1
00:00:14,870 --> 00:00:20,788
(Singing) I see the moon.
The moon sees me.

2
00:00:20,788 --> 00:00:26,858
The moon sees somebody that I don't see.

3
00:00:26,858 --> 00:00:33,393
God bless the moon, and god bless me,

4
00:00:33,393 --> 00:00:40,368
and God bless that somebody
that I don't see.

5
00:00:40,368 --> 00:00:46,050
If I get to heaven, before you do,

6
00:00:46,050 --> 00:00:52,891
I'll make a hole and pull you through.

7
00:00:52,891 --> 00:00:57,782
And I'll write your name, on every star,

8
00:00:57,782 --> 00:01:02,005
and that way the world,

9
00:01:02,005 --> 00:01:05,887
won't seem so far.

10
00:01:05,887 --> 00:01:09,602
The astronaut will not be at work today.

11
00:01:09,602 --> 00:01:11,497
He has called in sick.

12
00:01:11,497 --> 00:01:16,887
He has turned off his cell phone,
his laptop, his pager, his alarm clock.

13
00:01:16,887 --> 00:01:19,846
There is a fat yellow cat
asleep on his couch,

14
00:01:19,846 --> 00:01:21,799
rain drops against the window,

15
00:01:21,799 --> 00:01:25,014
and not even the hint
of coffee in the kitchen air.

16
00:01:25,014 --> 00:01:26,768
Everybody is in a tizzy.

17
00:01:26,768 --> 00:01:30,708
The engineers on the 15th floor have
stopped working on their particle machine.

18
00:01:30,708 --> 00:01:32,711
The anti gravity room is leaking

19
00:01:32,711 --> 00:01:34,619
and even the freckled kid with glasses,

20
00:01:34,619 --> 00:01:37,135
whose only job is to take
out the trash, is nervous,

21
00:01:37,135 --> 00:01:39,777
fumbles the bag, spills
a banana peel and a paper cup.

22
00:01:39,777 --> 00:01:41,383
Nobody notices.

23
00:01:41,383 --> 00:01:44,479
They are too busy recalculating
what this all mean for lost time.

24
00:01:44,503 --> 00:01:46,866
How many galaxies
are we losing per second.

25
00:01:46,866 --> 00:01:49,486
How long before next rocket
can be launched, somewhere.

26
00:01:49,510 --> 00:01:51,743
An electron flies off its energy cloud.

27
00:01:51,743 --> 00:01:53,024
A black hole has erupted.

28
00:01:53,024 --> 00:01:56,216
A mother finishes setting
the table for dinner.

29
00:01:56,216 --> 00:01:57,883
A Law & Order marathon is starting.

30
00:01:57,907 --> 00:02:00,037
The astronaut is asleep.

31
00:02:00,037 --> 00:02:01,959
He has forgotten to turn off his watch,

32
00:02:01,959 --> 00:02:04,759
which ticks, like a metal
pulse against his wrist.

33
00:02:04,759 --> 00:02:06,510
He does not hear it.

34
00:02:06,510 --> 00:02:09,673
He dreams of coral reefs and plankton.

35
00:02:09,673 --> 00:02:12,675
His fingers find
the pillowcase's sailing masts.

36
00:02:12,675 --> 00:02:15,399
He turns on his side.
Opens his eyes at once.

37
00:02:15,399 --> 00:02:20,668
He thinks that scuba divers must have
the most wonderful job in the world.

38
00:02:20,668 --> 00:02:24,335
So much water to glide through!

39
00:02:26,381 --> 00:02:30,687
(Applause)

40
00:02:30,687 --> 00:02:32,879
Thank you.

41
00:02:32,879 --> 00:02:37,004
When I was little, I could
not understand the concept

42
00:02:37,004 --> 00:02:39,771
that you could only live one life.

43
00:02:39,771 --> 00:02:41,637
I don't mean this metaphorically.

44
00:02:41,637 --> 00:02:44,966
I mean, I literally thought
that I was going to get to do

45
00:02:44,966 --> 00:02:47,512
everything that there was to do

46
00:02:47,512 --> 00:02:50,027
and be everything there was to be.

47
00:02:50,027 --> 00:02:51,899
It was only a matter of time.

48
00:02:51,899 --> 00:02:54,709
Ad there was no limitation
based on age, or gender,

49
00:02:54,709 --> 00:02:57,659
or race or even appropriate time period.

