WEBVTT 00:00:14.870 --> 00:00:20.788 (Singing) I see the moon. The moon sees me. 00:00:20.788 --> 00:00:26.858 The moon sees somebody that I don't see. 00:00:26.858 --> 00:00:33.393 God bless the moon, and god bless me, 00:00:33.393 --> 00:00:40.368 and God bless that somebody that I don't see. 00:00:40.368 --> 00:00:46.050 If I get to heaven, before you do, 00:00:46.050 --> 00:00:52.891 I'll make a hole and pull you through. 00:00:52.891 --> 00:00:57.782 And I'll write your name, on every star, 00:00:57.782 --> 00:01:02.005 and that way the world, 00:01:02.005 --> 00:01:05.887 won't seem so far. 00:01:05.887 --> 00:01:09.602 The astronaut will not be at work today. 00:01:09.602 --> 00:01:11.497 He is cold and sick. 00:01:11.497 --> 00:01:16.887 He has turned off his cell phone, his laptop, his pager, his alarm clock. 00:01:16.887 --> 00:01:19.846 There is a fat yellow cat asleep on his couch, 00:01:19.846 --> 00:01:21.799 rain drops against the window, 00:01:21.799 --> 00:01:25.014 and not even the hint of coffee in the kitchen air. 00:01:25.014 --> 00:01:26.768 Everybody is in a tizzy. 00:01:26.768 --> 00:01:30.708 The engineers on the 15th floor have stopped working on their particle machine. 00:01:30.708 --> 00:01:32.711 The anti gravity room is leaking 00:01:32.711 --> 00:01:34.319 and even the freckled kid with glasses, 00:01:34.319 --> 00:01:36.835 whose only job is to take out the trash, is nervous, 00:01:36.835 --> 00:01:39.777 fumbles the bag, spils a banana peel and a paper cup. 00:01:39.777 --> 00:01:41.383 Nobody notices. 00:01:41.383 --> 00:01:44.299 They are too busy recalculating what this all mean for lost time. 00:01:44.299 --> 00:01:46.866 How many galaxies are we losing per second. 00:01:46.866 --> 00:01:49.009 How long before next rocket can be launched, somewhere. 00:01:49.009 --> 00:01:51.743 An electron flies off its energy cloud. 00:01:51.743 --> 00:01:53.024 A black whole has erupted. 00:01:53.024 --> 00:01:56.216 A mother finishes setting the table for dinner. 00:01:56.216 --> 00:01:57.531 A law and order marathon is starting. 00:01:57.531 --> 00:02:00.037 The astronaut is asleep. 00:02:00.037 --> 00:02:01.959 He has forgotten to turn off his watch, 00:02:01.959 --> 00:02:04.759 which ticks, like a metal pulse against his wrist. 00:02:04.759 --> 00:02:06.510 He does not hear it. 00:02:06.510 --> 00:02:09.673 He dreams of coral reefs and plankton. 00:02:09.673 --> 00:02:12.675 His fingers find the pillowcase, his sailing mask. 00:02:12.675 --> 00:02:15.399 He turns on his side. Opens his eyes at once. 00:02:15.399 --> 00:02:20.668 He thinks that scuba divers must have the most wonderful job in the world. 00:02:20.668 --> 00:02:24.335 So much water to glide through! 00:02:26.381 --> 00:02:30.687 (Applause) 00:02:30.687 --> 00:02:32.879 Thank you. 00:02:32.879 --> 00:02:37.004 When I was little, I could not understand the concept 00:02:37.004 --> 00:02:39.771 that you could only live one life. 00:02:39.771 --> 00:02:41.637 I don't mean this metaphorically. 00:02:41.637 --> 00:02:44.966 I mean, I literally thought that I was going to get to do 00:02:44.966 --> 00:02:47.512 everything that there was to do 00:02:47.512 --> 00:02:50.027 and be everything there was to be. 00:02:50.027 --> 00:02:51.899 It was only a matter of time. 00:02:51.899 --> 00:02:54.709 Ad there was no limitation based on age, or gender, 00:02:54.709 --> 00:02:57.659 or race or even appropriate time period. 00:02:57.659 --> 00:03:01.009 I was sure that I was going to actually experience 00:03:01.009 --> 00:03:05.523 what it felt like to be a leader of the civil right movement, 00:03:05.523 --> 00:03:08.441 or a ten-year old boy living on a farm during the dust bowl, 00:03:08.441 --> 00:03:12.086 or an emperor of the Tang dynasty in China. 