WEBVTT

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OK.

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So here you have the
original 1855 edition

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of Leaves of Grass.

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How many of you
guys have actually

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seen an original edition
of Leaves of Grass?

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A couple of you guys?

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OK.

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You would probably
know then that it

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doesn't look like a
typical 19th century book.

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It isn't a stout, small,
little rat-killer of a book.

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It's more of a folio.

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It's a large, expansive,
as thin as a wafer.

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It looks like he wanted
to make a big splash,

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and you'd be right to think that
Whitman had those ambitions.

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I mean, this is the same
guy who basically published

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all these glowing
reviews of his book

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when it came out under assumed
aliases in different-- yeah,

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he pulled a lot of
strings when this came out

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in a lot of different
publications in New York.

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So he wasn't above that sort
of thing, and neither am I.

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[LAUGHTER]

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But if you notice, it's a
long, broad sort of book.

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The reason for this is
because the Rome brothers, who

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had printed the book,
their stock in trade,

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what they were mainly known for,
was printing legal documents.

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And they tend to be a
larger sheet, right?

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And so Whitman had to
reconfigure his poem

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to kind of fit that format.

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And what a format it is.

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I mean, you look at this--

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to the 19th century
reader, I would

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imagine that this doesn't
even look like poetry, right?

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So you can imagine,
just like my book,

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it doesn't look like a
typical typeset sort of thing.

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People are, what the
hell is this thing?

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It's like, well, I'm
following Walt. That's all.

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Don't blame me.

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Blame Walt.

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[LAUGHTER]

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But you can see it's
a torrent of text.

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It's not in stanzas.

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It's not in a set sort of line
length or anything like that.

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It's just sprawling
all over the place.

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So it's a typographical
expression of the themes

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that you find in
Song of Myself, which

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I think is very appropriate.

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Now, Whitman apparently
had typeset about a third

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of the original edition.

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This is just rumor.

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These are just things
that I've been reading.

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I don't know how true that is.

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But if it is true,
then I'm really

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following in
Whitman's footsteps,

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because he too was a graphic
designer and maybe even

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an illustrator.

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There's even some talk
about him actually

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having done the type on the
cover of the book as well.

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Now, this also isn't the
typical frontispiece portrait

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of the author either.

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A lot of people at the time were
really, really put off by this.

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It's the equivalent of today
being in a hoodie or something

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like that.

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He doesn't even have a tie on.

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He doesn't have a
jacket or anything.

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He looks kind of--

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well, he just looks like sassy--

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sassy, Walt, you know?

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[LAUGHTER]

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And there's an interesting
story behind this actually.

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Are there any kids in the room?

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Yeah.

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All right.

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Yeah.

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Quick, cover their ears.

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But apparently he stopped
the first run in the middle

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to have the engraver enhance
his nethers, as it were--

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as we call it on the East Coast.

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No, we don't talk like
that on the East Coast.

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We would say much
something much more crude,

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but I'm trying to be genteel.

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Yeah.

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Actually, because
he wanted to exude

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an air of robustness and vigor.

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Which is a 19th
century way of saying,

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he wanted to put out the vibe.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Now, what really
got me going with--

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how I worked out the look
of the text in my book

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is I started looking at
successive editions of Song

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of Myself.

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This is the 1860-1861 edition.

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This is the other frontispiece.

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This is the one where
he kind of looks

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like Dr. Zaius in his portrait.

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I don't know if you've
ever seen this one.

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He does.

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He looks like it's something
out of Planet of the Apes.

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It's actually-- he's very--

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very simian, very strange.

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But I saw this type,
and I knew that this

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was going to kind of
provide me with a template,

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stylistically, to kind
of move forward with it.

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I'm also a big fan of
19th century scrimshaw,

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and that was also a great
influence on me typographcially

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as well.

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Now, this is my dump.

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This is the basement.

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I bet you guys weren't
expecting carpeting.

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[LAUGHTER]

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The way I go on about
it, I make myself out

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to be some sort of
Gregorian monk or something.

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It's like, no.

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I did have about three or
four house coats on, and yeah.

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But that space over
there, the draftboard,

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was for sketching
and banging my head,

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and then I would
bring it over here

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to tighten up the
sketch in Sharpie,

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and then finally throw
it on a light table

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and do the final inking.

