1
00:00:00,609 --> 00:00:05,297
(Singing) I see the moon.
The moon sees me.

2
00:00:06,296 --> 00:00:11,564
The moon sees somebody that I don't see.

3
00:00:12,708 --> 00:00:18,351
God bless the moon, and God bless me.

4
00:00:19,243 --> 00:00:24,655
And God bless the somebody
that I don't see.

5
00:00:25,673 --> 00:00:31,331
If I get to heaven, before you do,

6
00:00:31,987 --> 00:00:37,770
I'll make a hole and pull you through.

7
00:00:38,083 --> 00:00:43,552
And I'll write your name on every star,

8
00:00:44,062 --> 00:00:46,704
and that way the world

9
00:00:47,356 --> 00:00:50,638
won't seem so far.

10
00:00:51,079 --> 00:00:54,770
The astronaut will not be at work today.

11
00:00:55,111 --> 00:00:56,767
He has called in sick.

12
00:00:56,791 --> 00:01:01,919
He has turned off his cell phone,
his laptop, his pager, his alarm clock.

13
00:01:01,943 --> 00:01:05,092
There is a fat yellow cat
asleep on his couch,

14
00:01:05,116 --> 00:01:06,860
raindrops against the window

15
00:01:06,884 --> 00:01:10,599
and not even the hint
of coffee in the kitchen air.

16
00:01:10,623 --> 00:01:11,872
Everybody is in a tizzy.

17
00:01:11,896 --> 00:01:15,842
The engineers on the 15th floor have
stopped working on their particle machine.

18
00:01:15,866 --> 00:01:17,644
The anti-gravity room is leaking,

19
00:01:17,668 --> 00:01:19,548
and even the freckled kid with glasses,

20
00:01:19,572 --> 00:01:22,246
whose only job is to take
out the trash, is nervous,

21
00:01:22,270 --> 00:01:24,979
fumbles the bag, spills
a banana peel and a paper cup.

22
00:01:25,003 --> 00:01:26,425
Nobody notices.

23
00:01:26,449 --> 00:01:29,874
They are too busy recalculating
what this all mean for lost time.

24
00:01:29,898 --> 00:01:31,930
How many galaxies
are we losing per second?

25
00:01:31,954 --> 00:01:34,004
How long before next rocket
can be launched?

26
00:01:34,028 --> 00:01:36,899
Somewhere an electron
flies off its energy cloud.

27
00:01:36,923 --> 00:01:38,889
A black hole has erupted.

28
00:01:38,913 --> 00:01:41,214
A mother finishes setting
the table for dinner.

29
00:01:41,238 --> 00:01:43,299
A Law & Order marathon is starting.

30
00:01:43,323 --> 00:01:45,544
The astronaut is asleep.

31
00:01:45,568 --> 00:01:47,471
He has forgotten to turn off his watch,

32
00:01:47,495 --> 00:01:50,246
which ticks, like a metal
pulse against his wrist.

33
00:01:50,270 --> 00:01:51,845
He does not hear it.

34
00:01:51,869 --> 00:01:54,918
He dreams of coral reefs and plankton.

35
00:01:54,942 --> 00:01:58,081
His fingers find
the pillowcase's sailing masts.

36
00:01:58,105 --> 00:02:01,173
He turns on his side,
opens his eyes at once.

37
00:02:01,197 --> 00:02:05,927
He thinks that scuba divers must have
the most wonderful job in the world.

38
00:02:05,951 --> 00:02:08,794
So much water to glide through!

39
00:02:11,070 --> 00:02:16,298
(Applause)

40
00:02:16,322 --> 00:02:18,103
Thank you.

41
00:02:18,127 --> 00:02:22,228
When I was little, I could
not understand the concept

42
00:02:22,996 --> 00:02:25,041
that you could only live one life.

43
00:02:25,560 --> 00:02:27,140
I don't mean this metaphorically.

44
00:02:27,164 --> 00:02:30,115
I mean, I literally thought
that I was going to get to do

45
00:02:30,433 --> 00:02:32,479
everything there was to do

46
00:02:32,503 --> 00:02:35,099
and be everything there was to be.

47
00:02:35,123 --> 00:02:36,527
It was only a matter of time.

48
00:02:36,899 --> 00:02:39,923
And there was no limitation
based on age or gender

49
00:02:39,947 --> 00:02:43,034
or race or even appropriate time period.

