WEBVTT

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I'll read you one more about
a musician, a great musician

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named Charlie Parker.

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This man, Sterling Brown,
did a definitive kind

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of study of literature,
poetry, fiction, drama- black

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characters in American lit.

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And it's something which
any student of literature

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and language should read--

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begin to understand
Melville, Twain, Whitman,

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the great 19th century titans,
why they were so concerned,

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and what the 20th
century's abdicated.

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All of us are kind of
responsible for that.

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Charlie Parker died in 1955.

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This poem is a poem
called, "Bird Lives,

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Charles Parker in St. Louis."

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St Louis to me
represents the transition

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from 19th to 20th
century slavery.

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And Bird was a giant.

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"Bird Lives, Charles
Parker in St. Louis."

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I want to tell you
I'm goin' about this,

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because I don't want
it to come in a vacuum.

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This poem is in nine parts
and it's called "High Modes."

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And it's an attempt to transform
classical myth into modal myth.

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It's based on a series
of legends about Zeus

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and nine annunciations.

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You know what annunciation is?

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Some of the classic
annunciation, the best

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annunciation I can think
of in the 20th century

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is Leda the swan by Yeats.

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And the annunciation,
is always about culture.

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This begins with Charlie Parker,
because this particular poem

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is about ritual.

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"Bird Lives, Charles
Parker in St. Louis."

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"Last on legs, last on sax, last
in Indian wars, last on smack,

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Bird is spacious, Bird is
alive, horn unplayable, before,

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after, right now,
it's heroin time.

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Smack in the melody a trip,
smack in the Mississippi,

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smack in a drug merchant trap,
smack in St. Louis, Missouri.

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We knew you were through
trying to get out of town,

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unpaid bills, connections
unmet, unwanted, unmasked.

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Bird's in the last arc of
his own light-- blow Bird!

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And you did screaming,
screaming, baby for life

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after it, around it, screaming
for life-- blow Bird!

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What is the meaning of music?

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What is the meaning of war?

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What is the meaning
of oppression?

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Blow Bird!

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Ripped up and down into
the interior of life,

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the pain, Bird, the
embraceable you.

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How many brothers gone,
smacked out, blues and racism?

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The hardest longest penis in the
Mississippi urinal-- blow Bird!

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Taught more musicians
then forgot, space loose,

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fouling the melodies,
the marching songs,

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the fine white geese
from the plantations.

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Syrup in this pork
barrel, Kansas City,

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the even teeth of the mafia,
the big band-- blow Bird!

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Get yourself killed.

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In the first wave, the
musicians out there

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alone, in the first wave
everywhere you went.

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Massey Hall, Sweden,
New Rochelle, Birdland,

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nameless bird, Blue Note,
Carnegie, tuxedo junction,

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out of nowhere.

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Confirmation,
confirmation, confirmation.

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Bird lives!

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Bird lives!

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And you do, dead."

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