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And then it would get
scanned, and then I

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would kind of
clean up the image,

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and then I would
have volumes of these

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on my desktop and my computer--

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the very same one I have here.

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And then I would
eventually send them over

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to Tin House in batches of 50.

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And batches of 50
could take three weeks.

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Sometimes it could
take three months.

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You know, I had to work and keep
the lights on in between all

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of this, so I did what I could.

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There's a closer look.

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You can see I had my paperback
version of the 1855 edition

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up here, and I had it
highlighted and all that.

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And I had it up
there while I was

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working so I could
ponder and keep

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striking my forehead,
my beluga-like forehead,

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onto the thing.

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And I would probably spend
about a good five or six

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hours every day.

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It was probably a 12 to
14-hour workday usually,

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and I'd probably spend the first
five or six hours just trying

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to figure out what
I was going to do.

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I was going to
respond every time.

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And I did go chronologically
through the poem.

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I treated it like a landscape.

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So that was very
important to me to kind

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of progress in sequential
order through the poem

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and not really
look too far ahead.

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I mean, I've read
it obviously, but I

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wanted to kind of put it
in the back of my head

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and then encounter it
as freshly as I could.

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Now, you'd be surprised,
these suckers are really warm.

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I could probably be
wearing a bikini down there

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and still have that on--

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I'd still be fine.

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Which brings me to my next
picture-- no, I'm kidding.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Now, this is the
edition that I used.

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I just like the wavy,
gravy, groovy sort

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of illustration on that.

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I don't know what it is,
but that was my way in.

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I don't know what it is.

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I never picked up a
copy of Leaves of Grass,

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and then I saw this cover,
and then it kind of clicked.

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Does anybody else have that?

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It was like, oh yeah, that's
it-- every man a cosmos, right?

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And that's what turned
me on to Whitman.

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And you can see how I kind
of annotated the thing

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and broke down the various
verse paragraphs into pages--

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page spreads, I should say.

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Now, originally-- and I'm
sorry I'm repeating myself--

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I mean, this is unavoidable.

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But originally I
thought it was going

00:07:46.860 --> 00:07:50.830 align:middle line:84%
to be about 120 pages, 150
pages, and so did Tin House.

00:07:50.830 --> 00:07:56.430 align:middle line:84%
I was like, yeah, it's 50-60
pages in its original edition.

00:07:56.430 --> 00:07:59.140 align:middle line:84%
And then I finally went in there
and actually broke everything

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down.

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Because what you want to do
is make sure that each page

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spread has a theme, right?

00:08:04.380 --> 00:08:08.250 align:middle line:84%
So that way, by the time
you're turning the page,

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you've kind of
expanded that theme,

00:08:10.080 --> 00:08:12.180 align:middle line:84%
and you've moved
on to the next one.

00:08:12.180 --> 00:08:15.390 align:middle line:84%
Otherwise, the entire
thing's incoherent.

00:08:15.390 --> 00:08:22.200 align:middle line:84%
So in allowing Whitman's
words to go to the fore

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and determine the
amount of pages,

00:08:23.880 --> 00:08:26.280 align:middle line:90%
it comes out to 260 pages.

00:08:26.280 --> 00:08:29.760 align:middle line:84%
And that went over like a
lead balloon at Tin House.

00:08:29.760 --> 00:08:32.322 align:middle line:84%
They were not--
they were actually

00:08:32.322 --> 00:08:34.530 align:middle line:84%
really very kind about it
and all that sort of thing.

00:08:34.530 --> 00:08:36.072 align:middle line:84%
I was like, guys,
I don't know what--

00:08:36.072 --> 00:08:39.030 align:middle line:84%
I mean, there's no way
to do it any smaller,

00:08:39.030 --> 00:08:42.780 align:middle line:84%
because this is what the poem
needs in order to breathe.

00:08:42.780 --> 00:08:46.260 align:middle line:84%
And if you haven't
noticed, this book

00:08:46.260 --> 00:08:47.967 align:middle line:84%
is made from recycled
stock, and there's

00:08:47.967 --> 00:08:50.550 align:middle line:84%
all kinds of-- we really pulled
out the stops for this sucker.

