WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.910 align:middle line:90% 00:00:03.910 --> 00:00:04.940 align:middle line:90% Good evening. 00:00:04.940 --> 00:00:05.440 align:middle line:90% Buenas. 00:00:05.440 --> 00:00:08.260 align:middle line:90% 00:00:08.260 --> 00:00:12.280 align:middle line:84% What I seek is permission for a storyline. 00:00:12.280 --> 00:00:14.770 align:middle line:90% Clauses of invention. 00:00:14.770 --> 00:00:17.860 align:middle line:84% The chance to find cover in the episodes. 00:00:17.860 --> 00:00:23.800 align:middle line:84% A cascading commitment to making shape and being shaped. 00:00:23.800 --> 00:00:28.990 align:middle line:84% Here, I understand the power of feeling at home in a form, 00:00:28.990 --> 00:00:33.430 align:middle line:84% or in form as such, and it doubles always 00:00:33.430 --> 00:00:38.500 align:middle line:84% into foreboding, into an impending eviction. 00:00:38.500 --> 00:00:41.950 align:middle line:84% So second nature to me are all the conflicts involved 00:00:41.950 --> 00:00:46.290 align:middle line:84% in the process of composition, equal parts reverie 00:00:46.290 --> 00:00:51.180 align:middle line:84% and self-loathing, as to trust the method of objective chance 00:00:51.180 --> 00:00:55.710 align:middle line:84% that André Breton claimed makes a mockery of what would have 00:00:55.710 --> 00:00:58.910 align:middle line:90% seemed most probable. 00:00:58.910 --> 00:01:02.630 align:middle line:84% I give in to the doubling, to a place punctuated 00:01:02.630 --> 00:01:04.519 align:middle line:90% with visual interludes. 00:01:04.519 --> 00:01:08.510 align:middle line:84% And what I know is my own story appears largely 00:01:08.510 --> 00:01:12.050 align:middle line:84% to subsist over time by means of a lens. 00:01:12.050 --> 00:01:16.070 align:middle line:84% Small mementos from the past, perishable scraps 00:01:16.070 --> 00:01:20.030 align:middle line:84% of history, little evidences of experience 00:01:20.030 --> 00:01:22.940 align:middle line:84% both proper and foreign to myself 00:01:22.940 --> 00:01:29.090 align:middle line:84% composed of drawings, prints, films, and photographs. 00:01:29.090 --> 00:01:35.880 align:middle line:84% To find a foothold, I recall the ventriloquising passage 00:01:35.880 --> 00:01:40.560 align:middle line:84% voiced by the fictitious narrator of Chris Marker's 1982 00:01:40.560 --> 00:01:44.900 align:middle line:90% essay film, Sans Soleil. 00:01:44.900 --> 00:01:47.510 align:middle line:84% The first image he told me about was the three children 00:01:47.510 --> 00:01:50.120 align:middle line:90% on a road in Iceland in 1965. 00:01:50.120 --> 00:01:58.060 align:middle line:90% 00:01:58.060 --> 00:02:00.640 align:middle line:84% He said that for him it was the image of happiness, 00:02:00.640 --> 00:02:02.860 align:middle line:84% and also that he had tried several times to link it 00:02:02.860 --> 00:02:05.290 align:middle line:84% to other images, but it never worked. 00:02:05.290 --> 00:02:08.240 align:middle line:84% He wrote me, one day I'll have to put it 00:02:08.240 --> 00:02:10.039 align:middle line:84% all alone at the beginning of a film 00:02:10.039 --> 00:02:12.710 align:middle line:84% with a long piece of black leader. 00:02:12.710 --> 00:02:15.648 align:middle line:84% If they don't see happiness in the picture, at least 00:02:15.648 --> 00:02:16.565 align:middle line:90% they'll see the black. 00:02:16.565 --> 00:02:21.100 align:middle line:90% 00:02:21.100 --> 00:02:27.130 align:middle line:84% A decade earlier, in 1971, Amiri Baraka had written desires for, 00:02:27.130 --> 00:02:29.320 align:middle line:84% and attitudes about the engagement 00:02:29.320 --> 00:02:33.370 align:middle line:84% in action of a personality as part of a total world 00:02:33.370 --> 00:02:37.600 align:middle line:84% community, of personhood in the geopolitical 00:02:37.600 --> 00:02:41.650 align:middle line:84% racialized imaginary from a largely Euro-ethnic base 00:02:41.650 --> 00:02:43.630 align:middle line:90% of operations. 