The Wave

I've really been trying to make sense of this, ey, because
Well, what the hell's going on?
Why am I selling out 3,000 person auditoriums
I use the stage let's say, as a opportunity in real time to think
I've been thinking
Well, if you're surfing you don't confuse yourself with

[Chorus]
The wave
The wave
The wave
That's a real mistake
You might be on top of the wave but you're not the wave
The wave
The wave
That's a real mistake
You might be on top of the wave but you're not the wave

I think this long-form discussion
And the public hunger for that is best conceptualized like that
There's a technological revolution, it's a deep one
Online video and audio
Immediately accessible to everyone all over the world
It's turned the spoken word
Into a tool
That has the same reach as the printed word
So it's a Gutenberg Revolution in the domain of video and audio
And it might be even deeper than the original Gutenberg Revolution because
It isn't obvious how many people can read
But lots of people can listen

[Chorus]
The wave
The wave
The wave
You might be on top of the wave but you're not the wave
The wave
The wave
You might be on top of the wave but you're not the wave

I mean, we got a little bit of that with TV, right? And you got a little bit a bit of it with radio
But there was bandwidth limitations that were really stringent especially in TV
Where you could get 30 seconds if you were lucky, and six minutes if you were stellar
To elucidate a complicated argument, so you can't do that, everything gets compressed to a kind of oversimplified entertainment
But now, all of a sudden
We have this form for long-form discussion
Real long-form discussion
Turns out that everyone is way smarter than we thought

[Chorus]
The wave
The wave
The wave
You might be on top of the wave but you're not the wave
The wave
The wave
You might be on top of the wave
But you're not the wave

The people, the forefront of this are being cascaded forward like a surfer on a giant wave
On this technological transformation
It's necessary to keep your ego under control
With regards to the people coming to see me the proper attitude towards that and I think this is true for any performer is – gratitude
You bloody well be happy those people are there
And you should never think there's something
Spectacularly special about yourself that's attracting these people and that somehow you're above them and they're your fans or
There's this real power differential even though that sort of manifests itself because people are so happy to see you
That's a dangerous pathway and I truly am ridiculously overwhelmed and grateful and happy and pleased
That all these people show up