Inside that piece on Serena Williams, in the book,
are these images by--
this is the image on the right, actually--
by Nick Cave.
Nick Cave is an artist who makes these suits.
They're called Soundsuits.
And when I first saw Cave's work,
I thought it was very beautiful.
But I thought, why did he make that?
Why, what made him think to make a suit that
covered you from head to foot?
Why did you do that?
And I got--
I have-- I'll admit this.
I'm a little obsessive.
And my husband is more like a dog with a bone, I really am.
And once something bothers me, it keeps me up at night.
And so I started thinking, why would somebody just start
making suits, that covering from head to foot?
And so I did--
I started doing all this research.
And Nick Cave has become very, very famous.
And his work is now at the Metropolitan--
costume, all that.
He started out as an Alvin Ailey dancer.
But finally, after weeks of reading everything about him
and that he'd written, I found a piece
that was written a long time ago, when
he made his first Soundsuit.
And this is what he said.
I was thinking about, well, you know, I'm a Black male.
I know what it's like to feel discarded, dismissed, devalued.
You know, the moment I leave my house,
I could be a victim of circumstances.
You just never know.
I looked down and saw a twig, something that I walk on,
something that I dismiss.
And it just sort of clicked.
While meditating on the media portrayal of Rodney King,
larger than life, ten men to bring him down.
What does that look like in my head?
It ended up looking like a soup made of twigs.
I drilled more in the delicate tree
parts to create a massive object.
But I didn't even think I could put it on my body.
And then, once I stepped into it,
I thought about building this sort of second skin, you know,
a suit of armor, something for protection purposes.
Then I started thinking about protests.
In order to be heard, you've got to be aggressive.
You've got to speak louder.
You have got to make sound.
Hence, the name Soundsuits.
So the first one is that.