00:03:12.086 --> 00:03:14.739 My mom says that when people asked me what 00:03:14.739 --> 00:03:20.333 I wanted to be when I grew up, my typical response was princess-ballerina-astronaut. 00:03:20.333 --> 00:03:25.442 And what she doesn't understand is that I wasn't trying to invent some combined super profession. 00:03:25.442 --> 00:03:28.869 I was listing things I thought I was gonna get to be: 00:03:28.869 --> 00:03:31.953 a princess, and a ballerina, and an astronaut. 00:03:31.953 --> 00:03:34.395 and I'm pretty sure the list probably went on from there. 00:03:34.395 --> 00:03:36.592 I usually just got cut off. 00:03:36.592 --> 00:03:41.876 It was never a question of if I was going to do something, so much of a question of when. 00:03:41.876 --> 00:03:44.700 And I was sure that if I was going to do everything, 00:03:44.700 --> 00:03:46.708 that it probably meant I had to move pretty quickly, 00:03:46.708 --> 00:03:48.658 because there was a lot of stuff I needed to do. 00:03:48.658 --> 00:03:51.008 So my life was constantly in a state of rushing. 00:03:51.008 --> 00:03:53.019 I was always scared that I was falling behind. 00:03:53.019 --> 00:03:56.940 And since I grew up in New York City, as far as I could tell, 00:03:56.940 --> 00:04:00.112 rushing was pretty normal. 00:04:00.112 --> 00:04:03.926 But, as I grew up, I had this sinking realization, 00:04:03.926 --> 00:04:08.021 that I wasn't gonna get to live any more than one life 00:04:08.021 --> 00:04:11.016 I only knew what it felt like to be a teenage girl 00:04:11.016 --> 00:04:12.046 in New York City, 00:04:12.046 --> 00:04:14.934 not a teenage boy in New Zealand, 00:04:14.934 --> 00:04:17.821 not a prom queen in Kansas. 00:04:17.821 --> 00:04:21.013 I only got to see through my lens and it was around this time 00:04:21.013 --> 00:04:23.089 that I became obsessed with stories, 00:04:23.089 --> 00:04:25.034 because it was through stories that I was able to see 00:04:25.034 --> 00:04:30.021 through someone else's lens, however briefly or imperfectly. 00:04:30.021 --> 00:04:33.849 And I started craving hearing other people's experiences 00:04:33.849 --> 00:04:37.052 because I was so jealous that there were entire lives 00:04:37.052 --> 00:04:39.006 that I was never gonna get to live, and I wanted to hear 00:04:39.006 --> 00:04:41.011 about everything that I was missing. 00:04:41.011 --> 00:04:43.328 And by transitive property, I realized 00:04:43.328 --> 00:04:46.073 that some people were never going to get to experience what it felt like 00:04:46.073 --> 00:04:49.052 to be a teenage girl in New York city. 00:04:49.052 --> 00:04:50.698 Which meant that they weren’t going to know 00:04:50.698 --> 00:04:54.180 what the subway ride after your first kiss feels like, 00:04:54.180 --> 00:04:57.062 or how quiet it gets when its snows, 00:04:57.062 --> 00:04:58.988 and I wanted them to know, I wanted to tell them 00:04:58.988 --> 00:05:01.669 and this became the focus of my obsession. 00:05:01.669 --> 00:05:05.464 I busied myself telling stories and sharing stories and collecting them. 00:05:05.464 --> 00:05:08.487 And its not until recently that I realized 00:05:08.487 --> 00:05:11.952 that I can't always rush poetry. 00:05:11.952 --> 00:05:16.108 In April for National Poetry Month there's this challenge that, 00:05:16.108 --> 00:05:18.669 many poets in the poetry community participate in, 00:05:18.669 --> 00:05:21.057 and its called the 30/30 Challenge. 