Benjamin Fisher Dr. Sherwood Engl 771 4 May 2015 Reggie Watts At

Benjamin Fisher Dr. Sherwood Engl 771 4 May 2015

Reggie Watts at PopTech Conference Camden, Maine 2011

[acts like he is going to say something, then turns around and fiddles with his machines]

[begins beatboxing/looping]

[stops song abruptly and begins speaking in a British accent]

So for years we’ve been thinking about consciousness in the way that we have. And it, to my total pleasure, um, that these things have worked out. Um, as mentioned earlier, um, we’ve been going through a few different dynamic changes, uh, within the organization itself. As, uh, director and senior fellow at, uh, the Brooklings Institute I can assure you, uh, my compatriots here, that everything that you’ve seen here so far is just the beginning.

So I’d like . . .

We talk about design, often. Uh, at some point during any human’s lifetime, they will use the word design, and that’s a big deal. Aside from the, and the a, and the an, in various languages, design is the fourth most popular word used. Before design was constructed, we had the Mezzo- Potamian era, and we all know how that was.

[gives a phony laugh, as if he had just said something funny]

[laughs again]

[points to someone in the crowd]

Now this is, uh, as an ethnomusicologist, I, I’ve seen it all, you know, as they say. I’ve seen as much as I’ve seen. Um, and um, and so I’ve been collecting various tunes, if you will, um, throughout the e, e, the epochs and eras. And the thing that I’ve landed upon this evening I wanted to share for you. Uh, this is a Lamurian song. This is a civilization before the Mesopotamians, as, as many of you know, and they contained advanced technologies, we’ve been discussing earlier. Um, they had the ability to levitate, and decrease the volume and mass of objects at will, uh, utilizing sequenced thought processes, which, uh, entail very detailed, uh, memorization and visuala, zations, yes. Okay? So, here’s that song. Fisher 2

[begins singing in a fake foreign language]

[adds effect to his voice by shaking the microphone]

[speaks nonsense language]

[makes jungle noises]

[begins singing]

Yah your face, Every little time I can tell for face, I’ve got a love face, Every time I wanna be down you, Yeah.

I got a love face, And every time too gets on for, Oh, Oh, Can I say? I wanna be there for you.

[nonsense]

[continues singing nonsense, leaning on the table like he’s bored with his own song]

[does the “hurry up” motion with his hand]

[continues singing nonsense]

Yah, I wanna tell you babe, Touch you up and down, Put your hands all over, Get your cell phone, Get your cell phone out, Do the projections, Then you find out, Yah, Molecular structure, ain’t nothing but a thing. Oh, yeah. Molecular structure, ain’t nothing but a thing. Oh Lord. Generally, ascribing to the geometry that identifies you as a being that people can recognize over and over, ‘cause they, ah, they really they don’t memorize, yeah, and just because you think Fisher 3 you know what you’re doing don’t mean a thing, ‘cause science knows that you don’t really know anything, just temporarily have a mild understanding of how things really are.

[crowd cheers]

[sits down]

[speaks in an American accent]

Thank you. Thank you all for coming here. Um, PopTech is, uh, without, uh, without a doubt. And it has been that way, um, um, for long enough, uh, to be here. And, what I’ve learned, um, through PopTech, is innumerable, immeasurable, inconsistent, constant, evading, ineffable, incongruous, malfeasant, [adds more terms in various fake foreign languages], and fun.

Ok, let’s do this.

[fiddles with the keyboard]

[begins playing, and chants]

Community of the Holy Sp… No, I’m just kidding, alright, here we go.

And, here we go.

[begins playing keyboard]

[begins singing]

Take a move on a road what you’re goin’ down, baby, It’s nine days, sixty-five, you ain’t got your stereo on, And I don’t know if I can take another light on my own, You put your thing down, helpin’, and you flippin’ it bad, And you ain’t got another switch, so you just feelin’ so sad, And you can tell another person that she’s evernescence all on your growth,

[shrugs and shakes his head, as if to say, “I don’t understand it either”]

And you can do what you do when you’re doing it good, You can do what you didn’t when you did it last week, ‘Cause next week’s another week and if I have to remind you, Then you don’t understand the basic I’m said the time, yeah And if you wanna do what you can, then it’s up to you, Because you know that you

[nonsense]

And your mud flaps flappin’ in the wind.

Fisher 4

[keyboard solo]

[sings in a high-pitched voice]

Tell me I think, That this world, Is a world, But it’s not, ‘Cause it’s more, Than you think, And it’s less than tha, an. We’re only living in the memories of our future selves, And it’s fun to think like we’re here right now, But we never really are, ‘cause we’re somewhere in the future, controlling the options, giving lots of hints to ourselves in order for us to understand that choice is still important in a world where we gotta figure some stuff out, yeah.

[in a lower register]

Baby, I love ya, I love ya, baby.

[noises]

[beatboxes, simulating a heartbeat]

[simulates a didgeridoo]

[cuts it short, speaking in an American accent]

You know, here, we heard enough of that in the 90s.

