WEBVTT

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And because I got that
buildup from Carmen,

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I must leave you with this.

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Let's see what I got here.

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[MUSIC PLAYING]

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So I had a whole riff.

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I'm the poet Stephen Jonas,
but all I have is this.

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It's a salad bowl with
a piece of ginger.

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The salad bowl belongs to
the poet Gerrit Lansing,

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somewhere on the
outskirts of Gloucester.

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Jonas and Lansing were two
of the members of the Boston

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Poetry School.

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They were queer.

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Supposedly, Jonas was Black.

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No, Jonas is Black.

00:01:01.810 --> 00:01:06.160 align:middle line:84%
He says at one point his
mom was from San Juan.

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That would make him Boricua.

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He says at one point his
father was Portuguese,

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but that might have
been from Cape Verde.

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That might make him Latino
or Cape Verde and Latino.

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I have no idea.

00:01:17.930 --> 00:01:19.370 align:middle line:90%
I'm improvising this.

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You didn't pay me enough to
actually prepare or write

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something new.

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So you're getting
smartphone improvisation.

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Smartphone improvisation
is my nation.

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Shout out to Lehua.

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Those of us who are from
non-incorporated territories

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must find our nations elsewhere.

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1898, we're going
to party, baby.

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So getting back
to Stephen Jonas.

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Jonas may or may not
have been Boricua.

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He may or may not
have been Latino.

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He claimed so.

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But all his friends
insist he passed as White.

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Here's a problem.

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All his friends were White.

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Therefore, we have no idea.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Stephen Jonas died in 1970.

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[INAUDIBLE] is finally coming
out next year with City Lights.

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I look forward to that.

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But maybe you see lights
as in light-skinned.

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Get it?

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City Lights.

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Light-skinned.

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That was really bad.

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[LAUGHTER]

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So why does this matter here?

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Partly, think about this.

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It's the ephemeral archive.

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I came to Gloucester
looking for some guidance

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from Gerrit Lansing who's
90 and saw TS Eliot read

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and Wallace Stevens.

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Ask me about that.

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He says TS Eliot was cool.

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He says autumn was whack.

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Ask me about that.

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He was really uncomfortable when
I asked him, raised questions.

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And this is a guy who thought as
Charlie that Poppy Z Brite was

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way better than Anne Rice.

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That's how cool
this viejito was.

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And so he couldn't
figure Stephen Jonas out,

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although they were BFFs.

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Here's the thing.

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So Stephen Jonas had
these shoutouts to Baraka,

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where he riffed on
their shared Blackness.

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I wanted to know more.

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I wanted to find the archive.

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And Joseph Torra, who edited
the selected Jonas that's

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out of print, read from a letter
that Jonas wrote to Baraka

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when he was doing--

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What was it?

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"Floating Bear"
with Diane di Prima,

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who was the poet
that said in a letter

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that Steve Jonas is the
great Puerto Rican poet.

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Diane di Prima, where are you?

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I need your archive.

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But I didn't know that
the archive was ephemeral.

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And of course, there's
huge permissions issues

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because Jonas was queer.

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Right?

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There's no progeny.

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There is no estate.

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These folks are the estate.

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So Joe Torra read to
me from a distance

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of the outside of
the room this letter

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where Jonas cusses Baraka out
for not publishing or giving

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love--

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I forget which.

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--to his boy.

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His boy's name was Jack Spicer.

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I'm not kidding.

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Jonas has this poem where he
uses the phrase, "Us Latins."

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Here's the problem.

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Us Latins is him
and Jack Spicer.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And the poet that
they're reading is Lorca.

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Going back to Baraka's Lorca.

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I have no idea if any
of this is related.

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I hope I would figure
this out and be

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able to report back
something from the archive,

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but it was too ephemeral.

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So I got nothing for you, but
smartphone improvisations.

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Maybe before the reader
comes out, I'll publish it,

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but nobody will care.

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Again, City Lights
might whitewash it,

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so it'll become part
of the, I guess,

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not so ephemeral archive
of Thinking Its Presence.

