EmBark! | Mel Rosenberg | TEDxKibbutzimCollegeofEducation

This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences.

This lecture is about overcoming our fear of silliness, which is the main obstacle preventing us from being creative, original and pursuing our passions and dreams. Prof. Rosenberg teaches barking as a metaphor to overcoming one's initial embarrassment - a first step in pursuing one's dream.

[EmBark! Bark!]
(Dogs barking)

[Please Bark!]
(Audience barking)

[I can hardly hear you --
Please bark louder!]

(Audience barking louder)

[$100 prize for
the loudest and finest barker]

(Audience continues to bark)

[Just kidding, but... thanks anyway!!]

(Laughter) (Applause)

Mel Rosenberg:
Well, thank you very much for barking.

That was a very good beginning,

however, I can see there's a few of you

who haven't been
to barking practice lately.

If you wait a few minutes,
I'll give you another opportunity,

and for those of you who feel
a spontaneous need to bark during my talk,

please wait for another ten minutes.

The thing is that young kids love to bark.

They see it as a hoot, it's fun,

it's spontaneous,
it's silly, it's wonderful,

and if you ask them why,
they'll say, "Because".

My sister Miriam, as a young child,
used to bark with such conviction

that dogs would follow her
down the street,

and if you ask her, she'd say, "Because".

But as we grow up,
we forget the word "because".

We become more worried
about words like insults,

embarrassment,
snide comments, or self-conscious.

And then we grow up.

And as grown ups we crave one thing,
and that one thing is respectability.

And if you had met me at the age of 39,
you would have thought I was respectable.

And the truth is I was very respectable.

I was a university scientist studying
how bacteria interact with the mouth,

I had a bunch of papers,
I was up for professorship,

I had innovations
and inventions in the oven.

I was up and coming,
but inside, I was down and out.

I was a wreck. A train wreck.

I was afraid of failure,
but I was afraid of success.

I was afraid of dying,
and I was also afraid of being alive.

From a very young age, I had noticed
that once in a while my heart would go

into some kind of Brazilian samba,
beating wildly in my chest.

And once I was diagnosed,
or maybe I should say misdiagnosed,

as having a very rare heart condition,

and I spent the next 20 years
in mortal fear of dying.

When I was 39, my wife said to me,
"Why don't you check?"

So I did, I went to a famous cardiologist,
he looked at my electrocardiogram,

and he said, "You have
a wacky electrocardiogram,

but your heart is normal."

I said, "What?"
He said, "Yes, you are going to live."

And he was right.

That was my first wake up call
at the age of 39.

Because a few months later,

I found out I had a completely separate
chronic medical condition

that I have to deal with
on a day to day basis.

So I cope.

That was my second wake up call.

And the third wake up call
was getting a puppy.

Family dogs teach us
a lot about ourselves.

The kids called him Elvis Presley.

He didn't [sing], but boy,
did he ever have a life.

He didn't sing, he barked.

Elvis had a girlfriend named Camilla.

And we didn't approve
of that relationship. She was a bitch.

(Laughter)

And we locked him up in the second floor,

sure enough Elvis flew out of there
one day, over the balcony,

to be reunited with his true love,

and he wasn't worrying very much.

That's what I call barking.

And after those three wake up calls,
as I approached the age of 40,

I realized that I had
to get myself something: a life.

And so I began barking.

My first port of call, as a barker,
was my university career

because I had become interested
in something called bad breath,

and I went to the library once,

and I saw that nobody
was doing research on this subject

which is so worrisome to all of us.

I came home that night,

and I said to my wife,
"I have found my scientific career.

It's a scientific gold mine.
A stinky one."

And at work, my colleagues made fun of me.

They called me "Mel the Smell",

they even coaxed me

to leave my scientific papers
on bad breath out of my CV

so that I would be promoted in the end.

But I followed my nose.

I wrote dozens of scientific papers.

I smelled about 10,000 mouths,
more than most people.

Now I do it only for fun.

I wrote books, I organized
international meetings.

I became the world expert on bad breath.

And I say this to you
with a degree of modesty

because there's only three of us,

and each one claims
that he's the world expert.

My second barking career
was writing children's books.

I'd wanted to write
children's books from my 20s.

I started in my 40s.

My first books were albeit
closer to my comfort zone.

I wrote books about bacteria,
I wrote books about dentistry,

witches, dental witches,
toothbrushes, tooth fairies,

but then I really began to bark.

With the help
of the wonderful illustrator Rotem Omri,

we created a whole zoo of characters.

