WEBVTT

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Given that you are
a scholar, I want

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you to discuss for me about
scholarship, about your poetry.

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What a kind question.

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I am-- I think probably the
most important thing it brings

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is not so much.

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Sometimes the musical
presence of that other--

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I work on the 16th and 17th
century English literature

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and culture, and I--

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so sometimes because I'm
saturated with that loveliness.

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It's just-- there is
there-- among other things

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it's just really good company
in which to spend one's time.

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But I think--

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So there are actually some
musical hauntings in them,

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and you'll see,
you know, I mean,

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I got like, I see Midsummer
Night's Dream a lot,

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and I think about it.

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But I think it's
in some ways what

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it gives me isn't elsewhere, it
gives me another place to go.

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It gives me a reprieve
from self and the present.

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It gives me another model
of imaginative discipline.

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And I think it gives me back
a sense of estrangement from

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and therefore wonder in the
life we lead here and now.

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I mean, I think there's
nothing like some people do

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it other ways and
some people submit

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or seek to submit their
imaginations to cultures

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that are very different in--

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that maybe
contemporary with ours,

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but are different in
the way they inhabit

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the Earth or the way they
use language or the rhythms

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of day and night and work.

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I find that the
wonderful challenge

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to contemplate a very
different historical period

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is a wonderful, healthy,
tonic because it

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makes me realize how much is--

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that I take for granted.

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Is simply peculiar to us.

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Is accidental divisions of
the world, habits of mind,

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and practice that we tend
to think of as at odds

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were absolute.

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For instance, political
life or scientific research

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and the practice of poetry.

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I mean, people did all of those
things in the Renaissance.

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That's they just
look at Bacon look,

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I mean, they just-- they did
all those things together

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and they did-- or they
ghost wrote public speeches

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for political leaders
or correspondence

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for aspiring and
shady courtiers,

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at the same time they were
micromanaging spy communities

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on the continent and
proposing ways of realigning

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experimental knowledge.

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And it just-- and it's just
good to be reminded of how

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contingent our own habits are.

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So I actually think that's the
most significant effect really,

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and the fact that--

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I think I just
love having a kind

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of intellectual and
imaginative commute.

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You know is sort of,
one place where I

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can play hooky from the other.

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I think it's the
way I need to live.

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So--

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