50
00:02:43,058 --> 00:02:46,509
I was sure that I was going
to actually experience

51
00:02:46,533 --> 00:02:50,327
what it felt like to be a leader
of the civil rights movement

52
00:02:50,351 --> 00:02:53,985
or a ten-year old boy living
on a farm during the dust bowl

53
00:02:54,009 --> 00:02:57,627
or an emperor of the Tang
dynasty in China.

54
00:02:57,651 --> 00:02:59,652
My mom says that when people asked me

55
00:02:59,676 --> 00:03:03,255
what I wanted to be when I grew up,
my typical response was:

56
00:03:03,279 --> 00:03:05,047
princess-ballerina-astronaut.

57
00:03:05,458 --> 00:03:08,603
And what she doesn't understand
is that I wasn't trying to invent

58
00:03:08,627 --> 00:03:10,610
some combined super profession.

59
00:03:10,634 --> 00:03:14,011
I was listing things I thought
I was gonna get to be:

60
00:03:14,035 --> 00:03:17,096
a princess and a ballerina
and an astronaut.

61
00:03:17,120 --> 00:03:19,859
and I'm pretty sure the list
probably went on from there.

62
00:03:19,883 --> 00:03:21,881
I usually just got cut off.

63
00:03:21,905 --> 00:03:24,771
It was never a question
of if I was gonna get to do something

64
00:03:24,795 --> 00:03:26,855
so much of a question of when.

65
00:03:27,278 --> 00:03:29,755
And I was sure that if I was going
to do everything,

66
00:03:29,779 --> 00:03:32,215
that it probably meant I had
to move pretty quickly,

67
00:03:32,239 --> 00:03:34,485
because there was a lot
of stuff I needed to do.

68
00:03:34,509 --> 00:03:36,779
So my life was constantly
in a state of rushing.

69
00:03:36,803 --> 00:03:38,970
I was always scared
that I was falling behind.

70
00:03:38,994 --> 00:03:42,374
And since I grew up
in New York City, as far as I could tell,

71
00:03:42,398 --> 00:03:44,224
rushing was pretty normal.

72
00:03:45,128 --> 00:03:48,763
But, as I grew up, I had
this sinking realization,

73
00:03:49,108 --> 00:03:53,398
that I wasn't gonna get to live
any more than one life.

74
00:03:53,422 --> 00:03:56,428
I only knew what it felt like
to be a teenage girl

75
00:03:56,452 --> 00:03:57,603
in New York City,

76
00:03:57,627 --> 00:03:59,918
not a teenage boy in New Zealand,

77
00:03:59,942 --> 00:04:03,019
not a prom queen in Kansas.

78
00:04:03,043 --> 00:04:04,964
I only got to see through my lens.

79
00:04:04,988 --> 00:04:08,296
And it was around this time
that I became obsessed with stories,

80
00:04:08,320 --> 00:04:11,447
because it was through stories
that I was able to see

81
00:04:11,471 --> 00:04:15,193
through someone else's lens,
however briefly or imperfectly.

82
00:04:15,589 --> 00:04:18,701
And I started craving hearing
other people's experiences

83
00:04:18,725 --> 00:04:22,288
because I was so jealous
that there were entire lives

84
00:04:22,312 --> 00:04:24,003
that I was never gonna get to live,

85
00:04:24,027 --> 00:04:26,702
and I wanted to hear
about everything that I was missing.

86
00:04:26,726 --> 00:04:28,020
And by transitive property,

87
00:04:28,044 --> 00:04:31,273
I realized that some people
were never gonna get to experience

88
00:04:31,297 --> 00:04:33,981
what it felt like to be a teenage girl
in New York city.

89
00:04:34,005 --> 00:04:35,910
Which meant that they weren't gonna know

90
00:04:35,934 --> 00:04:39,156
what the subway ride
after your first kiss feels like,

91
00:04:39,180 --> 00:04:41,998
or how quiet it gets when its snows.

92
00:04:42,022 --> 00:04:44,634
And I wanted them to know,
I wanted to tell them.

93
00:04:44,658 --> 00:04:47,085
And this became the focus of my obsession.

94
00:04:47,109 --> 00:04:50,734
I busied myself telling stories
and sharing stories and collecting them.

95
00:04:50,758 --> 00:04:52,742
And it's not until recently

96
00:04:52,766 --> 00:04:57,075
that I realized that
I can't always rush poetry.

97
00:04:57,666 --> 00:05:01,004
In April for National Poetry Month,
there's this challenge

98
00:05:01,028 --> 00:05:04,146
that many poets in the poetry
community participate in,

99
00:05:04,170 --> 00:05:06,234
and its called the 30/30 Challenge.

