I think of Regina Spektor as a poet and philosopher who also happens to be a massively talented and popular musician. If I had a magic wand that could summon any presenter to appear at Matter, she would be on the short list with Bono, Anne Lamott, Maira Kalman and Christopher Nolan.
So it will probably surprise you that I once had an opportunity to have dinner with her…and let it go.
It was 2009, I was attending TED along with a dear friend, and Regina was one of that day’s performers. She opened her 18-minute set with the bold, Dr. Zhivago-esque “Après moi.” Then, just a few notes into her second song, she froze.
“That was wrong,” she said, mostly to herself. “I knew this ten minutes ago.”
She started and stopped a second time. And a third. And a fourth, before finally declaring, with probably more poise than she felt, “I’ll just do a different one.” She went on to play the rest of her set without a hitch, and it was the kind of stumble handled so graciously and gracefully that it only endears you more to someone.
That evening we were treated to a private, TED-only block party spanning several restaurants and bars. On the walk over, my friend and I ran into Regina, who was by herself and looking unsure of where to go. We invited her to walk with us, and she seemed grateful for the companionship. To paraphrase Maya Angelou: I don’t remember what we talked about, but I’ll never forget how genuinely, humanly warm and accessible she was.
Not surprisingly, Regina attracted a small crowd along the way, and as we arrived at the party it was clear there would be a custody battle over her. A larger, louder, more gregarious (and opportunistic) group invited her to join them, and she looked at us as if to say, do you mind?
“Go with them,” we told her. “It’s a fun crowd.”
We didn’t see her again after that.
There are plenty of reasons why, in the moment, it seemed like the right, selfless response.
This was a party, and they were the partying personalities;
It would have been petty and grade-schoolish to resort to tug of war;
I was at a life-and-career crossroads at the time, and I’d been looking forward to a quiet, candid conversation with my friend and mentor. It made more sense all around.
Do I wish I had chosen differently? Yes. And no. And somewhere in the middle of that conflicted space I found two opposing truths held together in tension.
(1) Missing out on having dinner with Regina Spektor is something I deeply regret. (2) In order to make it happen, I would have had to behave in a way that’s not me, that I wouldn’t want to become.
The peace, I suppose, lies in reconciling them.
Greg Fuson 