00:05:21.057 --> 00:05:26.798 The idea is you write a new poem every single day for the entire month of April. 00:05:26.798 --> 00:05:30.045 And last year I tried it for the first time, and I was thrilled 00:05:30.045 --> 00:05:34.001 by the efficiency at which I was able to produce poetry. 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, 00:05:38.309 --> 00:05:42.402 and discovered that they were all trying to tell the same story, 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. 00:05:46.829 --> 00:05:50.662 And I realized that this is probably true of other stories on an even larger scale. 00:05:50.662 --> 00:05:53.019 I have stories that I have tried to tell for years, 00:05:53.019 --> 00:05:57.062 rewriting and rewriting and constantly searching for the right words. 00:05:57.062 --> 00:06:01.016 There's a French poet, an essayist by the name of Paul Valery 00:06:01.016 --> 00:06:04.743 who said a poem is never finished, it is only abandoned. 00:06:04.743 --> 00:06:07.263 And this terrifies me because it implies that 00:06:07.263 --> 00:06:11.002 I could keep reediting and rewriting forever and its up to me to decide 00:06:11.002 --> 00:06:15.763 when a poem is finished and when I can walk away from it. 00:06:15.763 --> 00:06:18.039 And this goes directly against my very obsessive nature to try 00:06:18.039 --> 00:06:22.313 to find the right answer, and the perfect words, and the right form. 00:06:22.313 --> 00:06:27.011 And I use poetry in my life, as a way to help me navigate an work through things. 00:06:27.011 --> 00:06:30.047 But just because I end the poem, doesn't mean that I've solved 00:06:30.047 --> 00:06:33.144 whatever I was puzzling through. 00:06:33.144 --> 00:06:34.764 I like to revisit old poetry, 00:06:34.764 --> 00:06:38.611 because it shows me exactly where I was at that moment. 00:06:38.611 --> 00:06:41.197 And what it was I was trying to navigate and the words 00:06:41.197 --> 00:06:43.090 that I chose to help me. 00:06:43.090 --> 00:06:47.098 Now, I have a story that I've been stumbling over for years and years 00:06:47.098 --> 00:06:50.034 and I'm not sure if I've found the prefect form, 00:06:50.034 --> 00:06:52.064 or whether this is just one attempt 00:06:52.064 --> 00:06:53.973 and I will try to rewrite it later 00:06:53.973 --> 00:06:55.827 in search of a better way to tell it. 00:06:55.827 --> 00:06:59.106 But I do know that later, when I look back 00:06:59.106 --> 00:07:01.735 I will be able to know that this is where I was 00:07:01.735 --> 00:07:05.009 at this moment, and this is what I was trying to navigate, 00:07:05.009 --> 00:07:09.686 with these words, here, in this room, with you. 00:07:10.732 --> 00:07:12.925 So -- Smile. 00:07:19.864 --> 00:07:22.521 It didn't always work this way. 00:07:22.521 --> 00:07:25.011 There is a time you have to get your hands dirty. 00:07:25.011 --> 00:07:29.029 When you were in the dark, for most of it, fumbling was a given, 00:07:29.029 --> 00:07:32.076 and you needed more contrast, more saturation, 00:07:32.076 --> 00:07:35.004 darker darks, and brighter brights. 00:07:35.004 --> 00:07:38.049 They called it extended development. It meant you spent 00:07:38.049 --> 00:07:40.901 longer inhaling chemicals, longer up to your wrist. 00:07:40.901 --> 00:07:42.363 It wasn't always easy. 00:07:42.363 --> 00:07:45.041 Grandpa Stewart was a navy photographer. 00:07:45.041 --> 00:07:48.311 Young, red-faced with the sleeves rolled up, 00:07:48.311 --> 00:07:51.412 fists of fingers like fat rolls of coins, 00:07:51.412 --> 00:07:54.513 he looked like Popeye the sailor man, come to life. 00:07:54.513 --> 00:07:56.245 Crooked smile, tuft of chest hair, 00:07:56.245 --> 00:07:59.771 he showed up at World War II, with a smirk and a hobby. 