Eric Idle: 'America is 300 million people all walking in the same direction, singing 'I Did It My Way'', Whitman College - 2013

19 May 2014, Whitman College, Washington, USA

President Bridges, faculty, graduating class, parents, yes, students, and the man in the back who's wondered into the wrong place by mistake. Good morning. My task is a pleasant one. I'm here today because I'm a proud parent of one of the graduating class of 2013, my daughter Lily, congratulations.

And like the other proud parents, I'm kinda anxious to hear what on earth I'm gonna to say. I have been especially asked not to be rude or inappropriate. Which is a bit like inviting a boxer to fight and not asking him to hit anyone. But, I have reassured your president, whose job is at stake, that today's address is rated MBL, NV, and NN. No bad language, no violence, and definitely no nudity.

I've also been asked not to be too long, as I'm sure you're bursting for a pee. And, to be funny, I do hope I will be funny. But do feel free to laugh sycophantically at anything that sounds even remotely amusing. I hope I can say something that you can take away with you today, as you commence your life. Or as the rest of us know, go down hill from here. This is not so much a commencement as the end of the good bit. After college, it's a bit like being cast out of paradise. From now on, it's all debts and taxes, and death and jobs, marriages and divorces, and money problems. It's a mess out there. And then you have to watch yourself turning into your parents.

Well I'm not gonna say any of that. Obviously, because I think we need today to hear something encouraging. Something, you remember, when other people say, "Oh, we had Steve Jobs." Or, "We had Oprah." "We had Obama." "We had the Pope." So you don't feel you have to say, "Oh, we had that twit from Monty Python."

 So I really do want to say something touching and real, but don't hold your breath. Okay? Because my track record on the touchy-feely stuff is not good. Not just because I'm a professional idiot, but because, as you might have spotted, I'm British. And as you know, we Brits have no emotions. Instead, we have royalty. And they have emotions for us.

We are always very happy for them. Getting married, getting pregnant, getting buried. It's nice and it stops us having to worry about our own feelings. We stand out in the rain for hours and wave little flags and cheer as they celebrate themselves.

"Hooray. Shall we go inside now?"

"No, no. Let's stay outside. It's still raining."

So the Queen's 'rain' is actually literal in England. And so we do love royalty in England. Now. When I do this. It means I'm being ironic. Now, I'm being genuine. Now I'm being ironic. Sincere. Ironic. Okay. Got it? And I've been forced to invent this sign recently as I find that nowadays, nobody gets irony, because we are now living in the post-ironic age. Once George Bush gets a library, irony is dead.

But I don't want to be controversial today, because I know you Americans are very sensitive. Plus, you have a lot of guns.

And a quick word, on the Second Amendment, which I understand, but I think I can promise you we Brits are not coming back. So you don't need that many muskets.

Okay. That's the irony sign. I think you're gonna find that really helpful in your future life. Now, President Bridges, I'm so sorry. President Bridges kindly blackmailed me into coming today. And showed his perfect understanding of the British by offering me no money, but a chance to dress up in a silly costume. That, for Brits, is irresistible. So thank you President Bridges for the great honor you do me today. My wife is absolutely thrilled she's finally married to a doctor. And of course, I am thrilled, because I can now prescribe my own medical marijuana.

Actually, I can't imagine why you asked me. I presume the Kardashians were busy. Now, I've called this address, "There's No Time Like the Pleasant." And here's a little poem I wrote to help remind you what I'm trying to say.

Life has a very simple plot.
First you're here and then you're not.

So remember life is very short. And life can be very pleasant. So do enjoy it. Just remember, that throughout all of history, and all of the people who ever lived, there's not one single person, not Shakespeare, not Mozart, not Chaucer, not Einstein, not Hubble, not Jeff who feeds the donkeys, who wouldn't give up everything they ever achieved in their lifetimes to stand here in your place and be alive here today, right now.

Not one. Well there is one, yes. But a part from Jeff who feeds the donkeys, there's nobody who wouldn't gladly change with you today being young and here and alive. I would give all of my money to be you. I'm not going to, because my wife has it. I'm allowed one wife joke, and that's it. And I agreed because I am a married liberal. I believe in a woman's right to choose for me.

So, your life is precious. You've only got one. Don't waste it on bad relationships, on bad marriages, on bad jobs, on bad people. Waste it wisely, on what you want to do. But if you're still playing beer pong in five years from now, you may be on the wrong track.

You are alive at the finest point in mankind's history, where we now know more about our origins and our planet and our universe, than any preceding generations. Life took over 4 billion years to evolve into year. And you've about 70 more years to enjoy it. Billions of years ago, right here, mollusks frolicked. In the grand age of the mollusk, when mollusks ruled the world, as seen on PBS. That was of course in the great period that scientists call the flirtatious. I mean, can you imagine, one mollusk saying to another, "Ooh, love, swim around a bit, you know? In only a few billion years, we'll all've evolved into a graduating class at Whitman."

No, you can't imagine that because mollusks can't speak. Nor are they qualified for Whitman degrees, though they'd probably have more chance of getting a Whitman degree than the Kardashians.

Now there aren't that many days in life that you can pretty much guarantee you won't forget. Your first arrest, prison, obviously, first sex, it's hard to forget that, no matter how hard you try. And graduation day is on of those days that you will remember until you the day forget. So what else are you going to remember about Whitman, apart from beer bong and beer pong.