00:08:50.550 --> 00:08:53.370 align:middle line:84%
So this was just
one more expense.

00:08:53.370 --> 00:08:56.203 align:middle line:84%
But you kind of have to go
for broke with these things,

00:08:56.203 --> 00:08:57.120 align:middle line:90%
so that's what we did.

00:08:57.120 --> 00:09:00.000 align:middle line:84%
And also, I color-coded the
pages red, green, blue, red,

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and there's a galloping palette
throughout the whole thing

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that kind of holds it.

00:09:03.930 --> 00:09:05.370 align:middle line:84%
Because I knew I
was really going

00:09:05.370 --> 00:09:08.880 align:middle line:84%
to be stylistically all over the
place, because Whitman's words

00:09:08.880 --> 00:09:10.540 align:middle line:90%
take you all over the place.

00:09:10.540 --> 00:09:14.430 align:middle line:84%
And because I knew that I was in
for a kitchen sink sort of ride

00:09:14.430 --> 00:09:16.920 align:middle line:84%
with Whitman, I knew
that I have to have

00:09:16.920 --> 00:09:21.780 align:middle line:84%
some graphic elements that will
hold the entire thing together.

00:09:21.780 --> 00:09:25.560 align:middle line:84%
The chromatic
strictness that I used

00:09:25.560 --> 00:09:29.590 align:middle line:84%
was kind of like the
mortar for the whole thing.

00:09:29.590 --> 00:09:32.530 align:middle line:84%
Now, this is one of my
first couple failures.

00:09:32.530 --> 00:09:34.620 align:middle line:84%
I got Walt wearing
lipstick for some reason

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here, with antlers on his head.

00:09:36.000 --> 00:09:37.072 align:middle line:90%
I don't know.

00:09:37.072 --> 00:09:38.450 align:middle line:90%
[LAUGHTER]

00:09:38.450 --> 00:09:39.450 align:middle line:90%
It's a lifestyle choice.

00:09:39.450 --> 00:09:41.010 align:middle line:90%
I'm not judging.

00:09:41.010 --> 00:09:46.680 align:middle line:84%
But yeah, you have these
first-- and the first one,

00:09:46.680 --> 00:09:50.490 align:middle line:84%
I don't know, it just didn't
really get me excited.

00:09:50.490 --> 00:09:53.940 align:middle line:84%
The second one was
completely off base.

00:09:53.940 --> 00:09:55.550 align:middle line:90%
It was too floral.

00:09:55.550 --> 00:09:59.970 align:middle line:84%
It looks like Oscar Wilde's
Song of Myself, you know?

00:09:59.970 --> 00:10:03.913 align:middle line:84%
Yeah, it's just--
it minces too much.

00:10:03.913 --> 00:10:04.830 align:middle line:90%
Let's put it that way.

00:10:04.830 --> 00:10:08.280 align:middle line:84%
It's just too-- the type is
all in ribbons and garlands,

00:10:08.280 --> 00:10:10.920 align:middle line:84%
and I'm expecting
tambourines and chiffon

00:10:10.920 --> 00:10:12.940 align:middle line:90%
to start flying in any moment.

00:10:12.940 --> 00:10:15.730 align:middle line:84%
So obviously this
isn't the way to go.

00:10:15.730 --> 00:10:18.000 align:middle line:84%
So what I did is I kind
of re-explored this,

00:10:18.000 --> 00:10:19.290 align:middle line:90%
and I just boom.

00:10:19.290 --> 00:10:22.620 align:middle line:84%
So I tightened it up,
and I simplified it.

00:10:22.620 --> 00:10:25.806 align:middle line:90%
And then it clicked.

00:10:25.806 --> 00:10:29.410 align:middle line:84%
And just like mom said, the
manticore will show the way.

00:10:29.410 --> 00:10:31.380 align:middle line:84%
And in this case,
it certainly did.

00:10:31.380 --> 00:10:35.340 align:middle line:84%
Actually, I always thought of
Whitman as an American Sphinx,

00:10:35.340 --> 00:10:36.240 align:middle line:90%
you know?

00:10:36.240 --> 00:10:38.925 align:middle line:84%
So I decided I'm going
to get a sphinx in there.

00:10:38.925 --> 00:10:40.910 align:middle line:90%
So I did.