00:07:59.771 --> 00:08:02.420 When they asked him if he knew much about photography, 00:08:02.420 --> 00:08:06.280 he lied, learned to read Europe like a map, 00:08:06.280 --> 00:08:09.018 upside down, from the height of a fighter plane, 00:08:09.018 --> 00:08:12.086 camera snapping, eyelids flapping, the darkest darks 00:08:12.086 --> 00:08:14.009 and brightest brights. 00:08:14.009 --> 00:08:17.019 He learned war like he could read his way home. 00:08:17.019 --> 00:08:19.046 When other men returned, they would put their weapons out to rest, 00:08:19.046 --> 00:08:22.867 but he, brought the lenses and the cameras home with him. 00:08:22.867 --> 00:08:25.650 Opened a shop, turned it into a family affair. 00:08:25.650 --> 00:08:29.043 My father was born into this world of black and white. 00:08:29.043 --> 00:08:32.604 His basketball hands learned the tiny clicks and slides 00:08:32.604 --> 00:08:35.064 of lens into frame, film into camera, 00:08:35.064 --> 00:08:37.000 chemical into plastic bin. 00:08:37.000 --> 00:08:40.014 His father knew the equipment but not the art. 00:08:40.014 --> 00:08:42.001 He knew the darks but not the brights. 00:08:42.001 --> 00:08:46.024 My father learned the magic, spent his time following light. 00:08:46.024 --> 00:08:48.990 Once he traveled across the country to follow a forest fire, 00:08:48.990 --> 00:08:51.968 hunted it with his camera for a week. 00:08:51.968 --> 00:08:54.299 "Follow the light," he said. 00:08:54.299 --> 00:08:55.830 "Follow the light." 00:08:55.830 --> 00:08:58.293 There are parts of me I only recognize from photographs. 00:08:58.293 --> 00:09:01.512 The loft on Wooster street with the creaky hallways, 00:09:01.512 --> 00:09:04.517 the twelve-foot ceilings, the white walls and cold floors. 00:09:04.517 --> 00:09:07.293 This was my mothers home, before she was mother. 00:09:07.293 --> 00:09:10.237 Before she was wife, she was artist. 00:09:10.237 --> 00:09:11.960 And the only two rooms in the house, 00:09:11.960 --> 00:09:14.109 with walls that reached all the way up to the ceiling, 00:09:14.109 --> 00:09:15.736 and doors that opened and closed, 00:09:15.736 --> 00:09:18.711 were the bathroom and the dark room. 00:09:18.711 --> 00:09:21.036 The dark room she built herself, with custom made 00:09:21.036 --> 00:09:25.010 stainless steel sinks, an 8 by 10 bed enlarger 00:09:25.010 --> 00:09:27.045 that moved up and down by a giant hand crank, 00:09:27.045 --> 00:09:29.056 a bank of color balanced lights, 00:09:29.056 --> 00:09:31.408 a white glass wall for viewing prints, 00:09:31.408 --> 00:09:33.863 a drying rack that moved in and out from the wall. 00:09:33.863 --> 00:09:35.930 My mother built herself a dark room. 00:09:35.930 --> 00:09:37.076 Made it her home. 00:09:37.076 --> 00:09:39.985 Fell in love with a man with basketball hands, 00:09:39.985 --> 00:09:42.265 with the way he looked at light. 00:09:42.265 --> 00:09:44.364 They got married. Had a baby. 00:09:44.364 --> 00:09:46.013 Moved to a house near a park. 00:09:46.013 --> 00:09:49.008 But they kept the loft at Wooster street 00:09:49.008 --> 00:09:50.867 for birthday parties and treasure hunts. 00:09:50.867 --> 00:09:53.611 The baby tipped the gray scale. 00:09:53.611 --> 00:09:56.083 Filled her parents' photo albums with red balloons 00:09:56.083 --> 00:09:57.073 and yellow icing. 00:09:57.073 --> 00:09:59.535 The baby grew into a girl without freckles, 00:09:59.535 --> 00:10:01.002 with a crooked smile, 00:10:01.002 --> 00:10:05.711 who didn’t understand why her friends did not have dark rooms in their houses, 00:10:05.711 --> 00:10:07.490 who never saw her parents kiss, 00:10:07.490 --> 00:10:09.449 who never saw them hold hands. 