Well you'll probably remember the first time you got drunk. Who knew the room would go round and round and around. They don't say that on the bottle, do they? Warning: the room will go round and round and round. The wineries here in Walla Walla don't say 'come to a room going round and round and round' party. So be careful of that. When a room's spinning, you've pretty much had enough. It's the same with marriage.

Some bit of advice, never apologise, never explain. That's what I hear a lot of people say, and I think it's bollocks. Okay? "Never apologise, never explain," was said by Henry Ford the Second, when he was caught drunk driving in a car, in California, with a young lady not his wife. She was chorus girl and he was a millionaire. There are still some things money can buy. But under those terms, he never apologised and never explained, is good advice. But I think apologising every now and again is a very good thing to do. It puts you in very high moral position with people you've hurt. I'm not suggesting you become like the English and say sorry all the time. Because they don't mean it. You know? They push you down and go, "Oops, sorry!" And they elbow you aside in shops, but they don't mean it, the British do not mean sorry-

Her Majesty the Queen was hosting the Nigerian President in London, and they were in a horse and carriage in a parade on their way to a public banquet. Now one of the horses loudly farted. "I'm terribly sorry," said the Queen. "That's all right," said the President, "I thought it was the horse."

Winston Churchill addressing the kids at his old school, said, "Never, never, never, never, never give up." And I think that's really important, don't give up and don't be afraid to not know what you're doing. Uncertainty is the atomic principle on which we are all organised. So why try and beat your own chemistry? It's okay to uncertain, okay.

The other thing I'd say is begin to learn to trust yourselves. That's very vital. You know, don't say, "Oh, I'm sure they're right, I probably shouldn't go and invent Apple." Just stand with yourself. Remember in his lifetime Van Gogh sold only two paintings. I've personally sold even fewer. So persevere. And excuse me one second. Argh ... This is a very wonderful moment for me, I have to say this:

Someone once said, "America is 300 million people all walking in the same direction, singing 'I did it my way' ", actually it was me, I said that. But remember to persevere. Your life is very precious, you're travelling round a galaxy, you're not in Walla Walla, you're on the surface of a planet. Pull back, it helps to put everything in perspective. Okay? Remember you're a tiny little speck of consciousness in an incredibly expanding and immense and virtually eternal universe, a 190 billion light years across. And that's just the bit we can see.

So don't just pursue happiness, catch it. And they may even have a cure for it by then. All right, so other bits of advice. Do see some of the planets, get a little further adrift than Walmart. And don't stop reading, your brain doesn't know it's graduated. Feed it, okay. We proud parents are here to salute you and to give thanks that we no longer have to pay Whitman fees.

But most of us old farts are sadly sentimental to see our little kids all grown up and about to make their way into the world, that's you Lily. Thank you son Carey for being here. My wife of 36 years Tania. Make us proud Whitmanese, get out there Class of 2013, go and kick some ass.

Later, Eric Idle finished with the greatest of finishing songs.

Mark Merry: 'How do we become wise?', Yarra Valley GS Valedictory Address - 2017

26 October 2017, Yarra Valley Grammar School, Melbourne, Australia

This was the headmaster's address to graduating Year 12 students.

We are here to mark the end of thirteen years of formal education. This is cause for considerable celebration and acknowledgement of hard work, contribution and perseverance. Congratulations and well done.

Ought we now to consider our graduates to be educated?

Well…No!

I would hope that none of us in this room would describe ourselves as educated. This may sound a strange thing to say, but let’s consider the term.

To be ‘educated’ suggests that our studies are complete. We have learnt all that there is needed to be known…the process is finished. We have grown enough. Today more than ever, what we need to know and understand can shift in an instant. A better aspiration for us in a racing world is not to be educated but rather to be in the process of educating.

Of course, education is not confined to schools and universities and the process doesn’t stop. It’s continuous and it’s evolving. It’s not a store of knowledge that we rely upon but rather a set of skills to find, capture and use: the right knowledge at the right time and in the right way.

Our graduates are acquiring those skills.

·         Our science and mathematics students employ the skills of experimentation, observation, analysis of data and equations to find solutions. 

·         Our humanities students analyse text, find evidence and propose theories,

·         Our artists express themselves in creative and unique ways. They show us an alternate view of the world.

·         This is very clever stuff…important skills which will stand them in good stead. But it’s not enough.

I have a greater aspiration for you and it’s bound up in a word which has gone out of fashion. We don’t use it very much anymore because there doesn’t seem to be a lot of evidence of it…but we should. The word is “Wisdom”. Wisdom…or to be wise. It’s good to be clever…but as Euripides once wrote:

“Cleverness is not wisdom”.

Wisdom is more than ability and more than knowledge. It’s more than just being clever.

Wisdom is not just having knowledge or just having access to facts. Google does not bestow wisdom. Google is a shorthand way of finding information, most of it accurate. Michel de Montaigne was one of the most significant philosophers of the French Renaissance, known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre. He invented the essay…Not a popular figure amongst some students.

He wrote that:

“Learned we may be with another man's learning: we can only be wise with wisdom of our own.”

It’s not enough to learn and repeat what other people think, we need to learn to think and understand for ourselves. We can’t and we shouldn’t outsource our thinking. To create an original thought in a world awash with the thoughts of others literally at the push of a button is becoming increasingly difficult.

Wisdom is not just having strong opinions either. The American philosopher William James asserted that:

“A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.”