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So why is this relevant here?

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Let me put it to you this way.

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This guy was thought of, Jonas,
I mean, passing as White.

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And what a better guide
than him to my own,

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serving as a guide for you
to the queer Afro-Latino

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experience.

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For what better guide to that
experience than a blanquito

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de la isla, among so many
blanquitos in the field.

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What a better guide.

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But the paths of guidance
are kind of messed up.

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Blanquito de la isla may
or may not have been--

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I won't tell you.

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That's part of my
ephemeral archive.

00:05:09.990 --> 00:05:12.253 align:middle line:84%
--a phrase of the late
great one, Flores.

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When he was on, they
asked him about me.

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"Oh, Urayoan is OK for
a blanquito de la isla."

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At least he takes
diaspora seriously.

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Flores may or may
not have been--

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You figure it out. --on
my committee at NYU,

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where Muñoz taught.

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I was a student of
José Esteban also.

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I think both of them
found me annoying.

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I would get exasperated and
ask these really difficult

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questions.

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When José wanted to phone it in.

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I'm sorry, José Esteban.

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I'm on the other side now.

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Some days, I want
to phone it in.

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I was eager.

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I was hungry.

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I didn't get it maybe.

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But I'm trying to give
you a shout out here.

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So these guys may or may
not have been my professors.

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And now, I guess
I'm a confessor.

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And José Esteban told me--

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I did a paper on Edwin
Torres for his class.

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He told me this is
really good as a paper,

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but you're still doing lit.

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I'm like, what does it
mean I'm still doing lit?

00:06:03.120 --> 00:06:05.370 align:middle line:84%
I'm writing about experimental
poetics and a performer

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and sound artist.

00:06:06.120 --> 00:06:07.200 align:middle line:90%
You're doing lit.

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It took me weeks and
months, and then I

00:06:09.720 --> 00:06:12.090 align:middle line:84%
realized, oh, he means write
from the body, not about

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the body.

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Close read bodies and
text will disappear.

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They'll become something
like me playing

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like Jimi Hendrix with guitar.

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There are no shoutouts
to Jimi Hendrix.

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I don't think in Jonas' poetry.

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And if they are, I missed them.

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They must have gotten
lost with the salad bowl.

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I promise I'm almost ending.

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I know that Kearney is coming
up next, who's actually really

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Black and really a performer.

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I'm just reading a paper.

00:06:38.150 --> 00:06:39.550 align:middle line:84%
But after that
intro from Carmen,

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I thought I had to give you
a sense of my flow, which

00:06:43.120 --> 00:06:43.902 align:middle line:90%
is kind of wack.

00:06:43.902 --> 00:06:45.610 align:middle line:84%
But again, you're not
paying me for this.

00:06:45.610 --> 00:06:51.040 align:middle line:84%
I'm just holding time,
until your next commitment.

00:06:51.040 --> 00:06:53.440 align:middle line:84%
I'm thinking about
the ephemeral archive.

00:06:53.440 --> 00:06:57.370 align:middle line:84%
And I once thought I would
start a journal called Arc Hive.

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And a friend told me that's the
worst name ever, and I agreed.

00:07:00.593 --> 00:07:03.010 align:middle line:84%
And so I thought I would just
divorce my archival politics

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from my poetic ones,
until you invited me here.

00:07:05.830 --> 00:07:09.070 align:middle line:84%
Curse you, Thinking
Its Presence.

00:07:09.070 --> 00:07:12.260 align:middle line:84%
We call UFOs OVNIs
in Puerto Rico,

00:07:12.260 --> 00:07:14.260 align:middle line:90%
objeto volador no identificado.

00:07:14.260 --> 00:07:17.950 align:middle line:84%
So think of this as an
OVNI that came to the sky

00:07:17.950 --> 00:07:20.200 align:middle line:84%
and made you think
about its absence.

00:07:20.200 --> 00:07:21.730 align:middle line:90%
Maybe I got it.

