had to do something.
50	04:52	I jumped up and I grabbed that hammer
51	04:53	and I brought it crashing down on that pig.
52	04:56	And Uncle Freeman started to weep as I gathered up all the coins.
53	05:00	"We're not buying no lottery ticket, Uncle Freeman.
54	05:02	C'mon."
55	05:05	We spent every last cent at the seed store.
56	05:11	You know, the kids in my gardening group?
57	05:13	They didn't bat an eye when I had Uncle Freeman get down and put his hands in the earth again and start breaking up that soil for our seeds.
58	05:21	And my little friend Taesha even came over and started slapping him on the back saying, "Cry it out, Uncle Freeman.
59	05:27	Cry it out."
60	05:30	"I can't fix this," he sobbed.
61	05:34	It's an ancient-future truism, that.
62	05:39	He wasn't the first to feel that way, and he wouldn't be the last.
63	05:43	Right now, it feels as though everything is breaking beyond repair.
64	05:50	It is.
65	05:52	But that breaking apart can be a breaking open, no matter how violent and uncertain and fearsome it seems.
66	06:03	The thing is ... we can't do it alone.
67	06:08	Uncle Freeman cried so much that day as we planted our seeds, he was our very own irrigation system.
68	06:20	"I don't know who I am anymore, little girl," he said to me at sundown.
69	06:26	"Good, Uncle Freeman.
70	06:28	Good.
71	06:30	You're new again, and that's just how we need you."

Daniel Alexander Jones: What to do when everything feels broken