We see this in all aspects of modern commentary, on social media and in political discourse. One side of politics today has a tendency to tell us what we must believe and say whilst the other side will believe and say anything.

There’s not much wiggle room for original thought.

Julius Caesar called it out when he said:

'Libenter homines id quod volunt credunt.”

'Men readily believe what they want to believe”

It’s hard to have an original thought where trolling forces conformity and not just opinion but now facts are subjective. I am a keen observer of US politics. I do this by watching MSNBC, CNN and FOX to try to understand how others with different views see the same events.

The bizarre thing is that we seem to be living in parallel universes where meaning is lost amongst “alternate facts”, “fake news” and political spin. It’s no longer just difference of opinion, it’s become a difference of facts.

The Nazi Minister for Information and Propaganda Josef Goebbels once cynically said that:

“A lie told once remains a lie. A lie told a thousand times becomes the truth”.

I don’t often reference Josef Goebbels. Our world has become a world where we only commune and speak to those who agree with us…the rest of the time we yell formulas at those who don’t.

If cleverness and knowledge are not enough… what is wisdom? How do we become wise?

Wisdom or sapience (from the Latin sapientum: to be wise) is the ability to think and act using knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense, self-knowledge and insight. Importantly, wisdom is also associated with virtues such as compassion, ethics and benevolence.

Let’s look at the checklist and ask ourselves if we can tick all the boxes:

·         Knowledge

·         Experience

·         Understanding

·         Common sense

·         Insight: Socrates: “Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.”

·         Self-knowledge: Aristotle said: “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”

·         Compassion:

·         Ethics

·         Benevolence

The US President Theodore Roosevelt once wrote:

“No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care”

Remember when we could quote American Presidents? So wisdom seems to be a combination of the intellectual and the ethical, the mind and the heart. Wisdom is not a factor of age. I have met many wise young people and many unwise older people. Wisdom is attainable, but we need to work on ticking all of the boxes.

It’s quite a confronting question…am I now or will I ever be considered to be a wise person? Do I tick all the boxes? Do I have the energy, the capacity and the will to become wise? Do I even want to be wise? Perhaps asking these questions of ourselves are the early stages of the getting of wisdom?

One considered to be one of the great wise persons of the last century, Albert Einstein once quipped:

“It is not that I'm so smart. But I stay with the questions much longer.”

It’s my earnest hope that as you enjoy life after school, continue to learn and to aspire to be wise, and that you like that genius Albert Einstein,

“Stay with the questions much longer.”

Thank you, God bless and good luck with all that you do….

Russell Baker: 'Whatever you do, do not go forth!', Connecticut College - 1995

27 May 1995, Connecticut College, Connecticut, USA

In a sensible world I would now congratulate the Class of 1995 and sit down without further comment. I am sure the Class of 1995 wishes I would do so. Unfortunately for the Class of 1995 we do not live in a sensible world.

We live in a world far more slavish in its obedience to ancient custom than we like to admit. And ancient commencement-day custom demands that somebody stand up here and harangue the poor graduates until they beg for mercy. The ancient rule has been: make them suffer. I still remember the agony of my own graduation at The John Hopkins University.

They had imported some heat from the Sahara Desert especially for the occasion, and the commencement orator spoke for two and a half days. That was in 1947.

Luckily, the forces of mercy have made big gains since then. The authorities of Connecticut College have suggested that for me to speak longer than 20 minutes would be regarded as cruel and inhuman punishment and that if I go as long as 30 minutes several strong men will mount this platform and forcibly remove me. But if I can finish in 15 minutes - 15 minutes! - they will let me stay for lunch. They know their man, ladies and gentleman. When I smell a free lunch, I go for it.

So if I can do this right, you’ll see the back of me before we get to minute 16. This will not be easy. Condensing a graduation speech into 15 minutes is like trying to squeeze a Wagnerian opera into a telephone booth. To do it I had to strip away all the frills. This means you don’t even get any warm-up jokes. So those of you who came just for the jokes might as well leave now.

All right, let’s plunge right ahead into the dull part. That’s the part where the commencement speaker tells the graduates to go forth into the world, then gives advice on what to do when they get out there. This is a ridiculous waste of time. The graduates never take the advice, as I have learned from long experience. The best advice I can give anybody about going out into the world is this: Don’t do it. I have been out there. It is a mess.

I have been giving graduates this advice ever since 1967 when I spoke to a batch of them over at Bennington. That was 28 years ago. Some of your parent were probably graduating there that day and went on to ignore my advice.

Thanks to the genius of my generation, I told them, it was a pretty good world out there - they went forth into it, they would mess it up. So I urged them not to go.

I might as well have been shouting down a rain barrel. They didn’t listen. They went forth anyhow. And look what happened. Within a year Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were murdered. Then Nixon took us all to The Watergate. Draft riots. Defeat in Vietnam. John Lennon killed. Ronald Reagan and his trillion-dollar deficit.

Over the years I spoke to many graduating classes, always pleading with them: Whatever you do, do not go forth.

Nobody listened. They kept right on going forth anyhow. And look what we have today: Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton.

So I will not waste my breath today pleading with you not to go forth. Instead I limit myself to a simple plea: When you get out there in the world try not to make it any worse than it already is. I thought it might help to give you a list of the hundred most important things you can do to avoid making the world any worse. Since I’m shooting for 15 minutes, however, there is no time to give you all 100. You will have to make do with 10. Short as the public attention span is these days, nobody could remember 100 anyhow. Even 10 may be asking too much.

