WEBVTT

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[APPLAUSE]

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I'm just amazed at how
wonderful and authentic

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these comments have been
from every single person.

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I just-- I don't think if I've
ever heard anything like this,

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and we're not quite done yet.

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Karen Brennan.

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Well, thanks Aurelie and
Buzz for squeezing me

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in at the last minute here.

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I've known Steve
for over 30 years,

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and I wracked my brains
for stories about Steve

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that would be appropriate.

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And I could only think of
the inappropriate stories

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which I didn't want to share.

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Yeah, so I-- but then,
it occurred to me

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just this morning.

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A memory, an appropriate
memory of Steve

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which is actually
very dear to my heart.

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Here is a memory I'll call
Steve's idea of heaven.

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He did actually have
an idea of heaven.

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This was in the '80s when
I was still a grad student.

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We all remember that
it was Steve's practice

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to take his MFA
students to the Shanty

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after class, to sit
around in that more

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casual atmosphere with
pitchers of beer, where

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our teacher could hold forth,
not imperiously but always

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provocatively, asking
questions as was

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his mode of conversation.

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On that particular
night, Steve wanted

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to know each of our
ideas of heaven.

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What did we think it was?

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Or rather, how did
we conceive of it,

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if there were such a place?

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We all provided answers.

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I think mine might have
been glib, whatever it was.

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A place of universal
ice cream and sex.

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But Steve's idea was,
of all of ours, the most

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unusual and the most no-surprise
since he had given the matter

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some thought, developed

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Steve's idea was that heaven
would be a place of thought,

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of abstract thought where
beautiful ideas would

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co- mingle, and
proliferate, where

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the conceptual would reign.

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I remember thinking there
was something luminous

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about Steve's idea
of having something

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closer to the truly
spiritual than any of us

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had managed to come up with.

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Also the most imaginative,
the most deeply poetic,

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and oddly, the most visual.

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I can still see it.

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And I hope he's there.

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[APPLAUSE]

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