Here come the ideas, creeping about the queues of people looking for love, like minds, business contacts or ginger-and-turmeric lattes.
Tugging the heart, broiling the brain: what it means to be human; why to feel fine about being fat; how to watch your six-year-old daughter die; when not to listen to Adele. TEDx Sydney 2016 tossed up oodles of ideas, good intentions and several thousand spoons.
Statements of no discernible pattern enlivened the crowd at the one-day "festival of ideas". "At the core of humanity is empathy." "When we think of climate change, we probably don't think of giant insects and exploding volcanoes." "Let's see 5000 spoons in the air."
The last of these was uttered by musician Deb "Spoons" Perry, while leading the Sydney Opera House audience in a world record attempt for the most number of people to play an eating utensil at once, to the tune of Dumb Things.
I've heard worse – having once witnessed an unsuccessful world record bid for people playing piano accordions. To O Sole Mio. Twice.
TEDx is a little bit silly, a little serious. Like life, really. Speakers in several shades of black stood on the stage on Wednesday: a quantum physicist, political cartoonist, fat activist, terrorist bombing survivor, grieving mum, and acrobats.
This year's talkfest focused on the theme of "together". Organiser Edwina Throsby challenged the notion that "great ideas come from some dude going off to the forest" alone. "I urge you to start conversations with each other today," she said.
Some audience members were asked to go further by wearing heart stickers, to signify they were single and available.
Aerospace engineer Brad Dewar (29 years old, 188 centimetres, two years single) was looking for a woman who's chasing her dreams. Digital content producer Jess Wilkinson (28, 175cm, two years single) wanted a man who's "nice, kind, well-educated" and tall. Would she consider an aerospace engineer? "Sure, yeah."
Complex ideas abounded: how to overcome fear; why we love sad music; is it advisable to eat tabbouleh from a jar.
Why do people do stupid things? "We are greedy and we lack self-control," answered neuro-finance expert Elise Payzan-Le Nestour. What would your young self say to you now? "What happened to all our dreams," said biomedical engineer and futurist Jordan Nguyen.
Intensive care specialist Ken Hillman recalled how his aged, hospital-bound mum asked him over and over before she died: "What is wrong with me?" Modern medicine can't cure everything, he said.
"Even when you're told there is no hope, you somehow still manage to find it," said Freshwater mother Peta Murchison. Her six-year-old daughter Mia has the rare degenerative Batten disease. There is no cure. In a few years, it will take her life.
"When my daughter dies I will wash her and dress her and put flowers in her hair," she said to the audience, many of them in tears. "Living in grief means life is more illuminating," she said, before departing the stage to a standing ovation.
Fairfax Media is a media partner of TEDx Sydney 2016.
