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[Liz Larner] Clay is just this kind of amazing
material

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in that it has all these different states.

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And it's, you know,
very loose and pliable.

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It can be unwieldy, especially when
you're working with a lot of it.

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[chuckles]

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— It's a little skinny.

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— Hmm.

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[Liz Larner] And then, you know, it dries out,
the water leaves it, it be—

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it just becomes, like, this dust.

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[drilling]

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And you have to get it into the kiln,
you fire it, and it vitrifies

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and becomes very hard and stable.

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It's so interesting that dust becomes this
material that is, like,

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probably one of the hardest things to degrade.

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— A little bit more.

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— OK.

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— Push it in there.

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— All right.

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— I'm going to need this—uh-oh.

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I grabbed it too hard.

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[Liz Larner] The kind of idea behind many
of these works is that they're broken.

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It's a rupture, and every
rupture is different.

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So the terms are, like, kind of both
poetic terms and geologic terms,

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so a subduction is when two plates,
um, overlap each other, so these—

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there's these forms called subductions,
and then the one on the wall over there,

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that is a caesura, and that's a poetic term
that means a break in one poem.

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The thing for me about sculpture
is that it's the most physical form of art

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while still retaining this aspect of the poetic
totally.

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And so the physical reality of instability,
something that we all have to deal with,

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is part of these works.

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The land is very important in California.

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It's what brought people out here.

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It was the end of the frontier.

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It's like the myth of America kind of ended
in California.

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— Ready for some digging?

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I grew up about 60 miles northwest of Sacramento.

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My father was mostly a rice farmer,

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although we also grew wheat and barley
in the winter and tomatoes and beans.

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— Ooh!

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Good catch.

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When I was 12 and my sister was 11,
he sat us down and said,

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"Girls, you think either of you want to run
this ranch?"

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We were like, "No."

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[laughs]

45
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But I think about that now like,

46
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"Wow.

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I just, like, said that when I was a kid,
and it changed my whole life, basically."

48
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I was an undergrad, and philosophy was my
declared major.

49
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I decided to just apply to art school.

50
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I got into CalArts as a third-year photographer.

51
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At the end, when I got out, I realized that
I didn't really want to make pictures of things.

52
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I wanted to make things.

53
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I decided to stay in L.A.

54
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You know, it was a slower pace.

55
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It was easier
to live here and make work as a young artist.

56
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I—of course I thought about moving to New
York

57
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and just realized that I wanted to experiment
and explore,

58
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and I didn't want to have a lot of attention
on me.

59
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I guess the idea of an artist being someone
that can change their mind,

60
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that that's kind of what you're required to
do,

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is to follow your ideas and not just do the
same thing over and over again,

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that's part of what I found really exciting
about being an artist.

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So this is “Planchette”,

64
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And what a planchette is-is it's that little
piece

65
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on a Ouija board that is heart-shaped, usually.

66
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I'm not really thinking you can contact the—

67
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the dead by touching this,

68
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but I love that idea of everyone's hands being
on this object,

69
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and that's supposed to be able
to evoke spiritual communication.

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I just think that—I just love that idea.

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I don't really like to tell people what to
think about things.

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I like to give them things to think about
that aren't spelled out,

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that hopefully just come from the physical
itself.

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That's—that's a reason to make sculpture
right there.

75
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So these pieces are called the “Guests”,
and, um, the idea with them is that

76
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they don't have any place in particular
that they have to be, like on a base or on

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a wall.

78
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But then they are really defined 'cause
they're, like, super mathematical.

79
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And one of the hardest things to do with this
was just to get it so that they would never

80
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bind, you know,

81
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that I could move it in any direction and
it would stay fluid.

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I have little hooks for them, too, So you
really can wear them.

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[Woman] Really?

84
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[Liz Larner] Yeah.

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[Woman] Have you done that?

86
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[Liz Larner] Yeah, I did do that.

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We did a fashion show with them.

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[Woman] You did?

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Larner: It was really fun, yeah.

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— OK, I don't think I'll be using this one.

91
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— It's copper.

92
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How about pink?

93
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— Mmm, keep the pink.

94
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[Liz Larner] Every pigment that I get, I make a
small sample of it...

95
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— Lot of green and blue.

96
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[Liz Larner] And so I have this kind of huge palette…

97
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— No, too harsh.

98
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[Liz Larner] And it really has to do with looking at the
form,

99
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and it's kind of thinking of it as a character.

100
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It has a certain presence within it that
I want to try to bring out in the color.

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—Right.

102
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[Liz Larner] I'm really interested in technique,
but I don't want to stabilize a technique

103
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or get into just having the technique 
become the art.