50
00:02:57,659 --> 00:03:01,009
I was sure that I was going
to actually experience

51
00:03:01,009 --> 00:03:05,523
what it felt like to be a leader
of the civil right movement,

52
00:03:05,523 --> 00:03:08,441
or a ten-year old boy living
on a farm during the dust bowl,

53
00:03:08,441 --> 00:03:12,086
or an emperor of the Tang
dynasty in China.

54
00:03:12,086 --> 00:03:14,739
My mom says that when people asked me what

55
00:03:14,739 --> 00:03:20,140
I wanted to be when I grew up, my typical
response was princess-ballerina-astronaut.

56
00:03:20,164 --> 00:03:23,293
And what she doesn't understand
is that I wasn't trying to invent

57
00:03:23,318 --> 00:03:25,441
some combined
super profession.

58
00:03:25,442 --> 00:03:28,869
I was listing things I thought
I was gonna get to be:

59
00:03:28,869 --> 00:03:31,953
a princess, and a ballerina,
and an astronaut.

60
00:03:31,953 --> 00:03:34,668
and I'm pretty sure the list
probably went on from there.

61
00:03:34,692 --> 00:03:36,592
I usually just got cut off.

62
00:03:36,592 --> 00:03:39,359
It was never a question
of if I was going to do something

63
00:03:39,384 --> 00:03:41,875
so much of a question of when.

64
00:03:41,876 --> 00:03:44,700
And I was sure that if I was going
to do everything,

65
00:03:44,700 --> 00:03:47,208
that it probably meant I had
to move pretty quickly,

66
00:03:47,208 --> 00:03:49,458
because there was a lot
of stuff I needed to do.

67
00:03:49,458 --> 00:03:51,808
So my life was constantly
in a state of rushing.

68
00:03:51,808 --> 00:03:53,999
I was always scared
that I was falling behind.

69
00:03:54,023 --> 00:03:56,940
And since I grew up in New York
City, as far as I could tell,

70
00:03:56,940 --> 00:04:00,112
rushing was pretty normal.

71
00:04:00,112 --> 00:04:03,926
But, as I grew up, I had
this sinking realization,

72
00:04:03,926 --> 00:04:08,021
that I wasn't gonna get to live
any more than one life

73
00:04:08,021 --> 00:04:11,016
I only knew what it felt
like to be a teenage girl

74
00:04:11,016 --> 00:04:12,046
in New York City,

75
00:04:12,046 --> 00:04:14,934
not a teenage boy in New Zealand,

76
00:04:14,934 --> 00:04:17,821
not a prom queen in Kansas.

77
00:04:17,821 --> 00:04:21,012
I only got to see through my lens
and it was around this time

78
00:04:21,012 --> 00:04:23,089
that I became obsessed with stories,

79
00:04:23,089 --> 00:04:25,613
because it was through stories
that I was able to see

80
00:04:25,637 --> 00:04:30,021
through someone else's lens,
however briefly or imperfectly.

81
00:04:30,021 --> 00:04:33,849
And I started craving hearing
other people's experiences

82
00:04:33,849 --> 00:04:37,052
because I was so jealous
that there were entire lives

83
00:04:37,052 --> 00:04:39,906
that I was never going to get
to live, and I wanted to hear

84
00:04:39,906 --> 00:04:41,711
about everything that I was missing.

85
00:04:41,711 --> 00:04:43,528
And by transitive property, I realized

86
00:04:43,528 --> 00:04:46,957
that some people were never going
to get to experience what it felt like

87
00:04:46,981 --> 00:04:49,052
to be a teenage girl in New York city.

88
00:04:49,052 --> 00:04:51,100
Which meant that they weren’t
going to know

89
00:04:51,124 --> 00:04:54,180
what the subway ride
after your first kiss feels like,

90
00:04:54,180 --> 00:04:57,062
or how quiet it gets when its snows,

91
00:04:57,062 --> 00:04:59,348
and I wanted them to know,
I wanted to tell them

92
00:04:59,372 --> 00:05:01,669
and this became the focus of my obsession.

93
00:05:01,669 --> 00:05:05,464
I busied myself telling stories
and sharing stories and collecting them.

94
00:05:05,464 --> 00:05:08,487
And it's not until recently
that I realized

95
00:05:08,487 --> 00:05:11,952
that I can't always rush poetry.

96
00:05:11,952 --> 00:05:16,108
In April for National Poetry Month
there's this challenge that,

97
00:05:16,108 --> 00:05:18,669
many poets in the poetry
community participate in,

98
00:05:18,669 --> 00:05:21,057
and its called the 30/30 Challenge.

