WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:08.010 align:middle line:84% This is from The Blues Don't Change. 00:00:08.010 --> 00:00:11.530 align:middle line:84% I'll read two poems from The Blues Don't Change. 00:00:11.530 --> 00:00:19.170 align:middle line:84% One is a poem, I guess, you could say about death, 00:00:19.170 --> 00:00:21.780 align:middle line:90% which I don't really believe in. 00:00:21.780 --> 00:00:25.020 align:middle line:84% That's complicated, so I won't go into all of that. 00:00:25.020 --> 00:00:27.600 align:middle line:84% But you reach a point in your life 00:00:27.600 --> 00:00:32.183 align:middle line:84% when people that you know, your loved ones, parents, 00:00:32.183 --> 00:00:33.600 align:middle line:84% people that you only halfway know, 00:00:33.600 --> 00:00:36.617 align:middle line:90% they start disappearing on you. 00:00:36.617 --> 00:00:38.700 align:middle line:84% I guess when you're in your teens and in your 20s, 00:00:38.700 --> 00:00:42.840 align:middle line:84% you don't really think much about those transitions. 00:00:42.840 --> 00:00:47.980 align:middle line:84% And you reach a certain age when it looks as if everyone 00:00:47.980 --> 00:00:49.180 align:middle line:90% is starting to disappear. 00:00:49.180 --> 00:00:51.700 align:middle line:84% In fact, what happens with celebrities that you're 00:00:51.700 --> 00:00:54.280 align:middle line:84% trying to keep up with is that, months, maybe sometimes two 00:00:54.280 --> 00:00:56.440 align:middle line:84% years can go by, and you say, oh is he dead? 00:00:56.440 --> 00:00:58.492 align:middle line:84% Now I wondered what had happened to him. 00:00:58.492 --> 00:01:00.700 align:middle line:84% It happens so much, you can't keep up with who's here 00:01:00.700 --> 00:01:02.260 align:middle line:90% and who isn't here. 00:01:02.260 --> 00:01:05.260 align:middle line:84% So one day I came to this building 00:01:05.260 --> 00:01:11.380 align:middle line:84% where I worked in California, and there was a woman up there 00:01:11.380 --> 00:01:14.110 align:middle line:84% who worked with textiles, and she's in the hallway crying. 00:01:14.110 --> 00:01:15.443 align:middle line:90% And I ask her what had happened. 00:01:15.443 --> 00:01:16.690 align:middle line:90% She said her mother had died. 00:01:16.690 --> 00:01:19.030 align:middle line:90% And I offer my condolences. 00:01:19.030 --> 00:01:21.280 align:middle line:84% She says, you don't understand, it was six months ago, 00:01:21.280 --> 00:01:23.958 align:middle line:84% and it just now hit me because we never got along. 00:01:23.958 --> 00:01:25.000 align:middle line:90% And I thought about this. 00:01:25.000 --> 00:01:26.950 align:middle line:84% I said, I'll write a poem for you, Jean. 00:01:26.950 --> 00:01:29.500 align:middle line:84% And, of course, in writing the poem for Jean, 00:01:29.500 --> 00:01:33.250 align:middle line:84% writing a poem to try to understand my own feeling 00:01:33.250 --> 00:01:36.790 align:middle line:84% about a lot of these things because in my own life, 00:01:36.790 --> 00:01:40.750 align:middle line:84% these disappearances are taking place. 00:01:40.750 --> 00:01:44.465 align:middle line:84% I really am convinced that the best-- 00:01:44.465 --> 00:01:46.840 align:middle line:84% I shouldn't say the best, but the most interesting poetry 00:01:46.840 --> 00:01:51.370 align:middle line:84% takes place between two people or between one person and maybe 00:01:51.370 --> 00:01:54.730 align:middle line:84% a very small group of people, and is not 00:01:54.730 --> 00:01:56.417 align:middle line:84% written for posterity and is not written 00:01:56.417 --> 00:01:58.000 align:middle line:84% with the idea of somebody looking over 00:01:58.000 --> 00:02:01.100 align:middle line:84% your shoulder saying, that's a great poem, that kind of thing, 00:02:01.100 --> 00:02:03.340 align:middle line:84% but when you're really trying to talk to somebody. 