WEBVTT

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This is the storm sewer under
Tucson, another labyrinth.

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There's a whole
labyrinthine system.

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Most cities have a lot larger
storm sewer systems than we do.

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But we only have--

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because we don't really
get that many storms,

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there's only probably, I
don't know, maybe six or seven

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networks of storm
sewers in Tucson,

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whereas if you go to say,
Toronto, or are New York,

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there's a lot more to be found.

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So, you know the labyrinth.

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You might know this
labyrinth, which is

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in Chartres Cathedral, France.

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This is the labyrinth,
which is the site

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of the original labyrinth.

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If you go to Crete
and you spend--

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and you go to the sort of
Minoan palace there, Knossos.

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This is a reconstructed--

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a reconstructed--
there's actually

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no real labyrinth there anymore.

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They've kind of made
a whole new building

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and sort of tried to
extrapolate and figure out

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what this might have been like,
which is actually a really

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disappointing experience
if you go to looking

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for a real labyrinth
and you find

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with this, which is kind of
Disney World of labyrinths.

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But you might know the
labyrinth there, too.

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Or you know this labyrinth.

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This is from a sort of early
video game called Rogue

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that I loved to play.

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So you're the little at symbol
in the upper right hand corner.

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You sort of tool through
these darkened passages.

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The fact that it's an
at symbol is super cool.

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And this is still a really
amazing game to play.

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It's as deep as playing
most role-playing games

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that you might ever play.

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As I said, there would be
a couple of geeky asides.

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It's a very fun-- the Kestrel--

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the Kestrel did kill me
right after this moment.

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Then you know the labyrinth.

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And you know the labyrinth.

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And there's hundreds
and hundreds

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of labyrinths to look at.

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There's a lot of meditation
labyrinths in Tucson.

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People just go spend their time
working through the labyrinth

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as a way of dealing with
whatever is in their life

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or lives.

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There's probably,
I'd say there's

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got to be 10 within
30 miles from here.

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Many of them are sort of rock.

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Some of them are
painted concrete.

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Or this is an old
Dungeons and Dragons

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dungeon that a friend of
mine drew, which I have.

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I spent a lot of
times growing up

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playing Dungeons and Dragons.

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Thinking again, these are
sort of formative experiences

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that you have as--

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really as writers.

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I mean, D&D is a kind of shared
story space in which you really

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can have it and kind of make
things up as you go along.

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It's really pretty
fantastic even

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though it took me a
while to be able to speak

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about it publicly.

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Because I understand
it's like not

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it's not as cool as I
once thought it was.

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But these are totally cool.

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Look at that.

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That's pretty cool.

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Here's another shot
of the storm sewer

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here in Tucson, which I spent
a lot of time exploring.

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I've got a video
with some images

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of the storm sewer in Tucson.

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It's a lot of labyrinths.

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I give you a lot of labyrinths
to indicate, I think,

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also that the labyrinth is, I
think, very-- it's important.

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It's important to me.

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But it's important to us
as readers and as writers.

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In a way, that's what we're
doing when we read poems, when

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we read stories,
when we read essays,

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we're just going through
one line at a time.

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I mean, it's actually right
to left, right-- or left

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to right, left to
right, left to right.

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Like we're stuck
in the groove kind

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of moving forward in the thing.

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There's really only one way
unless we're reading things

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like choose your own
adventures or things that are

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sort of like more explicitly
forked narratives, which

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usually aren't really
very fun as an adult.

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Although there is a pretty good
choose your own adventure that

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just came out which is
worthwhile talking about.

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Maybe we can talk about that.

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But we can't not be
in the labyrinth.

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That's why-- I think
that's why it's

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such an appealing sort
of metaphor for the way

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that we live.

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We have-- we're always going
forward in one way or another.

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We're certainly working in it.

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So the thing about it, and
the thing about the sentence,

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the thing about the poetic line,
is that it's mostly linear.

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I mean we experience it in
linear ways, even if we--

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even if it branches off and is
going in different directions.

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Part of what I think
is most interesting,

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though, about the labyrinth is
the pleasure of being in it,

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whether it's even sort of being
the protagonist in our own web

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surfing adventure, which
I admit is not a very

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interesting adventure, maybe--

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some days it is,
some days it's not--

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or a reading adventure, is
that we are first person.

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We are the one who is
doing the navigating.

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We're the one who is collecting
links, who is putting things

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on our Flickr, who
is tweeting things,

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who's liking stuff on Facebook.

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We are, as writers, we're
all-- we're writing.

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We're collecting.

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We're sort of
accumulating things

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as we move through
things reading.

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But we are a kind of
adventurer, I think,

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automatically when we
actually have to collect.

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When we're adventuring,
we're reading, too.

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Science tells us that we
experience the things.

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We actually physically,
biologically experience things

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that we read about,
which we all know

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if we've read since forever.

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Because we do.

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But it's pretty
fantastic that's actually

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been now proven to be true.

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So there's a pleasure
in playing these things,

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I think, in finding them and
connecting them and trying

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to participate a little
more actively in our art.

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I wrote this essay
last year in response

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to the question is
the knowledge dead?

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This question that everyone
always wants to talk about--

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is the book dead?

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Are we just going to be clicking
with our iPads into the future

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and never really looking
at the printed page again?

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Which is a really
annoying question for me

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just because, of
course, it's not dead.

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I mean, it's been
going for 1,000 years.

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The codex is a powerful thing.

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It'll be fine.

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But I started thinking about the
ways in which we increasingly

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now want to participate
in our media.

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If you look on
YouTube, for instance,

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you can find no less than
25 different cover versions,

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home made cover versions, of a
commercial for a website called

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finallyfast.com, which is this
terrible commercial that you

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watched-- they used to
watch on late night TV

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about two or three years ago.

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And it's this really
lame commercial.

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But there is, for
some reason, there's

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25 cover versions on YouTube.

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For some reason, we really like
to participate in the things,

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even if we're bad--

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for some reason, fan fiction.

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We want to play with things.

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And maybe it's a
generational thing.

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The kids or whoever,
they want to be-- they

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want to play with things.

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But I think we've
always-- we've always

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wanted to play with things, like
playing Dungeons and Dragons.

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And that's not super different.

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