99
00:05:21,223 --> 00:05:23,978
The idea is you write
a new poem

100
00:05:24,003 --> 00:05:26,798
every single day
for the entire month of April.

101
00:05:27,552 --> 00:05:30,545
And last year I tried it for the first
time, and I was thrilled

102
00:05:30,545 --> 00:05:34,001
by the efficiency at which I was able
to produce poetry.

103
00:05:34,001 --> 00:05:38,309
But at the end of the month I looked
back at these 30 poems I had written,

104
00:05:38,309 --> 00:05:42,402
and discovered that they were
all trying to tell the same story,

105
00:05:42,402 --> 00:05:46,829
it had just taken me 30 tries to figure
out the way that it wanted to be told.

106
00:05:46,829 --> 00:05:50,782
And I realized that this is probably true
of other stories on an even larger scale.

107
00:05:50,782 --> 00:05:53,211
I have stories that I have
tried to tell for years,

108
00:05:53,235 --> 00:05:57,062
rewriting and rewriting and constantly
searching for the right words.

109
00:05:57,062 --> 00:06:01,016
There's a French poet, an essayist
by the name of Paul Valery

110
00:06:01,016 --> 00:06:04,743
who said a poem is never
finished, it is only abandoned.

111
00:06:04,743 --> 00:06:07,263
And this terrifies me
because it implies that

112
00:06:07,263 --> 00:06:11,002
I could keep reediting and rewriting
forever and its up to me to decide

113
00:06:11,002 --> 00:06:15,763
when a poem is finished and when
I can walk away from it.

114
00:06:15,763 --> 00:06:18,716
And this goes directly against my very
obsessive nature to try

115
00:06:18,740 --> 00:06:22,313
to find the right answer, and the perfect
words, and the right form.

116
00:06:22,313 --> 00:06:24,138
And I use poetry in my life,

117
00:06:24,163 --> 00:06:27,011
as a way to help me navigate
and work through things.

118
00:06:27,011 --> 00:06:30,047
But just because I end the poem,
doesn't mean that I've solved

119
00:06:30,047 --> 00:06:33,144
whatever I was puzzling through.

120
00:06:33,144 --> 00:06:34,764
I like to revisit old poetry,

121
00:06:34,764 --> 00:06:38,611
because it shows me exactly
where I was at that moment.

122
00:06:38,611 --> 00:06:41,197
And what it was I was trying
to navigate and the words

123
00:06:41,197 --> 00:06:43,090
that I chose to help me.

124
00:06:43,090 --> 00:06:44,542
Now, I have a story

125
00:06:44,567 --> 00:06:47,098
that I've been stumbling
over for years and years

126
00:06:47,098 --> 00:06:50,034
and I'm not sure if I've found
the prefect form,

127
00:06:50,034 --> 00:06:52,064
or whether this is just one attempt

128
00:06:52,064 --> 00:06:53,973
and I will try to rewrite it later

129
00:06:53,973 --> 00:06:55,827
in search of a better way to tell it.

130
00:06:55,827 --> 00:06:59,106
But I do know that later, when I look back

131
00:06:59,106 --> 00:07:01,735
I will be able to know
that this is where I was

132
00:07:01,735 --> 00:07:05,009
at this moment, and this
is what I was trying to navigate,

133
00:07:05,009 --> 00:07:09,686
with these words, here,
in this room, with you.

134
00:07:10,732 --> 00:07:12,925
So -- Smile.

135
00:07:19,864 --> 00:07:22,521
It didn't always work this way.

136
00:07:22,521 --> 00:07:25,011
There is a time you have
to get your hands dirty.

137
00:07:25,011 --> 00:07:29,029
When you were in the dark,
for most of it, fumbling was a given,

138
00:07:29,029 --> 00:07:32,076
and you needed more
contrast, more saturation,

139
00:07:32,076 --> 00:07:35,004
darker darks, and brighter brights.

140
00:07:35,004 --> 00:07:38,049
They called it extended development.
It meant you spent

141
00:07:38,049 --> 00:07:40,901
longer inhaling chemicals,
longer up to your wrist.

142
00:07:40,901 --> 00:07:42,363
It wasn't always easy.

143
00:07:42,363 --> 00:07:45,041
Grandpa Stewart was a navy photographer.

144
00:07:45,041 --> 00:07:48,311
Young, red-faced
with the sleeves rolled up,

145
00:07:48,311 --> 00:07:51,412
fists of fingers like fat rolls of coins,

146
00:07:51,412 --> 00:07:54,513
he looked like Popeye
the sailor man, come to life.