100
00:05:06,551 --> 00:05:09,273
The idea is you write a new poem

101
00:05:09,297 --> 00:05:12,234
every single day
for the entire month of April.

102
00:05:12,916 --> 00:05:14,972
And last year, I tried it
for the first time

103
00:05:14,996 --> 00:05:19,146
and was thrilled by the efficiency
at which I was able to produce poetry.

104
00:05:19,765 --> 00:05:23,375
But at the end of the month, I looked
back at these 30 poems I had written

105
00:05:23,399 --> 00:05:27,418
and discovered that they were
all trying to tell the same story,

106
00:05:27,442 --> 00:05:32,251
it had just taken me 30 tries to figure
out the way that it wanted to be told.

107
00:05:32,275 --> 00:05:36,196
And I realized that this is probably true
of other stories on an even larger scale.

108
00:05:36,220 --> 00:05:38,648
I have stories that I have
tried to tell for years,

109
00:05:38,672 --> 00:05:43,060
rewriting and rewriting and constantly
searching for the right words.

110
00:05:43,084 --> 00:05:46,369
There's a French poet and essayist
by the name of Paul Valéry

111
00:05:46,393 --> 00:05:49,869
who said a poem is never
finished, it is only abandoned.

112
00:05:50,178 --> 00:05:51,329
And this terrifies me

113
00:05:51,353 --> 00:05:54,732
because it implies that I could keep
re-editing and rewriting forever

114
00:05:54,756 --> 00:05:58,209
and its up to me to decide
when a poem is finished

115
00:05:58,233 --> 00:06:00,344
and when I can walk away from it.

116
00:06:00,978 --> 00:06:03,685
And this goes directly against
my very obsessive nature

117
00:06:03,709 --> 00:06:07,328
to try to find the right answer
and the perfect words and the right form.

118
00:06:07,352 --> 00:06:09,433
And I use poetry in my life,

119
00:06:09,457 --> 00:06:12,169
as a way to help me navigate
and work through things.

120
00:06:12,193 --> 00:06:15,399
But just because I end the poem,
doesn't mean that I've solved

121
00:06:15,423 --> 00:06:17,407
what it was I was puzzling through.

122
00:06:18,001 --> 00:06:19,835
I like to revisit old poetry

123
00:06:19,859 --> 00:06:23,674
because it shows me exactly
where I was at that moment

124
00:06:23,698 --> 00:06:25,611
and what it was I was trying to navigate

125
00:06:25,635 --> 00:06:27,769
and the words that I chose to help me.

126
00:06:28,468 --> 00:06:29,821
Now, I have a story

127
00:06:29,845 --> 00:06:32,694
that I've been stumbling
over for years and years

128
00:06:32,718 --> 00:06:35,368
and I'm not sure if I've found
the perfect form,

129
00:06:35,392 --> 00:06:37,384
or whether this is just one attempt

130
00:06:37,408 --> 00:06:41,153
and I will try to rewrite it later
in search of a better way to tell it.

131
00:06:41,177 --> 00:06:44,177
But I do know that later, when I look back

132
00:06:44,201 --> 00:06:48,200
I will be able to know that
this is where I was at this moment

133
00:06:48,224 --> 00:06:50,423
and this is what I was trying to navigate,

134
00:06:50,447 --> 00:06:53,274
with these words, here,
in this room, with you.

135
00:06:56,105 --> 00:06:57,255
So --

136
00:06:58,652 --> 00:07:00,152
Smile.

137
00:07:05,310 --> 00:07:06,794
It didn't always work this way.

138
00:07:07,874 --> 00:07:10,281
There's a time you had
to get your hands dirty.

139
00:07:10,305 --> 00:07:14,090
When you were in the dark,
for most of it, fumbling was a given.

140
00:07:14,416 --> 00:07:17,812
If you needed more
contrast, more saturation,

141
00:07:17,836 --> 00:07:19,939
darker darks and brighter brights,

142
00:07:19,963 --> 00:07:22,660
they called it extended development.

143
00:07:22,684 --> 00:07:25,986
It meant you spent longer inhaling
chemicals, longer up to your wrist.

144
00:07:26,010 --> 00:07:27,302
It wasn't always easy.

145
00:07:27,937 --> 00:07:30,707
Grandpa Stewart was a Navy photographer.

146
00:07:30,731 --> 00:07:33,675
Young, red-faced
with his sleeves rolled up,

147
00:07:33,699 --> 00:07:36,327
fists of fingers like fat rolls of coins,

148
00:07:36,351 --> 00:07:39,171
he looked like Popeye
the sailor man come to life.