You remember the old joke about how television news would have reported the story of the Ten Commandments: “God today issued 10 commandments, three of which are…”

He is my list: 10 things to help you avoid making the world worse than it already is.

One: Bend down once in a while and smell a flower.

Two: Don’t go around in clothes that talk. There is already too much talk in the world. We’ve got so many talking people there’s hardly anybody left to listen. With radio and television and telephones we’ve got talking furniture. With bumper stickers we’ve got talking cars. Talking clothes just add to the uproar. If you simply cannot resist being an incompetent klutz, don’t boast about it by wearing a tee shirt that says ‘underachiever and proud of it.’ Being dumb is not the worst thing in the world, but letting your clothes shout it out loud depresses the neighbors and embarrasses your parents.

Point three follows from point two, and it’s this: Listen once in a while. It’s amazing what you can hear. On a hot summer day in the country you can hear the corn growing, the crack of a tin roof buckling under the power of the sun. In a real old-fashioned parlor silence so deep you can hear the dust settling on the velveteen settee, you might hear the footsteps of something sinister gaining on you, or a heart-stoppingly beautiful phrase from Mozart you haven’t heard since childhood, or the voice of somebody - now gone - whom you loved. Or sometime when you’re talking up a storm so brilliant, so charming that you can hardly believe how wonderful you are, pause just a moment and listen to yourself. It’s good for the soul to hear yourself as others hear you, and next time maybe, just maybe, you will not talk so much, so loudly, so brilliantly, so charmingly, so utterly shamefully foolishly.

Point four: Sleep in the nude. In an age when people don’t even get dressed to go to the theater anymore, it’s silly getting dressed up to go to bed. What’s more, now that you can no longer smoke, drink gin or eat bacon and eggs without somebody trying to make you feel ashamed of yourself, sleeping in the nude is one deliciously sinful pleasure you can commit without being caught by the Puritan police squads that patrol the nation.

Point five: Turn off the TV once or twice a month and pick up a book. It will ease your blood pressure. It might even wake up your mind, but if it puts you to sleep you’re still a winner. Better to sleep than have to watch that endless parade of body bags the local news channel marches through your parlor.

Six: Don’t take your gun to town. Don’t even leave it home unless you lock all your bullets in a safe deposit box in a faraway bank. The surest way to get shot is not to drop by the nearest convenience store for a bottle of milk at midnight, but to keep a loaded pistol in you own house. What about your constitutional right to bear arms, you say. I would simply point out that you don’t have to exercise a constitutional right just because you have it. You have the constitutional right to run for president of the United States, abut most people have too much sense to insist on exercising it.

Seven: Learn to fear the automobile. It is not the trillion-dollar deficit that will finally destroy America. It is the automobile. Congressional studies of future highway needs are terrifying. A typical projection shows that when your generation is middle-aged, Interstate 95 between Miami and Fort Lauderdale will have to be 22 lanes wide to avert total paralysis of south Florida. Imagine an entire country covered with asphalt. My grandfather’s generation shot horses. Yours had better learn to shoot automobiles.

Eight: Have some children. Children add texture to your life. They will save you from turning into old fogies before you’re middle-aged. They will teach you humility. When old age overtakes you, as it inevitably will I’m sorry to say, having a few children will provide you with people who will feel guilty when they’re accused of being ungrateful for all you’ve done for them. It’s almost impossible nowadays to find anybody who will feel guilty about anything, including mass murder. When you reach the golden years, your best bet is children, the ingrates.

Nine: Get married. I know you don’t want to hear this, but getting married will give you a lot more satisfaction in the long run than your BMW. It provides a standard set of parent for your children and gives you that second income you will need when it’s time to send those children to Connecticut College. What’s more, without marriage you will have practically no material at all to work with when you decide to write a book or hire a psychiatrist.

When you get married, whatever you do, do not ask a lawyer to draw up a marriage contract spelling out how your lives will be divvied up when you get divorced. It’s hard enough making a marriage work without having a blueprint for its destruction drawn up before you go to the altar. Speaking of lawyers brings me to point nine and a half, which is: Avoid lawyers unless you have nothing to do with the rest of your life but kill time.

And finally, point 10: Smile. You’re one of the luckiest people in the world. You’re living in America. Enjoy it. I feel obliged to give you this banal advice because, although I’ve lived through the Great Depression, World War II, terrible wars in Korea and Vietnam, and half a century of cold war, I have never seen a time when there were so many Americans so angry or so mean-spirited or so sour about the country as there are today.

Anger has become the national habit. You see it on the sullen faces of fashion models scowling out of magazines. it pours out of the radio. Washington television hams snarl and shout at each other on television. Ordinary people abuse politicians and their wives with shockingly coarse insults. Rudeness has become an acceptable way of announcing you are sick and tired of it all and are not going to take it anymore. Vile speech is justified on the same ground and is inescapable.

America is angry at Washington, angry at the press, angry at immigrants, angry at television, angry at traffic, angry at people who are well off and angry at people who are poor, angry at blacks and angry at whites. The old are angry at the young, the young angry at the old. Suburbs are angry at the cities, cities are angry at the suburbs. Rustic America is angry at both whenever urban and suburban invaders threaten the rustic sense of having escaped from God’s angry land. A complete catalog of the varieties of bile poisoning the American soul would fill a library. The question is: why? Why has anger become the common response to the inevitable ups and down of nation life? The question is baffling not just because the American habit even in the worst of times has traditionally been mindless optimism, but also because there is so little for Americans to be angry about nowadays. We are the planet’s undisputed super power. For the first time in 60 years we enjoy something very much like real peace. We are by all odds the wealthiest nation on earth, though admittedly our vast treasure is not evenly shared.

