After watching the Opening Ceremony of the 2010 Winter Olympics tonight, the part that stood out most in my mind was Shane Koyczan’s “We Are More” speech. After the commentator mentioned that Koyczan was discovered on YouTube, I went online and found the video of the slam poet performing “We Are More.”
Sure, there were plenty of flashy effects during the opening ceremony (my favorite of those was the light show and particularly, the whales) and celebrity appearances (Bryan Adams, Nelly Furtado and KD Lang among them) as well as the parade of athletes and the lighting of the torch but Koyczan’s poem reading held my attention most of all and made me think, “If I were Canadian, I’d be cheering too.”
I think I prefer tonight’s “performance” of the poem as he took his time with it and let audience have a bit more time to let the words sink in. All the same, if you didn’t catch the Opening Ceremony tonight or want to hear the poem again, below is a video that was posted in 2007 of Koyczan’s performance of “We Are More.” Hopefully NBC will make the video of the opening ceremony available for people to view online soon.