00:10:09.449 --> 00:10:11.035 But one day, another baby showed up. 00:10:11.035 --> 00:10:14.856 This one with perfect straight hair and bubble gum cheeks. 00:10:14.856 --> 00:10:16.570 They named him sweet potato. 00:10:16.570 --> 00:10:18.023 When she laughed, he laughed so loudly, 00:10:18.023 --> 00:10:20.061 he scared the pigeons on the fire escape 00:10:20.061 --> 00:10:23.262 And the four of them lived in that house near the park. 00:10:23.262 --> 00:10:25.903 The girl with no freckles, and the sweet potato boy, 00:10:25.903 --> 00:10:28.030 the basketball father, and the dark room mother 00:10:28.030 --> 00:10:30.872 and they lit their candles, and they said their prayers, 00:10:30.872 --> 00:10:33.698 and the corners of the photographs curled. 00:10:33.698 --> 00:10:35.750 One day some towers fell 00:10:35.750 --> 00:10:39.853 and the house near the park became a house under ash, so they escaped. 00:10:39.853 --> 00:10:45.008 In backpacks, on bicycles to darkrooms but the loft of Wooster street 00:10:45.008 --> 00:10:48.812 was built for an artist, not a family of pigeons 00:10:48.812 --> 00:10:50.775 and walls that do not reach the ceiling 00:10:50.775 --> 00:10:52.090 do not hold in the yelling 00:10:52.090 --> 00:10:56.745 and a man with basketball hands put his weapons out to rest. 00:10:56.745 --> 00:11:00.008 He could not fight this war and no maps pointed home. 00:11:00.008 --> 00:11:01.678 His hands no longer fit his camera, 00:11:01.678 --> 00:11:03.360 no longer fit his wife's, 00:11:03.360 --> 00:11:05.858 no longer fit his body. 00:11:05.858 --> 00:11:08.713 The sweet potato boy mashed his fists into his mouth 00:11:08.713 --> 00:11:10.229 until he had nothing more to say. 00:11:10.229 --> 00:11:14.022 So, the girl without freckles went treasure hunting on her own. 00:11:14.022 --> 00:11:17.638 And on Wooster street, in a building with a creaky hallways, 00:11:17.638 --> 00:11:19.490 and a loft of the 12-foot ceiling 00:11:19.490 --> 00:11:21.482 and a darkroom with too many sinks 00:11:21.482 --> 00:11:24.028 under the color balance light, she found a note, 00:11:24.028 --> 00:11:28.941 tacked to the wall thumb-tacked, left over from the times before towers, 00:11:28.941 --> 00:11:31.485 from the time before babies. 00:11:31.485 --> 00:11:37.007 And the note said: "A guy sure loves the girl who works in the darkroom." 00:11:37.007 --> 00:11:40.944 It was a year before my father picked up a camera again. 00:11:40.944 --> 00:11:43.578 His first time out, he followed the Christmas lights, 00:11:43.578 --> 00:11:46.013 dotting their way through New York City's trees. 00:11:46.013 --> 00:11:50.967 Tiny dots of light, blinking out of him from out of the darkest darks. 00:11:50.967 --> 00:11:54.873 A year later he traveled across the country to follow a forest fire, 00:11:54.873 --> 00:11:57.527 stayed for a week hunting it with his camera, 00:11:57.527 --> 00:11:59.497 it was ravaging the West Coast 00:11:59.497 --> 00:12:01.481 eating 18-wheeler trucks in its stride. 00:12:01.481 --> 00:12:03.062 On the other side of the country, 00:12:03.062 --> 00:12:06.050 I went to class and wrote a poem on the margins of my notebook. 00:12:06.050 --> 00:12:08.765 We have both learned the art of capture. 00:12:08.765 --> 00:12:11.398 Maybe we are learning the art of embracing. 00:12:11.448 --> 00:12:15.755 Maybe we are learning the art of letting go. 00:12:16.005 --> 02:06:07.010 Thank You. (Applause)