00:07:21.730 --> 00:07:23.230 align:middle line:90%
OVNI presence.

00:07:23.230 --> 00:07:26.850 align:middle line:90%
Thinking Its OVNI Presence.

00:07:26.850 --> 00:07:28.870 align:middle line:90%
This is my present to you.

00:07:28.870 --> 00:07:31.620 align:middle line:84%
It's my own complicity
with an ephemeral archive

00:07:31.620 --> 00:07:34.860 align:middle line:84%
that I may or may not be
able to riff as an app.

00:07:34.860 --> 00:07:38.310 align:middle line:84%
The app that perhaps is
my nation as arnification.

00:07:38.310 --> 00:07:39.420 align:middle line:90%
I'm running out of riffs.

00:07:39.420 --> 00:07:40.530 align:middle line:90%
I'm running out of flow.

00:07:40.530 --> 00:07:42.863 align:middle line:84%
At least, this tech part was
better than that tech part.

00:07:42.863 --> 00:07:44.040 align:middle line:90%
What the fuck was that?

00:07:44.040 --> 00:07:47.220 align:middle line:84%
Give it out to the ghosts
of José Esteban and Juan.

00:07:47.220 --> 00:07:48.120 align:middle line:90%
Gracias, maestros.

00:07:48.120 --> 00:07:49.340 align:middle line:90%
I figured it out somehow.

00:07:49.340 --> 00:07:51.090 align:middle line:84%
I can't wait to have
a student as annoying

00:07:51.090 --> 00:07:52.200 align:middle line:90%
as I was in your classes.

00:07:52.200 --> 00:07:53.700 align:middle line:90%
OK.

00:07:53.700 --> 00:07:56.700 align:middle line:84%
But there's a kind of
institutional politics here.

00:07:56.700 --> 00:07:59.430 align:middle line:84%
And I'll keep working
on the salad bowl

00:07:59.430 --> 00:08:02.150 align:middle line:90%
with or without ginger.

00:08:02.150 --> 00:08:03.770 align:middle line:84%
I keep hearing from
all the Nielsen

00:08:03.770 --> 00:08:05.480 align:middle line:90%
there's some stuff in the UCLA.

00:08:05.480 --> 00:08:08.090 align:middle line:84%
Maybe that'll help me, but
I have a sense that not.

00:08:08.090 --> 00:08:09.710 align:middle line:90%
I have a sense that

00:08:09.710 --> 00:08:11.900 align:middle line:84%
Stephen Jonas took
that one to the grave.

00:08:11.900 --> 00:08:13.610 align:middle line:84%
But he really
thought he was Latin.

00:08:13.610 --> 00:08:15.230 align:middle line:90%
He thought Lorca was, too.

00:08:15.230 --> 00:08:18.860 align:middle line:84%
I think he has this thing where
he thinks the South of Spain

00:08:18.860 --> 00:08:19.952 align:middle line:90%
equals California.

00:08:19.952 --> 00:08:20.910 align:middle line:90%
I'm not making that up.

00:08:20.910 --> 00:08:22.993 align:middle line:84%
It's in this Lorca poem,
which is called something

00:08:22.993 --> 00:08:25.400 align:middle line:84%
about cante jondo, which may
not be tied to the letter

00:08:25.400 --> 00:08:27.290 align:middle line:84%
to Baraka, where
he's pissed off,

00:08:27.290 --> 00:08:30.860 align:middle line:84%
which I couldn't read because
the archive was ephemeral.

00:08:30.860 --> 00:08:33.539 align:middle line:84%
And time was a memorial,
except I didn't get the memo.

00:08:33.539 --> 00:08:35.630 align:middle line:84%
And I kept going and
it was time to stop.

00:08:35.630 --> 00:08:37.429 align:middle line:90%
And I'll stop now.

00:08:37.429 --> 00:08:38.705 align:middle line:90%
Gracias.

00:08:38.705 --> 00:08:42.150 align:middle line:90%
[APPLAUSE]

00:08:42.150 --> 00:08:51.000 align:middle line:90%