TEDx Fort McMurray: Shift in Thought - InTer-CoNNecTion and Lucie Bause

I was delighted yesterday to receive an email. Now email often delights me, although I have a darker view of my occasional hate mail, but yesterday’s email was not only delightful but the polar opposite of hate mail. It was “joy” mail, an email I had been anticipating for days. It was the announcement that the videos from TEDx Fort McMurray 2013 were now on YouTube.

I could, I suppose, put all the videos in one blog post, but to me that would be disrespectful of my fellow presenters. You see over the course of my own TEDx journey I became both immensely fond and proud of the other ten presenters, even though at the beginning many had been total strangers to me. We may still not all know each other well, but we shared an experience that is a bit difficult to describe in words. We shared a journey, one we each took on our own but that was part of a larger collective journey. I remember the first time I saw each of the presentations, and I sat in wonder at them all. I saw strength, and passion, and courage, and beauty. I saw ten people who spoke from their heart and their heads, giving themselves to the experience. I saw nerves, and fear, and all the things we each brought to that stage. And on the actual day of TEDx Fort McMurray I saw how each of us had grown, how far we had come in our journey. So, I decided each presenter video deserved – actually demanded – its own blog post, and so this is the first. I have decided to follow the format of that day, which was divided into four themes – Art, YMM, Technology, and Courage. And so today I bring to you the first presenter of TEDx Fort McMurray: Shift in Thought – Lucie Bause and “InTer-CoNNecTion”.

First, a few of my own thoughts about Lucie. I had actually seen Lucie’s art online before I met her, and been transfixed by her mandala-like paintings. I had found her website in the course of some work I was doing at my “day job”, and had been entranced by these circular paintings that seemed to just draw me in. There is something mesmerizing about those circles, the colours, the repeating patterns...they swirl around you and into you, until you feel a part of them. Right now several of her pieces are on display just outside my office, and Lucie won’t know this but often during the day when I need to refocus and collect myself I will go and gaze at her works, finding they calm me in some inexplicable and magical way. So, when I heard Lucie’s story, the journey that inspired these works, I was once again mesmerized. I know what it is like to take a journey of heart, soul, and body that changes you. I know how an experience can change the way you see the world, and can become a part of you that you must find a way to express or you feel you will explode. I know what it is like to have something burning inside you that you must share.

When I sat in the darkened theatre on June 8, the day of TEDx Fort McMurray, I had tears in my eyes as I watched Lucie present. While she may not consider herself a public speaker she is most definitely a storyteller, perhaps one who prefers to tell her tale on canvas but one who does a damn fine job with words, too. Today I present to you the lovely, talented, inspiring, and amazing Lucie Bause.