WEBVTT

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Inside that piece on Serena
Williams, in the book,

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are these images by--

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this is the image on
the right, actually--

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by Nick Cave.

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Nick Cave is an artist
who makes these suits.

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They're called Soundsuits.

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And when I first
saw Cave's work,

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I thought it was very beautiful.

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But I thought, why
did he make that?

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Why, what made him think
to make a suit that

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covered you from head to foot?

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Why did you do that?

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And I got--

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I have-- I'll admit this.

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I'm a little obsessive.

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And my husband is more like a
dog with a bone, I really am.

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And once something bothers
me, it keeps me up at night.

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And so I started thinking,
why would somebody just start

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making suits, that
covering from head to foot?

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And so I did--

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I started doing
all this research.

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And Nick Cave has become
very, very famous.

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And his work is now
at the Metropolitan--

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costume, all that.

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He started out as an
Alvin Ailey dancer.

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But finally, after weeks of
reading everything about him

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and that he'd written,
I found a piece

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that was written a
long time ago, when

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he made his first Soundsuit.

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And this is what he said.

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I was thinking about, well,
you know, I'm a Black male.

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I know what it's like to feel
discarded, dismissed, devalued.

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You know, the moment
I leave my house,

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I could be a victim
of circumstances.

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You just never know.

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I looked down and saw a twig,
something that I walk on,

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something that I dismiss.

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And it just sort of clicked.

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While meditating on the media
portrayal of Rodney King,

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larger than life, ten
men to bring him down.

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What does that look
like in my head?

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It ended up looking like
a soup made of twigs.

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I drilled more in
the delicate tree

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parts to create
a massive object.

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But I didn't even think I
could put it on my body.

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And then, once I
stepped into it,

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I thought about building this
sort of second skin, you know,

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a suit of armor, something
for protection purposes.

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Then I started thinking
about protests.

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In order to be heard,
you've got to be aggressive.

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You've got to speak louder.

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You have got to make sound.

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Hence, the name Soundsuits.

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So the first one is that.

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