00:02:03.340 --> 00:02:08.350 align:middle line:84% And when people are really communicating at gut level, 00:02:08.350 --> 00:02:13.510 align:middle line:84% in powerful "rites of passage type" situations, 00:02:13.510 --> 00:02:18.478 align:middle line:84% I've noticed that ordinary conversation turns to poetry. 00:02:18.478 --> 00:02:23.860 align:middle line:84% So in this, in directing the poem to this textile artist, 00:02:23.860 --> 00:02:25.480 align:middle line:90% the imagery took care of itself. 00:02:25.480 --> 00:02:27.438 align:middle line:84% You don't sit around and say, oh, that's right, 00:02:27.438 --> 00:02:30.130 align:middle line:84% you have to get imagery in and metaphors in. 00:02:30.130 --> 00:02:31.360 align:middle line:90% They just occur. 00:02:31.360 --> 00:02:33.580 align:middle line:84% "How The Rainbow Works" for Jean Cook 00:02:33.580 --> 00:02:36.370 align:middle line:84% on learning of her mother's death. 00:02:36.370 --> 00:02:40.030 align:middle line:84% Mostly we occupy ocular zones, clinging only 00:02:40.030 --> 00:02:42.910 align:middle line:90% to what we think we can see. 00:02:42.910 --> 00:02:47.290 align:middle line:84% We can't see wind or waves of thought, electrical fields 00:02:47.290 --> 00:02:52.750 align:middle line:84% or storms of atoms dancing; only what they do or make 00:02:52.750 --> 00:02:55.030 align:middle line:90% us believe. 00:02:55.030 --> 00:02:58.030 align:middle line:90% Look on all of life as color-- 00:02:58.030 --> 00:03:01.360 align:middle line:84% vibratile movement, heart-centered, 00:03:01.360 --> 00:03:04.540 align:middle line:84% from invisibility to the merely visible. 00:03:04.540 --> 00:03:08.890 align:middle line:84% Never mind what happens when one of us dies. 00:03:08.890 --> 00:03:12.400 align:middle line:84% Where are you before you even get born? 00:03:12.400 --> 00:03:16.660 align:middle line:84% Where am I and all the unseeable souls we love at this moment, 00:03:16.660 --> 00:03:19.780 align:middle line:90% or loathed before birth? 00:03:19.780 --> 00:03:24.160 align:middle line:90% Where are we right now? 00:03:24.160 --> 00:03:28.390 align:middle line:84% Everything that either happened either never did or always 00:03:28.390 --> 00:03:31.780 align:middle line:90% will with variations. 00:03:31.780 --> 00:03:33.730 align:middle line:90% Let's put it another way. 00:03:33.730 --> 00:03:36.430 align:middle line:84% Nothing ever happened that wasn't dreamed, 00:03:36.430 --> 00:03:40.600 align:middle line:84% that wasn't sketched from the start with artful surprises. 00:03:40.600 --> 00:03:46.780 align:middle line:84% Think of the dreamer as God, a painter, a ham, to be sure, 00:03:46.780 --> 00:03:50.800 align:middle line:84% but a divine old master, whose medium is light 00:03:50.800 --> 00:03:54.490 align:middle line:84% and who sidesteps tedium by leaving room 00:03:54.490 --> 00:03:58.030 align:middle line:84% both inside and outside this picture 00:03:58.030 --> 00:04:02.710 align:middle line:84% for subjects and scenery to wing it. 00:04:02.710 --> 00:04:08.710 align:middle line:84% Look on death as living color, too, the dyeing of fabric, 00:04:08.710 --> 00:04:13.900 align:middle line:84% submersion into a temporary sea, a spectruming beyond the reach 00:04:13.900 --> 00:04:20.079 align:middle line:84% of sensual range which, like time, is chained to change; 00:04:20.079 --> 00:04:23.320 align:middle line:84% the strange notion that everything we've ever 00:04:23.320 --> 00:04:29.050 align:middle line:84% done or been up until now is past history, is gone away, 00:04:29.050 --> 00:04:32.800 align:middle line:84% is bleached, bereft, perfect, leaving 00:04:32.800 --> 00:04:38.740 align:middle line:84% the scene clean to freshen with pigment and space and leftover 00:04:38.740 --> 00:04:40.290 align:middle line:90% light."