Ok, um. Listen, um.

I wanna talk to you about a couple of relatively real issues. Um, a lot of people wrote in on email, uh, and a couple other forms of communication that are essentially all the same thing, but just branded different names. Um. That innovation is an innovation unto itself. At one point, innovation didn’t exist. Someone had to create some kind of a word that created the feeling that it feels like to hear the word that we hear when we hear innovation. Innovation is a word that’s only been around in the English vocabulary for sixty-three years. A lot of people don’t know that, and if you did know that, um, that’s great.

Now we all know that poverty is super easy to fix. And, and using modular dynamicism, we can recreate, unfold, resequence, understand, and reshape the way we think of thought itself. By constantly monitoring thought itself, it will not only lead you nowhere, it will give you a headache. So try not to do that. Instead, try to do something that’s way outside of the box. Like someplace that if you were to see how far away from the box you were, you wouldn’t even be able to tell what that box was anymore compared to the landscape that you’re comparing it Fisher 5 against. Getting outside of the box is more than just getting out of a box and walking away. As children know, sometimes boxes are very difficult to get out of. Why is it any different for us? Between glass ceilings, dirt floors, and boxes we need to know that a bottom-up approach is not only an approach that starts from somewhere that we believe to be the bottom, but an approach that was painted by several painters throughout the aeges, and the achoch, that lead us to understand: where can we be sometime in the future from now? And I can guarantee you, you will move at least twenty feet within the next hour. I can guarantee you that, and I have algorithms that can divine and predict that, utilizing movement prediction patterns, hair follicle samples that have been taken throughout the entire time that you’ve been here, and of course, the common spectralanalysis. Now, we know that everything here is an illusion, and that we are somewhere else. But the cool thing about that is it feels pretty real. I mean, you know what I mean. Like it’s, it’s pretty convincing. So, big credit to those, those people working hard there.

Um. So. Why Camden, Maine? Simple answer: because. What does because mean? Because has a b in it, at least one c, and a couple vowels. This combination of letters and vowels together to create a fairly pronounceable word gives us the strength and the power as individuals, and as human beings, to seek within ourselves not only the triumphant remorse of those who’ve compelled against us in a way that does not, not necessarily benefit us in the long term, but give us the strength in the midterm, to show how the reversal of those roles, of which we have come fairly accustomed to, let’s, let’s admit that, to acquiesce, and reform, and remodulate the world around us. Internally, we’re pretty gross. There’s a lot of liquid, and tissues, and things, and it’s, it’s pretty gross to think about.

So, I would like to, uh, this is a song that I’d like to, uh, dedicate to all the gross things that we are walking around. And, um, and also just a celebration of all of you guys here, the people up there as well, um, let’s not forget them. Um, there’s some people behind the walls as well, uh, walking around and doing things as well. And there’s some people behind here. There’s actually four people running this entire show, technically, that’s it. There’s just four people. They can divide into five people per person, so there seems to be a lot of people back there, but they’re all being controlled by one central consciousness.

Ok. So, anyways, without further ado, this is uh, this is a song, this is my, um, I have one-point- five songs, this song is, uh, [noises]

[clears throat]

M, kay.

[begins beatboxing/singing a do-wop baseline]

That’s not it, that’s just a warm-up. Here we go.

[begins singing, mostly nonsense] Fisher 6

Alaam, salaikum, salaikum, salaam [nonsense] salami.

Put your pants back on.

[nonsense]

Put your pants back on.

[nonsense]

One, two, three, five, seven, eight, ten, eleven, One, two, nine, three, sixty-four, six thousand three hundred, Twenty-seven, one hundred and twenty-two, sixty-five, twenty-six, Five, two, three, yeah.

[dances]

[cuts song short, speaking in a British accent]

Thank you. Um, for my last song, thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much.

[speaks in an effeminate male voice]

Some people talk like this.

[speaks in a deep base voice]

Other people talk like this.

[in an effeminate voice]

Some people are like this.

[in a deep voice]

Some people are like that.

[in a cockney accent]

Some people are like this.

[whispers]

I don’t know why they’re like that. Fisher 7

[in American accent]