104
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I want the ideas about what's happening
physically to be what the art is about.

105
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We call them cubes 'cause there's really no
other words,

106
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but when I made those pieces,
each of the bars were the same length.

107
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But they're curved, so is that a cube?

108
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I don't even know if that technically is—
could be considered a cube.

109
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And then the way that the color is applied
does not reinforce the form,

110
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so you see all these other forms within the
form.

111
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The work is pretty solid, but it seems
as if it's falling over or,

112
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um, lifting up or going to move.

113
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Something that I try to do is to not use the
same methods,

114
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but work with the same ideas.

115
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So that's why "2001," it's a similar kind
of idea in terms of color,

116
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but it comes from a really different method.

117
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"2001," uh, the idea for that was to make
an animation as a sculpture,

118
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and so I really did make an animation.

119
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It was a sphere turning into a cube,
and a cube turning back into a sphere.

120
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And then, in the computer,
I pushed them all into one space.

121
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There's no repetition as you're moving around
it.

122
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You get a sense the thing is rotating,
even though it is actually still.

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I believe right now we're in a time where
reality

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and illusion are kind of always together,

125
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and I think that the reality of this work
is its illusion,

126
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and you're constantly having to understand
the form

127
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and then re-understand the form

128
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and re-understand the form and re-understand
the color because it's changing on you.

129
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You know, if I keep using the same techniques,

130
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then it's going to become more permanent,
and I don't want it to be permanent.

131
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I want it to be about impermanence,

132
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so I have to keep changing the way I do it,
otherwise it—it—it gets too etched in—

133
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into the fabric of perception,
and it becomes too stable.

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One of the things, you know,
when I started finding out about geology and

135
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just, like,

136
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the first rule of geology is "rock fall down,"

137
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which I thought was so great, you know,

138
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that it's just this cycle of from mountaintop
to sea bottom

139
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and then back up, and that's kind of, like,
your Geology 101, first day.

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[Birds chirping]

141
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"Public Jewel" was commissioned
by the GSA for the Federal Plaza in Denver.

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— This is her last name.

143
00:11:11,680 --> 00:11:12,563
— Oh, thank you.

144
00:11:12,563 --> 00:11:13,096
— Thank you.

145
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[Liz Larner] I first didn't realize that I was
going to have to do multiple stones.

146
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I thought I might find one stone and, of course,

147
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that wasn't possible,

148
00:11:22,029 --> 00:11:26,680
so then I realized I needed to make
what I'm calling the agglomerate boulder.

149
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And that was kind of the great realization
'cause then I could get stones from all over

150
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Colorado.

151
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It was funny to me to just even understand
that,

152
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you know, stones seem so permanent,

153
00:11:43,320 --> 00:11:45,770
but there were many stones that would not
be able

154
00:11:45,770 --> 00:11:49,030
to make it even 5 years out here on the plaza.

155
00:11:49,823 --> 00:11:52,687
— Ok, can you just switch them real quick?

156
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That's better.

157
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[Liz Larner] It's a history that's in each stone, you know?

158
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They're each like a little time capsule
if you know how to look at them.

159
00:12:03,073 --> 00:12:07,883
In this piece, of course, the rocks are being
held up high, kind of above your head.

160
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It's a weight.

161
00:12:09,813 --> 00:12:11,468
It's a palpable weight,

162
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and I think people will think about that
when they walk into those buildings.

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[Overlapping chatter]

164
00:12:26,060 --> 00:12:29,817
[synth music]

165
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Larner: Geology in geologic time and individual
human time is so different.

166
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[synth music]

167
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Our lives are so short compared to geologic
eras.

168
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♪

169
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— Ready for the kiln.

170
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[Beeping]

171
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Larner: I've always felt that, like,
being an artist, you shouldn't get too much

172
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into production,

173
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like, it shouldn't become this thing that,

174
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you know, you have to do,

175
00:13:33,100 --> 00:13:38,836
but you should retain that freedom to, like,
take a break and reflect.

176
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I plan on downsizing the studio.

177
00:13:52,409 --> 00:13:53,930
— I'll sit in the shadiest one.

178
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I feel really lucky.

179
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We have a 2 1/2-year-old,

180
00:14:01,113 --> 00:14:04,873
and I just want to spend some time with him
while he's really young.

181
00:14:05,200 --> 00:14:07,370
I want to find some spaciousness and

182
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some tenderness in my life

183
00:14:10,467 --> 00:14:15,159
and bring that back when I come back to work
again.

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[Distant goose honking]

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[soft electronic music]