They all share one property.

They are forced in their lives to cope
with a challenge and to overcome it.

If you look over my left shoulder,
you see Tim the Porcupine.

He wakes up one morning,
his quills are on backwards.

He rubs everybody the wrong way.

In the palm of my hand you see Kenya.

Kenya can't hop, and that would be OK,
except she's a Kangaroo.

But my favorite character is Gloomeris.

Gloomeris is serious.
He has absolutely no sense of humor.

And that might have been OK,
except that Gloomeris is a laughing hyena.

Funny enough, I don't have
any dogs in any of my stories.

But all my animals learn to bark.

Finally, and perhaps most important,

I became a professional musician
at the age of 47.

It started when I was 41.

I was at a party,
and there was a saxophone there.

And I've been dying
to play the saxophone for years.

I don't know why I didn't.

But at the age of 41 I was there,
I was ready to change my life.

I grabbed that beast,
and I put it to my lips.

And noise came out.

Terrible noise, but I got all excited,

and I called my friend,
Chris McCulloch, in Toronto.

And I said, "Chris, am I too old
to learn to play saxophone?"

And he said something important.

He said, "Mel, you're never too old
to play saxophone."

The next thing you know,
before you could say maple syrup,

Chris had bought me a saxophone,
shipped it from Toronto to Israel,

and I began to play.

Not now and then,
not here and there, but every day!

I drove my family crazy.
The neighbors threatened me.

I sometimes practiced
in the car, but I persisted.

I had a wonderful teacher
who took me to a gig.

He said, "You see that guy
playing saxophone, Benny Tal?

He started when he was 35."

I was incredulous,
but five years later, sure enough,

I was gigging with my own band;
we've had some amazing gigs.

We played at Shimon Peres's 80th birthday,
before he was president.

Now he's president,
he's having a 90th birthday party,

where they've invited some other performer
named Barbra Streisand.

(Laughter)

That's OK. I can wait another ten years.

But what about Barbra Streisand?

What would have happened

if somebody insulted her
when she was nine or ten years old,

and said to her, "Barbra,
you don't sing well. You're off key,"

and she had stopped for years.

We would have lost
one of the world's great performers.

And I want to ask ourselves,
how many of us, when we were kids,

wanted to draw, to paint,
to play an instrument, to sing,

and somebody told us
that we weren't capable,

or we thought
we might have been ridiculed,

and we haven't done it up till now?

How unfortunate that is!

I stopped singing for 25 years.
You can't stop me now.

In the meantime,
the years have flown by,

and Elvis is dead, we have a new dog,
and his name is Fudge.

Fudge not only loves to bark
he also sings.

And I want you to have a look
at this instructional video,

because afterwards, we'll do something

that's never been done
in the history of mankind,

So will you have a look with me, please?

(Video) (Dog barking)
(Man playing the saxophone)

Look at that creature. He's in his groove.
He's singing with me.

He doesn't care if he's being criticized,
if there's jazz police.

Whether he's on key,
maybe he doesn't get the words right,

and I figure that if dogs can sing,

the very least that human beings
can do, is to bark.

And I'm going to do an experiment

that's never been done
in the history of mankind,

and you're going to join me
and make it happen.

It's very simple, because changing
your life can start with a bark.

I want you to bark with guts, with spirit.

I don't care whether you moo, growl,
yelp, grrr, it doesn't matter.

Because your life does
kind of depend on it, doesn't it?

You can sing only in the shower,
or you can sing in the choir.

You can step up to bat
with the bases loaded and two outs

or you can watch the baseball game
from your living room.

You can do your thing, or not.

But one thing is for certain,

whether we live our lives
and bark our dreams,

at the end of the day,
we all end up croaking.

So on the way, why not bark?

So what we're going to do now

(Laughter)

is you're going to yelp, growl,
bark with all your might,

and we're going to make this
a dream come true,

and it doesn't matter
if you don't understand the words.

Just let it all hang out. OK?

Please follow the magic ball.

Are you ready?

(Saxophone music)
(Audience barking along "Autumn Leaves")

(Applause)

Inbar: Thank you, Mel.
MR: Oh, thank you!

Inbar: Thank you, thank you very much.
MR: Woof!

(Laughter) (Applause)

Inbar: You do know, by the way,

that Israeli dogs bark, "Hav!",
and American dogs bark, "Woof!",

it's completely different kind.

Mel: But when one dog from Israel
says, "Woof!" to a dog from the US,

they understand each other.

Inbar: If you're saying so.

Thank you.

(Applause)