147
00:07:54,513 --> 00:07:56,245
Crooked smile, tuft of chest hair,

148
00:07:56,245 --> 00:07:59,771
he showed up at World War II,
with a smirk and a hobby.

149
00:07:59,771 --> 00:08:02,420
When they asked him if he knew
much about photography,

150
00:08:02,420 --> 00:08:06,280
he lied, learned to read
Europe like a map,

151
00:08:06,280 --> 00:08:09,018
upside down, from the height
of a fighter plane,

152
00:08:09,018 --> 00:08:12,086
camera snapping, eyelids
flapping, the darkest darks

153
00:08:12,086 --> 00:08:14,009
and brightest brights.

154
00:08:14,009 --> 00:08:17,019
He learned war like he could
read his way home.

155
00:08:17,019 --> 00:08:20,146
When other men returned,
they would put their weapons out to rest,

156
00:08:20,203 --> 00:08:22,967
but he, brought the lenses
and the cameras home with him.

157
00:08:22,967 --> 00:08:25,650
Opened a shop, turned it
into a family affair.

158
00:08:25,650 --> 00:08:29,043
My father was born into this
world of black and white.

159
00:08:29,043 --> 00:08:32,604
His basketball hands learned
the tiny clicks and slides

160
00:08:32,604 --> 00:08:35,063
of lens into frame, film into camera,

161
00:08:35,063 --> 00:08:37,000
chemical into plastic bin.

162
00:08:37,000 --> 00:08:40,014
His father knew the equipment
but not the art.

163
00:08:40,014 --> 00:08:42,001
He knew the darks but not the brights.

164
00:08:42,001 --> 00:08:46,024
My father learned the magic,
spent his time following light.

165
00:08:46,024 --> 00:08:48,990
Once he traveled across the country
to follow a forest fire,

166
00:08:48,990 --> 00:08:51,968
hunted it with his camera for a week.

167
00:08:51,968 --> 00:08:54,299
"Follow the light," he said.

168
00:08:54,299 --> 00:08:55,830
"Follow the light."

169
00:08:55,830 --> 00:08:58,497
There are parts of me
I only recognize from photographs.

170
00:08:58,521 --> 00:09:01,512
The loft on Wooster street
with the creaky hallways,

171
00:09:01,512 --> 00:09:04,517
the twelve-foot ceilings,
the white walls and cold floors.

172
00:09:04,517 --> 00:09:07,293
This was my mothers home,
before she was mother.

173
00:09:07,293 --> 00:09:10,237
Before she was wife, she was artist.

174
00:09:10,237 --> 00:09:11,960
And the only two rooms in the house,

175
00:09:11,960 --> 00:09:14,532
with walls that reached
all the way up to the ceiling,

176
00:09:14,532 --> 00:09:16,159
and doors that opened and closed,

177
00:09:16,159 --> 00:09:18,711
were the bathroom and the dark room.

178
00:09:18,711 --> 00:09:21,045
The dark room she built
herself, with custom made

179
00:09:21,069 --> 00:09:25,010
stainless steel sinks,
an 8 by 10 bed enlarger

180
00:09:25,010 --> 00:09:27,153
that moved up and down by a giant
hand crank,

181
00:09:27,177 --> 00:09:29,056
a bank of color balanced lights,

182
00:09:29,056 --> 00:09:31,408
a white glass wall for viewing prints,

183
00:09:31,408 --> 00:09:33,863
a drying rack that moved
in and out from the wall.

184
00:09:33,863 --> 00:09:35,930
My mother built herself a dark room.

185
00:09:35,930 --> 00:09:37,076
Made it her home.

186
00:09:37,076 --> 00:09:39,985
Fell in love with a man
with basketball hands,

187
00:09:39,985 --> 00:09:42,265
with the way he looked at light.

188
00:09:42,265 --> 00:09:44,364
They got married. Had a baby.

189
00:09:44,364 --> 00:09:46,013
Moved to a house near a park.

190
00:09:46,013 --> 00:09:49,008
But they kept the loft at Wooster street

191
00:09:49,008 --> 00:09:50,913
for birthday parties and treasure hunts.

192
00:09:50,937 --> 00:09:53,611
The baby tipped the gray scale.

193
00:09:53,611 --> 00:09:56,083
Filled her parents' photo
albums with red balloons

194
00:09:56,083 --> 00:09:57,173
and yellow icing.