149
00:07:39,195 --> 00:07:41,612
Crooked smile, tuft of chest hair,

150
00:07:41,636 --> 00:07:45,017
he showed up to World War II,
with a smirk and a hobby.

151
00:07:45,041 --> 00:07:47,707
When they asked him if he knew
much about photography,

152
00:07:47,731 --> 00:07:51,019
he lied, learned to read
Europe like a map,

153
00:07:51,043 --> 00:07:54,233
upside down, from the height
of a fighter plane,

154
00:07:54,257 --> 00:07:56,758
camera snapping, eyelids flapping

155
00:07:56,782 --> 00:07:58,997
the darkest darks and brightest brights.

156
00:07:59,021 --> 00:08:02,007
He learned war like he could
read his way home.

157
00:08:02,520 --> 00:08:05,624
When other men returned,
they would put their weapons out to rest,

158
00:08:05,648 --> 00:08:08,275
but he brought the lenses
and the cameras home with him.

159
00:08:08,299 --> 00:08:11,362
Opened a shop, turned it
into a family affair.

160
00:08:11,386 --> 00:08:14,806
My father was born into this
world of black and white.

161
00:08:14,830 --> 00:08:18,000
His basketball hands learned
the tiny clicks and slides

162
00:08:18,024 --> 00:08:20,595
of lens into frame, film into camera,

163
00:08:20,619 --> 00:08:22,096
chemical into plastic bin.

164
00:08:22,120 --> 00:08:24,944
His father knew the equipment
but not the art.

165
00:08:25,308 --> 00:08:27,151
He knew the darks but not the brights.

166
00:08:27,175 --> 00:08:30,850
My father learned the magic,
spent his time following light.

167
00:08:30,874 --> 00:08:34,508
Once he traveled across the country
to follow a forest fire,

168
00:08:34,532 --> 00:08:37,087
hunted it with his camera for a week.

169
00:08:37,929 --> 00:08:39,381
"Follow the light," he said.

170
00:08:39,698 --> 00:08:40,874
"Follow the light."

171
00:08:40,898 --> 00:08:44,071
There are parts of me
I only recognize from photographs.

172
00:08:44,095 --> 00:08:46,801
The loft on Wooster Street
with the creaky hallways,

173
00:08:46,825 --> 00:08:49,525
the twelve-foot ceilings,
white walls and cold floors.

174
00:08:49,549 --> 00:08:52,348
This was my mother's home,
before she was mother.

175
00:08:52,372 --> 00:08:55,229
Before she was wife, she was artist.

176
00:08:55,253 --> 00:08:56,992
And the only two rooms in the house,

177
00:08:57,016 --> 00:08:59,547
with walls that reached
all the way up to the ceiling,

178
00:08:59,571 --> 00:09:01,158
and doors that opened and closed,

179
00:09:01,182 --> 00:09:03,443
were the bathroom and the darkroom.

180
00:09:03,814 --> 00:09:05,893
The darkroom she built herself,

181
00:09:05,917 --> 00:09:10,512
with custom-made stainless steel sinks,
an 8x10 bed enlarger

182
00:09:10,536 --> 00:09:12,948
that moved up and down
by a giant hand crank,

183
00:09:12,972 --> 00:09:14,655
a bank of color-balanced lights,

184
00:09:14,679 --> 00:09:16,644
a white glass wall for viewing prints,

185
00:09:16,668 --> 00:09:19,010
a drying rack that moved
in and out from the wall.

186
00:09:19,034 --> 00:09:21,120
My mother built herself a darkroom.

187
00:09:21,144 --> 00:09:22,407
Made it her home.

188
00:09:22,431 --> 00:09:25,091
Fell in love with a man
with basketball hands,

189
00:09:25,115 --> 00:09:26,995
with the way he looked at light.

190
00:09:27,375 --> 00:09:29,458
They got married. Had a baby.

191
00:09:29,482 --> 00:09:31,672
Moved to a house near a park.

192
00:09:31,696 --> 00:09:33,609
But they kept the loft on Wooster Street

193
00:09:33,633 --> 00:09:36,182
for birthday parties and treasure hunts.

194
00:09:36,206 --> 00:09:38,610
The baby tipped the grayscale,

195
00:09:38,634 --> 00:09:42,269
filled her parents' photo albums
with red balloons and yellow icing.