Forgive me the geezer’s sin of talking about “the bad old days,” but the country is still full of people who remember when 35 dollars a week was considered a living wage for a whole family. People whine about being overtaxed, yet in the 1950s the top income-tax rate was 91 percent, universal military service was the law of the land, and racial segregation was legally enforced in large parts of the country.

So what explains the fury and dyspepsia? I suspect it’s the famous American ignorance of history. People who know nothing of even the most recent past are easily gulled by slick operators who prosper by exploiting the ignorant. Among these rascals are our politicians. Politicians flourish by sowing discontent. They triumph by churning discontent into anger. Press, television and radio also have a big financial stake in keeping the county boiling mad.

Good news, as you know, does not sell papers or keep millions glued to radios and TV screens.

So when you get out there in the world, ladies and gentlemen, you’re going to find yourself surrounded by shouting, red-in-the-face, stomping-mad politicians, radio yakmeisters and, yes sad to say, newspaper columnists, telling you ‘you never had it so bad’ and otherwise trying to spoil your day.

When they come at you with that , ladies and gentlemen, give them a wink and a smile and a good view of your departing back. And as you stroll away, bend down to smell a flower.

Now it seems I have run past the 15-minute limit and will have to buy my own lunch. That’s life Class of 1995. No free lunch.

My sermon is done.

Robert De Niro: 'You made it! And you’re f*cked!’, TISCH School of the Arts - 2015

22 May, 2015, TISCH School of the Arts, Madison Square Garden, Yew York City, USA

Dean Green, deans, University Leadership, faculty, staff, parents, friends, and the 2015 class of New York University’s TISCH School of the Arts.

Thank you for inviting me to celebrate with you today.  TISCH graduates, you made it!

And you’re fucked. Think about that. The graduates from the college of nursing, they all have jobs. The graduates from the college of dentistry, fullyemployed. The Leonard M Stern School of Business graduates, they’re covered. The School of Medicine graduates, each one will get a job. The proud graduates of the NY School of Law, they’re covered, and if they’re not, who cares? They’re lawyers. The English majors are not a factor. They’ll be home writing their novels. Teachers, they’ll all be working. Shitty jobs, lousy pay, but still working. The graduates in accounting they all have jobs. Where does that leave you? Envious of those accountants, I doubt that. They had a choice. Maybe they were passionate about accounting, but I think it’s more likely that they used reason and logic and common sense to reach for a career that could give them the expectation of success and stability. Reason, logic, common sense? At the TISCH School of Arts? Are you kidding me?

But you didn’t have that choice, did you? You discovered a talent, recognised your ambition and developed a passion. When you feel that you can’t fight it, you just go with it. When it comes to the arts, passion should always trump common sense. You aren’t just following dreams, you’re reaching for your destiny. You’re a dancer, a singer, a choreographer, a musician, a film maker, a writer, a photographer, a director, a producer, an actor, an artist. Yeah, you’re fucked!

The good news is that that’s not a bad place to start. Now that you’ve made your choice, or rather, succumbed to it, your path is clear. Not easy but clear. You have to keep working, it’s that simple. You got through TISCH, that’s a big deal, or to put it another way, you got through TISCH, big deal. Well it’s a start. On this day of triumphantly graduating a new door is opening for you. A door to a lifetime of rejection. It’s inevitable. It’s what graduates call the ‘the real world’. You’ll experience it auditioning for a part or a place in a company.  It’ll happen to you when you’re looking for backers for a project. You’ll feel it when door close on you when you’re trying to get attention for something you have written, and when you’re looking for a directing or choreographing job.

How do you cope with it? I hear that valium and vicodin work! Nyah, I dunno. You can’t be too relaxed when you do what we do. And you don’t wanna block the pain too much. Without the pain, what would we talk about. I would make an exception to having a couple of drinks, if hypothetically, you had to speak to a couple of thousand graduates and their families at a commencement ceremony. [takes swig]

Rejection might sting, but my feeling is that it often has very little to do with you. When you’re auditioning or pitching the director or producer or investor might just have something or someone different in mind, that’s just how it is. That happened to me recently when I audtioned for the role of Martin Luther King in Selma.  Which is too bad because I could have played the hell out of that part. I felt it was written for me. But the director had something different in mind. And you know, she was right. It seems the director is always right. Don’t get me wrong, David O’Yelowo was great. I don’t think I would have cast it great ..

I got two more stories, these really happened.

I read for Bang The Drum Slowly, seven times. The first two of the three times I read for the part of Henry Wiggins, the part eventually played by Michael Moriaty. I read for the director, I read for the producer, then they had me back to read for another part, the role of Bruce Pearson, I read for the director, I read for the producer, I read for the producer and his wife, I read for all of them together. It was almost like as long as I kept auditioning,  they would have time to find somebody they liked more. I don’t know exactly what they were looking for, but I’m glad I was there when they didn’t find it.

Another time I was auditioning for a play, they kept having me back and I was pretty sure I had the part, and then they went with a name. I hated losing the job, but I understood.

