[APPLAUSE]
I'm just amazed at how wonderful and authentic
these comments have been from every single person.
I just-- I don't think if I've ever heard anything like this,
and we're not quite done yet.
Karen Brennan.
Well, thanks Aurelie and Buzz for squeezing me
in at the last minute here.
I've known Steve for over 30 years,
and I wracked my brains for stories about Steve
that would be appropriate.
And I could only think of the inappropriate stories
which I didn't want to share.
Yeah, so I-- but then, it occurred to me
just this morning.
A memory, an appropriate memory of Steve
which is actually very dear to my heart.
Here is a memory I'll call Steve's idea of heaven.
He did actually have an idea of heaven.
This was in the '80s when I was still a grad student.
We all remember that it was Steve's practice
to take his MFA students to the Shanty
after class, to sit around in that more
casual atmosphere with pitchers of beer, where
our teacher could hold forth, not imperiously but always
provocatively, asking questions as was
his mode of conversation.
On that particular night, Steve wanted
to know each of our ideas of heaven.
What did we think it was?
Or rather, how did we conceive of it,
if there were such a place?
We all provided answers.
I think mine might have been glib, whatever it was.
A place of universal ice cream and sex.
But Steve's idea was, of all of ours, the most
unusual and the most no-surprise since he had given the matter
some thought, developed
Steve's idea was that heaven would be a place of thought,
of abstract thought where beautiful ideas would
co- mingle, and proliferate, where
the conceptual would reign.
I remember thinking there was something luminous
about Steve's idea of having something
closer to the truly spiritual than any of us
had managed to come up with.
Also the most imaginative, the most deeply poetic,
and oddly, the most visual.
I can still see it.
And I hope he's there.
[APPLAUSE]