You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day.
I'm your host, Elise Hugh.
Every day you show up with some version of a plan, and every day reality might have other ideas.
How you respond in that gap, that's the track we drop, as concert pianist and DJ Elu says.
No matter what happens, No matter how improbable or absurd the load we have to bear, it like the mythical atlas.
We have to keep those tracks spinning, our life choices.
We have to keep everything going on.
Elu, born Eric Lewis, is a rock jazz pioneer and one of the most inventive pianists today.
In this talk and performance he traces the unlikely journey from classical prodigy to New York City nightclub regular and shares what he learned along the way.
A philosophy that changed how he plays, how he thinks and how he moves through the beautiful chaos of everyday life.
That's coming up right after a short break.
And now, our TED Talk of the day.
My philosophy is that we are all DJs.
No matter whether you're a schoolteacher or a neuroscientist or a VC, a genius or even a piano player we're all DJs.
I think that the club that we exist in is called club reality.
And the choices that we make are the tracks that we drop and the perceptual entity that we identify with.
That is us.
We are the DJs.
Now, every day we approach with some sort of plan, some sort of gentle idea that we're going to execute.
But then, of course, club reality comes along.
And oftentimes, like with the flights, like with all other kind of things, sets everything on fire.
No matter what happens, no matter how improbable or absurd the load we have to bear, it like the mythical Atlas.
We have to keep those tracks spinning, our life choices.
We have to keep everything going on.
And it's not like we have much of a choice in the matter.
I mean...
You can't stop feeding your dog or you can't stop closing that million dollar deal.
We just have to keep pushing forward and remember that we are the DJs.
So I want to share with you how I came to this kind of concept.
I want to share with you my journey into the world of DJing and how it affected my piano playing from a technical perspective, as well as my thoughts, my life.
When I was about two years old, my great grandmother put me at the piano and said OK, it's time for you to become a fourth generation piano player in our family.
And so eventually, my mother introduced me to jazz music.
And I fell in love with it.
But I was always a little bit out of sync with the jazz industry.
This led to panic attacks, which led to me creating my own cathartic Rock jazz style.
But it wasn't until I started hanging out at One, Oak and Finale, these New York City nightclubs, that I became aware of the DJs and their art and their science.
At One Oak there would be these hip-hop DJ virtuosos, and I mean, it seemed like they had like multiple arms.
Do-do-do-do.
Do-do-do-do.
Do-do-do-do.
Do-do-do-do.
Do-do-do-do.
But then the edm djs over at finale.
These were like mythical eldritch energy guys.
They'd be immersing the room in like these amazing sounds, like i was like is there a mammoth in the room?
Either way, I was so fascinated with this stuff that I had to become a DJ.
And I began to think that these guys were like logical extensions of, like Franz Litz and Fats Waller.
Or...
I had to become a DJ.
I said, I got to learn how to do this stuff.
I thought it would be easy, given my piano background, and of course, I was dead wrong.
Reality had much different plans.
After a pretty embarrassing learning curve, I began to feel a little more comfortable with DJing and I began to notice that It's so much about empathy and sensitivity and rigorous preparation.
Ultimately, it enhanced my common sense.
I learned stuff like don't play a huge Avicii EDM rager at a lunchtime cafe and don't play an obscure amazing B-side in the middle of bottle service at the peak hours of a nightclub.
I actually studied the neuroscience of it all and I noticed that even our brain is set up like a mixer.
There's the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere, and the corpus callosum that strip between the two of them keeps them in sync.
So we're DJs organically.
I even came up with an idea I called piano turntablism.
This kind of thing here.
Thank you.
Playing two different tunes.
Sting heard that.
That's how I got the gig.
I opened for him.
Pretty funny.
So ultimately, this all has helped me get in control of those panic attacks that I touched on, the depressions, all that stuff.
My mantra is, my mind is the club.
I am the DJ.
My choices affect the atmosphere.
So let's keep that atmosphere groovy.
I hope that you find this idea useful applicable because, no matter what life throws at us, I believe we can always be enhanced by thinking of it as if we were a DJ because, in the end, we are all DJs.
Having said that, I'm going to play a quick tune for you.
This is an original I call The Inspirer.
I find you all so very inspirational and so very groovy.
Please enjoy.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
That was Elu at TED Next 2025.
If you're curious about TED's curation, find out more at TED.com slash curation guidelines.
And that's it for today.
TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective.
This talk was fact-checked by the TED Research Team and produced and edited by our team Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Lucy Little and Tansika Sungmarnivong.
This episode was mixed by Lucy Little.
Additional support from Emma Taubner and Daniela Balarezo.
I'm Elise Hu.
I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed.
Thanks for listening.