I could just as easily have lost the job to another no name actor, and I also would have understood. It’s just not personal. It can just mean nothing more than the director having another type in mind. You’ll get a lot of direction in your careers, some from directors, some from studio heads, some from money people, some from writers, although usually they’ll try to keep the writer at a distance. And some from your fellow artists. I love writers, by they way, I keep them on the set all the time.

Listen to all of it, and listen to yourself. I’m mostly going to talk about these ideas in movie actor terms, but this applies to all of you. You’ll find comparable situations in all the disciplines. The way the director gets to be right is that you help him or her be right. You may start out with different ideas, the director will have a vision, you will have ideas about your character. When you’re a young actor starting out, your ideas might not be trusted as much they will be later on in your career. You’ve been hired because the director saw something in your audition, your reading, in you that fit they’re concept. You may be given the opportunity to try it your way, but the final decision will be the director’s.

Later in your career when there’s a body of work to refer to, the may be more trust from the director but it’s pretty much the same thing. You may have more opportunities to try things your way, and you may think the director has agreed to your take, agreed your take is the best, but if it’s a movie, you’ll be nowhere near the editing room when the director makes the final decision. It’s best when you can work it out together.

As an actor, you always want to be true to your character and be true to yourself. But the bottom line is, you got the part. And that’s very important. As a director ora producer you also have to be true to yourself, and to the work. A film a dance a play, they are not tents where artists gets to play and express their individuality, they’re works of art that depend upon the contributions and collaboration of a group of artists. And it’s a big group, that includes production and costume designers, directors of photography, makeup and hair, stage managers, assistant directors, choreographers et cetera et et cetera many more I could name but I won’t now. Everyone plays an important part, an essential part. A director, producer, choreographer or company artistic director – these are powerful positions. But the power doesn’t come from the title. The power doesn’t come from the title, the power come from trust, respect, vision, work and again collaboration. You’ll probably be harder on yourself than any director. I’m not going to tell you to go easy on yourselves, I assume you didn’t pick this life because you thought it would be easy. You may have to answer to a director for a job but you also have to answer to yourself.

This could create conflicts for you. You may want to play the role your way and the director has a different idea. Discuss it with the director, maybe there’s a compromise, there always should be the space to try to both ways. But don’t make ... don’t make a production ... but don’t make ... [pauses – smiles] but don’t make a production out of it because it’s not a democracy. On the set, or on the stage, somebody has to make the final decision. Someone has to pull it all together - that’s the director. So don’t be obdurate. Nobody’s going to see you do it in the‘right way’ if you’re not on stage or in the movie.

I can answer the question that is on all of your minds right now. Yes, it’s too late to change your major to directing. While preparing for my role today, I asked a few TISCH students for directions for this speech. The first thing they said was keep it short. And they said it’s okay to give a bit of advice, it’s kind of expected and no one will mind. And then they said, to keep it short.

It’s difficult for me to come with advice for you who have already set upon your life’s work, but I can tell you some of the things I tell my own children. First, whatever you do, don’t go to TISCH School of the Arts. Get an accounting degree instead.

Then I contradict myself, and as corny as it sounds, I tell them don’t be afraid to fail. I urge them to take chances, to keep an open mind, to welcome new experiences and new ideas. I tell them that if you don’t go, you’ll never know. You just have to be bold and go out there and take your chances. I tell them that if they go into the arts, I hope they find a nurturing and challenging community of like minded individuals, a place like TISCH. If they find themselves with the talent and the burning desire to be in the performing arts, I tell them when you collaborate, you try to make everything better but you’re not responsible for the entire project, only your part in it. You’ll find yourself in movies or plays or concerts or dance pieces that turn out in the eyes of critics and audiences to be bad, but that’s not on you, because you will put everything into everything that you do. You won;t judge the characters you play, and shouldn’t bedistracted by judgments on the works you are in. Whether you are working for Ed Wood of Federico Fellini or Martin Scorsese, your commitment to your process will be the same. 

By the way there will be times when your best is not enough. There can be many reasons for this, but as long as you give your best, it’ll be okay. Did you get straight As at school? If so, good for you, congratulations, but in the real world you’ll never get straight As again. There are ups and there are downs. And what I want to say to you today is that it’s okay. Instead of rocking caps and gowns today I can see all of you graduating today in custom TSOA T-shirts. On the back is printed, ‘Rejection - it isn’t personal’. And on the front - your motto, your mantra, your battle cry, ‘Next!’ You didn’t get that part, that’s my point, ‘Next’, you’ll get the next one, or the next one after that. You didn’t get that waiter’s job at the White Oak tavern, next! You’ll get the next one, or you’ll get the next gig tending bar at Joseph’s. You didn’t get into Juilliard? Next! You’ll get into Yale or TISCH. You guys like that joke, so it’s okay.

No, of course choosing TISCH is like choosing the arts. It isn’t your first choice, it’s your only choice. I didn’t attend TISCH or for that matter any college, or my senior year of high school, or most of my junior year ... still I’ve felt like part of the TISCH community for a long time. I grew up in the same neighborhood as TISCH. I’ve worked for a lot of people who have attended TISCH, including Marty Scorsese, Class of ’64. As you learn your craft together you come to trust each other and depend on each other. This encourages taking creative risks, because you all have the sense that you’re in it together. It’s no surprise that we often work with the same people over and over. I did eight pictures with Marty, and plan to do more. He did about twenty five with his editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, whom he met at TISCH when she worked on his student film in the summer of ‘63. Other directors - Cassavetes, Fellini, Hitchcock, came back to the same collaborators over and over, almost like a repertoire company. And now David O Russell and Wes Anderson are continuing that tradition.

