WEBVTT

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"On October 17,
1980, a newspaper

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called The Reading
Eagle reported

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that five of the
lifeguards who worked

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on a heavily used beach
next to a storm drain

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suspected of spewing toxic
material into Santa Monica Bay

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had come down with illnesses
including leukemia,

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thyroid cancer, intestinal
cancer, and Hodgkin's disease.

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The one with leukemia
had passed away.

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Lifeguards had called
the authorities

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because the water in
the drain was purple.

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Surfers complained of an
oily substance on their skin.

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In Ocean Park No.

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6, the colors are pastel, the
palette kind of comforting,

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but there's a sensation
of a landscape that

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is being drawn downward,
twisting as toward a drain.

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'Do you know that in the
deepest part of the sea,

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everything goes transparent?'

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Anne Carson writes, quoting
a character in a film.

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When he was getting
older, Diebenkorn

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produced paintings that deviated
from his most celebrated style.

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A painting, for example,
entitled Flotsam and Jetsam

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has rash strokes and a
kind of messy violence,

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figures of people
and Xs, liquids

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that have spilled, weapons.

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The cluttered space
is not unlike a battle

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seen from overhead.

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Is it gray or beige, Juliet
asks of Flotsam and Jetsam.

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I tell her it's black and white.

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She says, if his colors were
not the blues, the greens,

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the whites, and that sort
of thing, I wonder if--

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Diebenkorn's New
York Times obituary

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describes his physical form.

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He tended to hunch his large
frame to make himself less

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imposing, and when he spoke, it
was typically in a halting way,

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frequently doubling back to what
he had said to amend or correct

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a remark.

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When her son was
young, Juliet went

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to see a psychic, a man
with cats who shook.

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He told her that her
son was going to die

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while he was still a teenager.

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I held my breath until
he turned 19, she says.

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'How can I describe to
someone how we use the word

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'tomorrow'?'

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Wittgenstein asks.

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'I can teach it to a child,
but this does not mean

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I'm describing it to him.'

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On the plane from Tehran,
his fingers began to bleed,

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so they landed prematurely.

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Please go faster, Juliet
urged the taxi driver,

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but he went what felt like 30
miles per hour on the Autobahn.

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'Threat provides the
sublime with its essential

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structure,' Anne Carson writes,
'an alternation of danger

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and salvation which other
aesthetic experiences, e.g.

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beauty, do not share.

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Threat also furnishes the
sublime with its necessary

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content, dire things,
volcanoes, oceans, ecstasies,

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and dire reactions,
death, dread, transport,

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within which the sublime
soul is all but lost.'

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Not long after Raman died,
the Northridge earthquake

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sheared the balcony and
stairs off of her building.

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A homeless man moved in
after it was condemned.

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He lit candles in the bedroom,
wore her cashmere sweater,

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and wrapped himself
in Hermes scarves.

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She called over to him
through her neighbor's window

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across the way.

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It's a wonder you're not
wearing my shoes, she said.

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He explained that her
slippers were too small.

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You have a ton of
sterling, he called out,

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and she paid him to bring down
her photo albums and family

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silver.

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You don't drink much,
do you, he asked,

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noting the dust on her
unopened bottles of liquor.

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The actress in The English
Patient who plays the woman who

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takes care of the
Hungarian fark--"

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there should be a
"far-tographer."

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[LAUGHTER]

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Almost done, OK.

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"The actress in
The English Patient

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who plays the woman
who takes care

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of the Hungarian cartographer
after he has been burned

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is in another film.

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In it, her son has died.

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Willem Dafoe is a cowboy
who guides the boy

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down a wet Parisian street.

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The actress in The
English Patient

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who plays the woman with whom
the Hungarian cartographer

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falls in love is
in another film.

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She plays a woman
whose son she killed

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to spare him the pain
caused by his illness.

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The worst prison is the
death of one's child.

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You never get out of it,
she tells her sister.

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In reality for the former,
fiction for the latter,

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both women are named Juliet.

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Most people have
memory threads that we

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can remember of our lives from
the time that we were young,

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Juliet explains.

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I have this instead
of a thread--

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barbed wire.

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Oftentimes, that barbed wire
became electrified with fear.

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During an improv
class, before she

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married and started
a family, Juliet

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was called onto the stage.

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Her stated instruction was
to act as though she had been

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stranded on a desert island.

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She has no memory
of what followed.

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She was told that she began
to weep uncontrollably.

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One day, my dad happened to
stop at the hospital on his way

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home.

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Don't leave me, he saw
Juliet tell her son.

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In his memory, she stood at
the edge of the bed, shouting.

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The boy kept receding.

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Hold on, she'd say, pulling
him back with her voice.

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Before going abstract, Richard
Diebenkorn's early work

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featured women who
gazed out at the ocean."

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Thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]