196
00:09:42,293 --> 00:09:45,062
The baby grew into a girl
without freckles,

197
00:09:45,086 --> 00:09:46,578
with a crooked smile,

198
00:09:46,602 --> 00:09:51,062
who didn’t understand why her friends
did not have darkrooms in their houses,

199
00:09:51,086 --> 00:09:52,998
who never saw her parents kiss,

200
00:09:53,022 --> 00:09:54,554
who never saw them hold hands.

201
00:09:55,006 --> 00:09:56,744
But one day, another baby showed up.

202
00:09:56,768 --> 00:09:59,951
This one with perfect straight
hair and bubble gum cheeks.

203
00:09:59,975 --> 00:10:01,601
They named him sweet potato.

204
00:10:01,625 --> 00:10:03,557
When he laughed, he laughed so loudly

205
00:10:03,581 --> 00:10:05,739
he scared the pigeons on the fire escape

206
00:10:05,763 --> 00:10:08,739
And the four of them lived
in that house near the park.

207
00:10:08,763 --> 00:10:11,318
The girl with no freckles,
the sweet potato boy,

208
00:10:11,342 --> 00:10:13,468
the basketball father and darkroom mother

209
00:10:13,492 --> 00:10:16,120
and they lit their candles
and said their prayers,

210
00:10:16,144 --> 00:10:18,198
and the corners of the photographs curled.

211
00:10:18,959 --> 00:10:21,467
One day, some towers fell.

212
00:10:21,491 --> 00:10:25,220
And the house near the park
became a house under ash, so they escaped

213
00:10:25,244 --> 00:10:28,507
in backpacks, on bicycles to darkrooms

214
00:10:28,531 --> 00:10:31,360
But the loft of Wooster Street
was built for an artist,

215
00:10:31,384 --> 00:10:34,138
not a family of pigeons,

216
00:10:34,162 --> 00:10:37,534
and walls that do not reach the ceiling
do not hold in the yelling

217
00:10:37,558 --> 00:10:41,800
and the man with basketball hands
put his weapons out to rest.

218
00:10:41,824 --> 00:10:45,063
He could not fight this war,
and no maps pointed home.

219
00:10:45,442 --> 00:10:47,641
His hands no longer fit his camera,

220
00:10:47,665 --> 00:10:49,252
no longer fit his wife's,

221
00:10:49,276 --> 00:10:50,712
no longer fit his body.

222
00:10:51,299 --> 00:10:53,983
The sweet potato boy mashed
his fists into his mouth

223
00:10:54,007 --> 00:10:55,580
until he had nothing more to say.

224
00:10:55,604 --> 00:10:58,902
So, the girl without freckles
went treasure hunting on her own.

225
00:10:59,497 --> 00:11:02,908
And on Wooster Street, in a building
with the creaky hallways

226
00:11:02,932 --> 00:11:04,760
and the loft with the 12-foot ceilings

227
00:11:04,784 --> 00:11:06,752
and the darkroom with too many sinks

228
00:11:06,776 --> 00:11:09,298
under the color-balanced lights,
she found a note,

229
00:11:09,322 --> 00:11:13,575
tacked to the wall with a thumb-tack,
left over from a time before towers,

230
00:11:13,933 --> 00:11:16,564
from the time before babies.

231
00:11:16,588 --> 00:11:21,520
And the note said: "A guy sure loves
the girl who works in the darkroom."

232
00:11:22,758 --> 00:11:25,710
It was a year before my father
picked up a camera again.

233
00:11:26,238 --> 00:11:28,776
His first time out, he followed
the Christmas lights,

234
00:11:28,800 --> 00:11:31,283
dotting their way through
New York City's trees,

235
00:11:31,307 --> 00:11:36,006
tiny dots of light, blinking out at him
from out of the darkest darks.

236
00:11:36,030 --> 00:11:39,928
A year later he traveled
across the country to follow a forest fire

237
00:11:39,952 --> 00:11:42,464
stayed for a week hunting
it with his camera,

238
00:11:42,488 --> 00:11:44,340
it was ravaging the West Coast

239
00:11:44,364 --> 00:11:46,594
eating 18-wheeler trucks in its stride.

240
00:11:46,618 --> 00:11:48,197
On the other side of the country,

241
00:11:48,221 --> 00:11:51,579
I went to class and wrote a poem
in the margins of my notebook.

242
00:11:51,603 --> 00:11:53,563
We have both learned the art of capture.

243
00:11:54,059 --> 00:11:56,912
Maybe we are learning
the art of embracing.

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00:11:56,936 --> 00:12:00,039
Maybe we are learning
the art of letting go.

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00:12:01,357 --> 00:12:06,023
(Applause)