Treasure the associations and friendships and working relationships with the people in your classes in your early work. You never know what might come from them. There could be a major creative shift or a small detail that could make a major impression. In Taxi Driver, Marty and I wanted Travis Bickle to cut his hair into a mohawk. An important character detail, but I couldn’t do it because I needed long hair for The Last Tycoon that was starting right after Taxi Driver, and we knew a false Mohawk would look, well, false. So we were kicking it around one day at lunch and we decided to give it one shot with the very best makeup artist at the time, Dick Smith. If you saw the movie, you’ll know that it worked. And by the way, now you know it wasn’t real.

Friendships, good working relationships, collaboration, you just never know what’s going to happen when you get together with your creative friends. Marty Scorsese was here last year to speak to your 2014 graduates. And now here I am, here we are, on Friday, at a kind of super sized version of one of Alison’s student lounge hangout sessions.  You're here  to pause and celebrate your accomplishments so far, as you move on to a rich and challenging future. And me - I’m here to hand out my picture and resume to the directing and producing graduates.

I’m excited to be in a room of young creatives who make me hopeful about the future of the performing and media arts and I know you’re going to make it, all of you. Break a leg!

Next!

Thank you.

Tim Minchin: 'It’s an incredibly exciting thing, this one, meaningless life of yours', UWA - 2013

17 September, 2013, University of Western Australia, Australia

In darker days, I did a corporate gig at a conference for this big company who made and sold accounting software. In a bid, I presume, to inspire their salespeople to greater heights, they’d forked out 12 grand for an Inspirational Speaker who was this extreme sports dude who had had a couple of his limbs frozen off when he got stuck on a ledge on some mountain. It was weird. Software salespeople need to hear from someone who has had a long, successful and happy career in software sales, not from an overly-optimistic, ex-mountaineer. Some poor guy who arrived in the morning hoping to learn about better sales technique ended up going home worried about the blood flow to his extremities. It’s not inspirational – it’s confusing.

And if the mountain was meant to be a symbol of life’s challenges, and the loss of limbs a metaphor for sacrifice, the software guy’s not going to get it, is he? Cos he didn’t do an arts degree, did he? He should have. Arts degrees are awesome. And they help you find meaning where there is none. And let me assure you, there is none. Don’t go looking for it. Searching for meaning is like searching for a rhyme scheme in a cookbook: you won’t find it and you’ll bugger up your soufflé.

Point being, I’m not an inspirational speaker. I’ve never lost a limb on a mountainside, metaphorically or otherwise. And I’m certainly not here to give career advice, cos… well I’ve never really had what most would call a proper job.

However, I have had large groups of people listening to what I say for quite a few years now, and it’s given me an inflated sense of self-importance. So I will now – at the ripe old age of 38 – bestow upon you nine life lessons. To echo, of course, the 9 lessons and carols of the traditional Christmas service. Which are also a bit obscure.

You might find some of this stuff inspiring, you will find some of it boring, and you will definitely forget all of it within a week. And be warned, there will be lots of hokey similes, and obscure aphorisms which start well but end up not making sense.

So listen up, or you’ll get lost, like a blind man clapping in a pharmacy trying to echo-locate the contact lens fluid.

Here we go:

1. You Don’t Have To Have A Dream.
Americans on talent shows always talk about their dreams. Fine, if you have something that you’ve always dreamed of, like, in your heart, go for it! After all, it’s something to do with your time… chasing a dream. And if it’s a big enough one, it’ll take you most of your life to achieve, so by the time you get to it and are staring into the abyss of the meaninglessness of your achievement, you’ll be almost dead so it won’t matter.

I never really had one of these big dreams. And so I advocate passionate dedication to the pursuit of short-term goals. Be micro-ambitious. Put your head down and work with pride on whatever is in front of you… you never know where you might end up. Just be aware that the next worthy pursuit will probably appear in your periphery. Which is why you should be careful of long-term dreams. If you focus too far in front of you, you won’t see the shiny thing out the corner of your eye. Right? Good. Advice. Metaphor. Look at me go.

2. Don’t Seek Happiness
Happiness is like an orgasm: if you think about it too much, it goes away. Keep busy and aim to make someone else happy, and you might find you get some as a side effect. We didn’t evolve to be constantly content. Contented Australophithecus Afarensis got eaten before passing on their genes.

3. Remember, It’s All Luck
You are lucky to be here. You were incalculably lucky to be born, and incredibly lucky to be brought up by a nice family that helped you get educated and encouraged you to go to Uni. Or if you were born into a horrible family, that’s unlucky and you have my sympathy… but you were still lucky: lucky that you happened to be made of the sort of DNA that made the sort of brain which – when placed in a horrible childhood environment – would make decisions that meant you ended up, eventually, graduating Uni. Well done you, for dragging yourself up by the shoelaces, but you were lucky. You didn’t create the bit of you that dragged you up. They’re not even your shoelaces.

I suppose I worked hard to achieve whatever dubious achievements I’ve achieved … but I didn’t make the bit of me that works hard, any more than I made the bit of me that ate too many burgers instead of going to lectures while I was here at UWA.

