WEBVTT

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So I was very fortunate to
have had the opportunity

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to live in Italy for a bit.

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And when I was there, I
came across a composer

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by the name of Paul Rudy.

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And I got to be quite
good friends with him.

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So we would go on
walks throughout Rome

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and talk about music
and what music could do

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and where you could find it.

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So when I was
diagnosed, I called him

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and I said, hey, Paul, if
I was a piece of music,

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what would I be?

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And so he wrote me.

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I mean, he literally wrote me.

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So that is what I
would look like if I

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were a piece of music.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And he was nice enough to
give us this sheet music.

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So in the final book, the
funnest piece of the book

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will be the sheet music
that is Jay Hopler.

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Let me see if I can
find this poem here.

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All right, a new book, I have
no idea where anything is.

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[LAUGHTER]

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OK, so Paul and I, and
some of our friends,

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found us wandering the
streets of Arezzo, Italy,

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in the middle of
a very cold night.

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And as we were out there,
we found an escalator that

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was outdoors still running.

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And it was squeaking
in this really

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kind of eerie, weird way.

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Paul, being the composer that
he is, has perfect pitch.

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And he immediately
knew what note

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that was and began to record
it to do a piece of music

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later with that.

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So this poem is about
the night that Paul and I

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found this escalator and
the music that it became.

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It's called, After the
Diagnosis, Meditation

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on the Origins of
Death's Thin Melody II,

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Variations on an
Escalator, by Paul Rudy.

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"Arezzo, middle of a
Sunday night in February,

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the city is silent, save a
hillside escalator moaning

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its rust to the ice mist.

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P said the sound made him think
of a solitary monk wandering

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the Tuscan hills.

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A said it sounded like
the world's oldest novice

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polishing an Oculus.

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S said there was something
of the sea about it,

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a widow's walk
with widow walking.

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T said it sounded like Priapus
having his way with a Grecian

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urn, but the sound
was more forlorn.

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A sub destroyer's sonar
ping beating the hull out

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of a submarine, or a hearse with
a bad axle squeaking its grief

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all the way to the graveside,
no line of mourners

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following behind--

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I said nothing of the kind."

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