There's a great documentary on the Reverend Al Green.
Anybody ever see it here?
We should all get it from Netflix this week.
[LAUGHTER]
There's this amazing scene where Al Green--
you know, he had a conversion experience, you know?
He was, you know, singing.
Did you see Barack Obama sing with Al Green?
Yeah.
Wasn't that adorable?
[LAUGHTER]
That's the guy we elected, right?
[LAUGHTER]
There's an amazing scene where Al Green is preaching
in his church, and he's telling the story
about the woman who thinks, if I just
touch the hem of his garment, and she thinks,
you know, I'll be healed.
And she touches-- she grabs ahold
of just the edge of Jesus's tunic,
and he says "somebody touched me."
And, but he's Al Green, right, so he goes, "somebody--
I mean, somebody touched me."
[LAUGHTER]
And then he does it again, and again, and then pretty soon
he's singing it, right?
Somebody touched me!
And it's so amazing.
It's such an amazing, amazing thing.
I can't-- wow.
If you want to just be lifted up, go go watch this thing.
I'm telling you.
Here's a poem called, "After the Movie."
It really should be called "After the Divorce."
[LAUGHTER]
OK?
I think I mis-titled it.
It really needs to be called that, "After the Divorce."
And anybody here relate to this?
[LAUGHTER]
Raise your hands.
[LAUGHTER]
"After the Divorce."
The movie was The Talented Mr, Ripley.
Remember?
Early Matt Damon.
[LAUGHTER]
So there's that.
And there's a reference to Matt Meister Eckhart,
the great 14th century theologian, a reference
to the great 20th century philosopher, theologian,
Simone Weil, and a reference to Janis Joplin.
"My friend Michael and I are walking home
arguing about the movie.
He says that he believes a person can
love someone and still be able to murder that person.
I say, 'no.
That's not love.' "
[LAUGHTER]
" 'That's attachment.'
Michael says, 'no.
That's love.
You can love someone, then come to a day when you're forced
to think, it's him or me, think me, and kill him.' "
Oh my god.
" I say, 'then it's not love anymore.'
Michael says, 'it was love up 'til then, though.'
I say, 'maybe we mean different things by the same word.'
Michael says, 'humans are complicated.
Love can exist even in the murderous heart.'
I say that what he might mean by love is desire.
'Love is not a feeling,' I say.
And Michael says, 'then what is it?'
We're walking along West 16th Street, a clear, unclouded
night, and I hear my voice repeating what
I used to say to my husband--
'love is action,' I used to say, and say, and say to him.
Simone Weil says that when you really love,
you are able to look at someone you want to eat and not eat
them."
[LAUGHTER]
"Janis Joplin says, 'take another little piece
of my heart right now.'
Meister Eckhart says that as long as we love any image,
we are doomed to live in purgatory.
Michael and I stand on the corner of 6th Avenue,
saying good night.
I can't drink enough of the tangerine spritzer
I've just bought.
Again and again, I bring the cold can to my mouth
and suck the stuff from the hole the flip-top made.
'What are you doing tomorrow?'
Michael says.
But when I think he's saying is, 'you are too strict, Marie.
You are a nun.'
Then I think, do I love Michael enough to allow
him to think these things of me, even if he's not thinking them?
Above Manhattan, the moon wanes and the sky
turns clearer and colder.
Although the days after the solstice
have started to lengthen, we both
know the winter has only begun."