Life lessons from the DJ booth | ELEW

0:03You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. 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.

0:24ELEW: 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, the 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.

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3:13ELEW: And now, our TED Talk of the day. My philosophy is that we are all DJs. No matter whether you're a school teacher or a neuroscientist or a VC of 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.

3:56ELEW: Well, then, of course, club reality comes along and oftentimes, like with the flights, like with all other kinds of things, sets everything on fire.

4:11ELEW: 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.

4:53ELEW: When I was about two years old, my great-grandmother put me at the piano and said, okay, 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. Oh.

5:27ELEW: 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 multiple arms.

5:49ELEW: 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.

6:06ELEW: 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 Franz Litz and Fats Waller. Or.

6:27ELEW: 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.

7:08ELEW: 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.

7:35ELEW: 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.

8:15ELEW: 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.

8:36Thank you.

9:06Thank you.

9:32Thank you.

10:11That 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 Tonsika Sungmarnivong. This episode was mixed by Lucy Little. Additional support from Emma Taubner and Daniela Ballarezzo. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feet. Thanks for listening.

10:57This episode is brought to you by Amazon Health AI. Let me ask you something. Why does getting care so often start with paperwork, forms that ask for the same information over and over, as if your story has to be retold from scratch every time? We've come to accept that friction as part of the process, but it doesn't have to be. Amazon Health AI is built to change that. It can understand your health history so you can spend less time repeating yourself and more time actually getting the care you need. Amazon Health AI. Healthcare just got less painful.

11:31Business is booming, but you know what really helped? Zero, the accounting platform for small businesses. I used to think spreadsheets were just part of it. Ugh. But real-time cash flow? Wow. Invoices that chase themselves? Even better. Books that automate? That's a big one. And I can keep track from my phone while I get the job done. No spreadsheet in sight. What a life. Do right by yourself and your business and search Xero for your free trial. Conditions apply.

12:30Thank you.