WEBVTT

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And I'll just maybe tell you--

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I don't know.

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Do you want to hear a
little bit about how

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the images, some of the
images came into the book?

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Yeah?

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I don't know how to
back up the images,

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so you won't hear about them.

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Well I'll tell
you, some of them--

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so I did a lot of research
into photographic archives.

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So some things come from the
Bancroft Photographic Library

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at Berkeley.

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I gave the poem to a couple
of, three artist friends,

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and asked them to
make work in response.

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So you saw some collages
by Isabelle Pelissier,

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who's actually married to
Jonathan Skinner, who was here

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recently.

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And then you saw some
things by Nancy Davidson.

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She did a kind of series.

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I was thinking a lot about keys
in biologic texts and guides.

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I love those keys where
you have if two wings, AA.

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If, for wing, so anyway, she
did a kind of sign language

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that doesn't really
quite correspond

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to kind of indicate that.

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The piece that's behind you--

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I wanted to, when the LA
insurrections happened,

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I had a friend, actually
a poet, Akilah Oliver,

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who was living in South Central.

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And we went down, right
after the insurrections and--

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just to be with her, and
all these storefronts

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were broken out.

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There was ash everywhere.

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And the person I was
traveling with is a sculptor.

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And he gathered a number
of the mannequins that

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had been burnt in
the storefronts

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and made sculptures out of them.

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And he ended up destroying
the sculpture he made,

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but just recording
them in photographs.

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And I wanted to have a
note on those events.

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But I didn't feel that it
could be done by me in a poem,

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so this holds that
place, just this image.

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You might not necessarily--
so there's no language to it,

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but this is what is left.

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And that's one of
Nancy's drawings.

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And this ended up being
one of the markers

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for the end of a poem.

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This is also by Peter
Cole, the same sculptor.

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This is an oak sapling in one
of the canyons I grew up near.

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And one of his projects
was to take matchbook cars

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and thread them into
oak saplings, when

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they were very, very tiny.

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And as the tree grew,
they would grow.

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The car would grow
into the tree.

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Sometimes the car would explode,
and sometimes it would just

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become a part of the tree.

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So this is one of those.

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And then, when the
forest got too dense,

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sometimes he would
cut them down.

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And there would just be
the branches and the car

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that he could show
in, say, a gallery.

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This is a picture of
just one of the roads

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I used to ride my
bike on every day.

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It looks like
Tucson, doesn't it?

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No.

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No?

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It doesn't?

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I haven't been to this place.

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It looks more like
Tucson than Boulder.

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Also by Isabelle
Pelissier, a painting

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that she gave me
for my birthday,

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of beautiful palm trees.

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And this, this is one
of the original images

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I was traveling around with.

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And this is by a man
named Merle Porter, who

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spent his whole life,
or much of his life,

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traveling around in an
RV, taking photographs

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in California for postcards.

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And he was called
the Postcard King.

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And I think he took, I
don't know, over like,

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at least 1,200.

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He made at least 1200 postcards.

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And I was--

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I don't know if
you guys have ever

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been to the Museum of Jurassic
Technology in Los Angeles?

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If you haven't
been, you should go.

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It's wonderful.

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And right next door is this
little place called The Center

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for Land Use Interpretation.

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And there's very rarely
anything actually up,

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or there didn't used to be.

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One day, I wandered over there,
and there was a postcard show

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of Merle Porter's postcards.

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And so I bought a number and
was traveling around with them,

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and realized that this would be,
this should go into the poem.

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And this is a plank road.

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It's the Jornada de la
Muerte, so the road of death,

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that the pioneers used to
cross the Mojave Desert.

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And so, this was probably
taken in the '50's.

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I don't think that
road is there anymore.

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And Janice was just
telling me that she

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remembers seeing some of these.

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And her mother called them
corduroy roads, right,

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which I love.

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So I had, I tracked down--

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Merle Porter was
no longer living,

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but I tracked down his widow
and talked to his widow,

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and got the right to print
it, and heard about their life

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together.

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These are from the Bancroft.

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This is an image after
the 1906 earthquake.

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So you can see
what the earthquake

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did to the middle
of the road there.

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Tracks through the
Mojave from 1926.

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And this part of
the Mojave, they

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called The Devil's Golf Course.

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This is outside of the Museum of
Natural History in my hometown.

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A postcard somebody sent me.

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And it's a postcard
from somebody

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who visiting Los Angeles.

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And I forget what year,
but I think the '40s.

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And that's it.

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So I'm going to--

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oh.

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