195
00:09:57,173 --> 00:09:59,535
The baby grew into a girl
without freckles,

196
00:09:59,535 --> 00:10:01,002
with a crooked smile,

197
00:10:01,002 --> 00:10:05,711
who didn’t understand why her friends did
not have dark rooms in their houses,

198
00:10:05,711 --> 00:10:07,490
who never saw her parents kiss,

199
00:10:07,490 --> 00:10:09,449
who never saw them hold hands.

200
00:10:09,449 --> 00:10:11,164
But one day, another baby showed up.

201
00:10:11,188 --> 00:10:14,856
This one with perfect straight
hair and bubble gum cheeks.

202
00:10:14,856 --> 00:10:16,570
They named him sweet potato.

203
00:10:16,570 --> 00:10:18,423
When he laughed, he laughed so loudly,

204
00:10:18,423 --> 00:10:20,361
he scared the pigeons on the fire escape

205
00:10:20,361 --> 00:10:23,262
And the four of them lived
in that house near the park.

206
00:10:23,262 --> 00:10:25,903
The girl with no freckles,
and the sweet potato boy,

207
00:10:25,903 --> 00:10:28,142
the basketball father,
and the dark room mother

208
00:10:28,166 --> 00:10:30,872
and they lit their candles,
and they said their prayers,

209
00:10:30,872 --> 00:10:33,698
and the corners of the photographs curled.

210
00:10:33,698 --> 00:10:35,750
One day some towers fell

211
00:10:35,750 --> 00:10:39,853
and the house near the park became
a house under ash, so they escaped.

212
00:10:39,853 --> 00:10:45,008
In backpacks, on bicycles to darkrooms
but the loft of Wooster street

213
00:10:45,008 --> 00:10:48,812
was built for an artist,
not a family of pigeons

214
00:10:48,812 --> 00:10:50,775
and walls that do not reach the ceiling

215
00:10:50,775 --> 00:10:52,090
do not hold in the yelling

216
00:10:52,090 --> 00:10:56,745
and a man with basketball hands
put his weapons out to rest.

217
00:10:56,745 --> 00:11:00,008
He could not fight this war
and no maps pointed home.

218
00:11:00,008 --> 00:11:01,678
His hands no longer fit his camera,

219
00:11:01,678 --> 00:11:03,360
no longer fit his wife's,

220
00:11:03,360 --> 00:11:05,858
no longer fit his body.

221
00:11:05,858 --> 00:11:08,713
The sweet potato boy mashed
his fists into his mouth

222
00:11:08,713 --> 00:11:10,285
until he had nothing more to say.

223
00:11:10,309 --> 00:11:14,022
So, the girl without freckles
went treasure hunting on her own.

224
00:11:14,022 --> 00:11:17,638
And on Wooster street, in a building
with a creaky hallways,

225
00:11:17,638 --> 00:11:19,490
and a loft of the 12-foot ceiling

226
00:11:19,490 --> 00:11:21,482
and a darkroom with too many sinks

227
00:11:21,482 --> 00:11:24,028
under the color balance
light, she found a note,

228
00:11:24,028 --> 00:11:28,941
tacked to the wall thumb-tacked, left
over from the times before towers,

229
00:11:28,941 --> 00:11:31,485
from the time before babies.

230
00:11:31,485 --> 00:11:37,007
And the note said: "A guy sure loves
the girl who works in the darkroom."

231
00:11:37,007 --> 00:11:40,944
It was a year before my father
picked up a camera again.

232
00:11:40,944 --> 00:11:43,578
His first time out, he followed
the Christmas lights,

233
00:11:43,578 --> 00:11:46,013
dotting their way through New
York City's trees.

234
00:11:46,013 --> 00:11:50,967
Tiny dots of light, blinking out of him
from out of the darkest darks.

235
00:11:50,967 --> 00:11:53,030
A year later he traveled
across the country

236
00:11:53,055 --> 00:11:54,873
to follow a forest fire,

237
00:11:54,873 --> 00:11:57,527
stayed for a week hunting
it with his camera,

238
00:11:57,527 --> 00:11:59,497
it was ravaging the West Coast

239
00:11:59,497 --> 00:12:01,481
eating 18-wheeler trucks in its stride.

240
00:12:01,481 --> 00:12:03,062
On the other side of the country,

241
00:12:03,062 --> 00:12:06,062
I went to class and wrote a poem
on the margins of my notebook.

242
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We have both learned the art of capture.

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Maybe we are learning
the art of embracing.

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Maybe we are learning
the art of letting go.

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Thank You. (Applause)