Real quickly, um, I’d like to, uh, thank PopTech. Um, I’m the first person to, uh, to thank PopTech. Uh, but, I would like to [laughs] thank PopTech. Um, it’s been an awesome ride, I mean, like I, you know, the first time I came here I met some ridiculous people. And, uh, a second time, some more ridiculous people. It keeps getting’ ridiculouser. But, it’s a just amazing concentration of people around you, but also, not only knowing that whoever you’re talking to, even a volunteer, often times you’re talking to a volunteer, someone who has a sign on them that says “volunteer.” And you’re talking to them and you find out that they’re like a theoretical physicist that works at some laboratory somewhere and you’re like “wah,” “what?” So, I think that’s important to realize. Every person in the world, around you, is really good at something, you know what I mean? So like, if, if this is the sample, you know, here in this situation, it’s kind of a special situation, but if you go out in the world, all around you constantly there are amazing people, and you’ll never know, you know, unless, er, unless they have a badge on, but like, um, you’ll never know, unless you, you know, unless you ask them. And, often times, when I ask people things they often times will often times say something often. And the more often that I notice that they’re saying things that I think that they’re going to say over and over again, which would classify as, as often. Um, I feel as though there’s a tranquil sunset setting-in, um, over my mind, which indicates that the world is gonna be a pretty cool place at some point. And then it’s gonna to be horrible again. But then it’s gonna be really cool. And then it’s gonna be not so good. And then it’ll be pretty decent for a while. And then it’s gonna be like, “uh-oh.” Um. And, after all, that’s the engine of reality, but that gets us a little bit stronger. So with that, um, knowledge that I’ve gotten, um, from an an amazing dodo case, which I still have. I do, I do still have it, although I did drop it once and that little frame cracked and I had to glue it. But anyways, the thing is that what I’m trying to tell you here today: stay in school. It’s, uh, it’s, it’s a good place for kids, and I know a lot of you parents here are not into school, but I’m here to re-convince you. Putting kids in school is a good idea. Okay? A lot of, I’ve talked to a lot of you guys, and you’re like “I’m not puttin’ my kids in school.” I get it, and it’s super, like, punk rock, I get it. But consider it. ‘Kay.

Alright, so. This is my last [laughs] song.

This about, this about love, because, um, at the end of the day, that’s pretty much all you got. Um, and, uh, that’s an important ingredient, as we saw in The Fifth Element, and I think that we need to re-COG-nize, um, all the things that influ, influess us.

So this my last song. Um, thank you again, so much everybody, this is always an honor to be here, and you guys always make me feel so incredibly welcome, and I actually feel comfortable now, going like “oh, maybe it’s not an accident I’m here.” So, thanks a lot for [laughs] letting me blend in. I do appreciate that, thank you.

So here we go.

[starts juggling the microphone, passing it between his legs like a basketball, dropping it with one hand, then catching it with the other, dancing around with it]

Fisher 8

Ok, power moves. Let’s do this.

[plays a driving beat, starts headbanging, then stops abruptly]

That’s not it. Ok, here we go.

[sings a cappella]

I been takin’ lots of time, Puttin’ it in my pocket, Don’t know how it got there, But I forgot just a little bit more, Every time I thiiiiiiIIIIIIiiiiiiIIiink,

[nonsense]

‘Cause I’m trying’ to be, The thing that I have never been befooooooOOre, yeah, But I got to know, Child, Child, Children, Yeah, But the world it, Listen to the music,

[nonsense]

[noises]

[sings in high-pitched voice]

There, There’s no, Time like you know it, [mouths words silently] Least I think there’s not, and you, [mouths words silently] But I know that you tell me one thing, And I know it’s true.

[mouths words silently]

There’s no no time,

[nonsense] Fisher 9

And I know,

[nonsense]

[sings]

I like to tell everybody here, yes, I feel really happy inside, yeah, I wanna thank, everything that I’ve come into contact, Yes I do, oh, oh, Yes I wanna thank, just a little [nonsense]

When I do what I do, Often times, I’m doin what I’m doin’ yeah, When I do what I do, Often times, I’m doin what I think I’m doin’ When I do what I… do, [nonsense] mood.

Everything is alright. Let me tell ya.

[beatboxes]

I wanna take a little time, Talk about the love that I have inside, yes, When I listen to people talk about their passions, Rather succinctly on stages like this, It gets me just a little bit of encouragement, To tell people other than myself that there’s somethin’ goin’ on and you just gotta open your eyes and on the Internet there is a place that’s curated for all the information that you might desire to understand about the world. Yeah, it’s a new age, and you see gotta understand what you’ve got. There’s no excuses anymore. You gotta do what you do. If you ain’t doin’ it, then what are you doin? Probably the antithesis of somethin’ that you’re doin’ that ok, baby, ‘cause I wanna tell ya. Whoa.

[nonsense]

Guess I wanna take you on a little journey, journey, journey, journey.

[raps in fake French]

Gargomel. Fisher 10

[fake French]

[nonsense]

[mic fades out, still mouths words silently, as if it still works, starts dancing/ miming]

[mimes singing with feeling, as if this is his big finish]

[audience cheers]

Ok guys, thanks so much.

Have a great night, tonight.

Thank you so much, I’ll see you a little bit later.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Note on the transcription

I did not transcribe every noise that came from Watts’ mouth. I call “beatboxing” any oral simulation of electronic music. “Looping” consists of recording an oral beat, then playing it back in a loop, and singing or adding other sounds on top of it. Some utterances I simply call

“noises.” The song lyrics are an approximation, and many times, I simply describe them as

“nonsense.” I call a “fake foreign language” any of the words that seem to be a parody of existing languages. Watts does a good deal of physical comedy, which I try to capture through the descriptions, but one really has to see his facial expressions and body language to get the full effect of a Reggie Watts performance.