Understanding that you can’t truly take credit for your successes, nor truly blame others for their failures will humble you and make you more compassionate.

Empathy is intuitive, but is also something you can work on, intellectually.

4. Exercise
I’m sorry, you pasty, pale, smoking philosophy grads, arching your eyebrows into a Cartesian curve as you watch the Human Movement mob winding their way through the miniature traffic cones of their existence: you are wrong and they are right. Well, you’re half right – you think, therefore you are… but also: you jog, therefore you sleep well, therefore you’re not overwhelmed by existential angst. You can’t be Kant, and you don’t want to be.

Play a sport, do yoga, pump iron, run… whatever… but take care of your body. You’re going to need it. Most of you mob are going to live to nearly a hundred, and even the poorest of you will achieve a level of wealth that most humans throughout history could not have dreamed of. And this long, luxurious life ahead of you is going to make you depressed!

But don’t despair! There is an inverse correlation between depression and exercise. Do it. Run, my beautiful intellectuals, run. And don’t smoke. Natch.

5. Be Hard On Your Opinions
A famous bon mot asserts that opinions are like arse-holes, in that everyone has one. There is great wisdom in this… but I would add that opinions differ significantly from arse-holes, in that yours should be constantly and thoroughly examined.

We must think critically, and not just about the ideas of others. Be hard on your beliefs. Take them out onto the verandah and beat them with a cricket bat.
Be intellectually rigorous. Identify your biases, your prejudices, your privilege.

Most of society’s arguments are kept alive by a failure to acknowledge nuance. We tend to generate false dichotomies, then try to argue one point using two entirely different sets of assumptions, like two tennis players trying to win a match by hitting beautifully executed shots from either end of separate tennis courts.

By the way, while I have science and arts grads in front of me: please don’t make the mistake of thinking the arts and sciences are at odds with one another. That is a recent, stupid, and damaging idea. You don’t have to be unscientific to make beautiful art, to write beautiful things.

If you need proof: Twain, Adams, Vonnegut, McEwen, Sagan, Shakespeare, Dickens. For a start.

You don’t need to be superstitious to be a poet. You don’t need to hate GM technology to care about the beauty of the planet. You don’t have to claim a soul to promote compassion.

Science is not a body of knowledge nor a system of belief; it is just a term which describes humankind’s incremental acquisition of understanding through observation. Science is awesome.

The arts and sciences need to work together to improve how knowledge is communicated. The idea that many Australians – including our new PM and my distant cousin Nick – believe that the science of anthropogenic global warming is controversial, is a powerful indicator of the extent of our failure to communicate. The fact that 30% of this room just bristled is further evidence still. The fact that that bristling is more to do with politics than science is even more despairing.

6. Be a teacher.
Please? Please be a teacher. Teachers are the most admirable and important people in the world. You don’t have to do it forever, but if you’re in doubt about what to do, be an amazing teacher. Just for your twenties. Be a primary school teacher. Especially if you’re a bloke – we need male primary school teachers. Even if you’re not a Teacher, be a teacher. Share your ideas. Don’t take for granted your education. Rejoice in what you learn, and spray it.

7. Define Yourself By What You Love
I’ve found myself doing this thing a bit recently, where, if someone asks me what sort of music I like, I say “well I don’t listen to the radio because pop lyrics annoy me”. Or if someone asks me what food I like, I say “I think truffle oil is overused and slightly obnoxious”. And I see it all the time online, people whose idea of being part of a subculture is to hate Coldplay or football or feminists or the Liberal Party. We have tendency to define ourselves in opposition to stuff; as a comedian, I make a living out of it. But try to also express your passion for things you love. Be demonstrative and generous in your praise of those you admire. Send thank-you cards and give standing ovations. Be pro-stuff, not just anti-stuff.

8. Respect People With Less Power Than You.
I have, in the past, made important decisions about people I work with – agents and producers – based largely on how they treat wait staff in restaurants. I don’t care if you’re the most powerful cat in the room, I will judge you on how you treat the least powerful. So there.

9. Don’t Rush.
You don’t need to already know what you’re going to do with the rest of your life. I’m not saying sit around smoking cones all day, but also, don’t panic. Most people I know who were sure of their career path at 20 are having midlife crises now.

I said at the beginning of this ramble that life is meaningless. It was not a flippant assertion. I think it’s absurd: the idea of seeking “meaning” in the set of circumstances that happens to exist after 13.8 billion years worth of unguided events. Leave it to humans to think the universe has a purpose for them. However, I am no nihilist. I am not even a cynic. I am, actually, rather romantic. And here’s my idea of romance:

You will soon be dead. Life will sometimes seem long and tough and, god, it’s tiring. And you will sometimes be happy and sometimes sad. And then you’ll be
old. And then you’ll be dead.

There is only one sensible thing to do with this empty existence, and that is: fill it. Not fillet. Fill. It.

And in my opinion (until I change it), life is best filled by learning as much as you can about as much as you can, taking pride in whatever you’re doing, having compassion, sharing ideas, running(!), being enthusiastic. And then there’s love, and travel, and wine, and sex, and art, and kids, and giving, and mountain climbing … but you know all that stuff already.

It’s an incredibly exciting thing, this one, meaningless life of yours. Good luck.

Thank you for indulging me.

Tim Minchin's acclaimed musical, Matilda, is crurrently touring Australia. You can purchase tickets here.