00:02:43.630 --> 00:02:47.050 align:middle line:84% Baraka wrote that a counter form in the closed 00:02:47.050 --> 00:02:49.750 align:middle line:84% field of white definition marks that 00:02:49.750 --> 00:02:53.530 align:middle line:84% place where ethics and aesthetics, as Wittgenstein 00:02:53.530 --> 00:02:55.390 align:middle line:90% said, are one. 00:02:55.390 --> 00:02:58.630 align:middle line:84% By which Baraka meant the projection of experience, 00:02:58.630 --> 00:03:02.095 align:middle line:84% hopefully beneficial in some way to the world. 00:03:02.095 --> 00:03:06.080 align:middle line:90% 00:03:06.080 --> 00:03:07.385 align:middle line:90% So I begin with a photograph. 00:03:07.385 --> 00:03:12.150 align:middle line:84% An Ektachrome slide of an immigrant couple 00:03:12.150 --> 00:03:14.520 align:middle line:84% posing for the camera at Griffith Park 00:03:14.520 --> 00:03:18.030 align:middle line:84% Observatory in Los Angeles, just before or after Baraka 00:03:18.030 --> 00:03:21.270 align:middle line:90% published his counter statement. 00:03:21.270 --> 00:03:24.420 align:middle line:84% The hazy blush of a polluted sky hangs 00:03:24.420 --> 00:03:27.450 align:middle line:84% heavy over the decline of the sluggish hills, 00:03:27.450 --> 00:03:30.990 align:middle line:84% rendering the Hollywood sign a blur at the summit 00:03:30.990 --> 00:03:35.190 align:middle line:90% of Mount Lee in the background. 00:03:35.190 --> 00:03:37.230 align:middle line:84% The couple comes here with a photographer, 00:03:37.230 --> 00:03:40.770 align:middle line:84% likely a relative, too early in the day to watch the sunset-- 00:03:40.770 --> 00:03:42.570 align:middle line:90% maybe mid-morning, afternoon. 00:03:42.570 --> 00:03:46.500 align:middle line:84% At any rate, posing between the 1930s street lamp 00:03:46.500 --> 00:03:50.310 align:middle line:84% and, beyond the frame, the sundial and Astronomers 00:03:50.310 --> 00:03:56.640 align:middle line:84% Monument from whose vantage point the portrait is rendered. 00:03:56.640 --> 00:03:59.550 align:middle line:84% With the winter lawn singed beige and brown 00:03:59.550 --> 00:04:02.010 align:middle line:84% by weeks of winter drought, the quad 00:04:02.010 --> 00:04:07.010 align:middle line:84% that leads to the planetarium appears devoid of others. 00:04:07.010 --> 00:04:11.200 align:middle line:84% For this couple, a husband and wife in their mid-30s, 00:04:11.200 --> 00:04:13.630 align:middle line:84% there's a visual disagreement in the opportunity 00:04:13.630 --> 00:04:16.160 align:middle line:90% for self-presentation. 00:04:16.160 --> 00:04:20.450 align:middle line:84% With her puffy hairstyle and red, long sleeved mini dress, 00:04:20.450 --> 00:04:22.550 align:middle line:84% the purse suspended from her left hand 00:04:22.550 --> 00:04:25.490 align:middle line:84% obliges a delicate but studied gesture 00:04:25.490 --> 00:04:29.330 align:middle line:84% that configures a feminine performance. 00:04:29.330 --> 00:04:33.350 align:middle line:84% With cigarette in hand, he wears his hair slicked back and over 00:04:33.350 --> 00:04:37.100 align:middle line:84% the pink shirt and floral tie, a poncho-- 00:04:37.100 --> 00:04:40.130 align:middle line:84% or ruana, the name of that item in the Andes 00:04:40.130 --> 00:04:42.730 align:middle line:90% region of Colombia. 00:04:42.730 --> 00:04:45.940 align:middle line:84% A testimony to immigrant achievement in the prosperity 00:04:45.940 --> 00:04:49.060 align:middle line:84% promised by Los Angeles in the Cold War years 00:04:49.060 --> 00:04:53.620 align:middle line:84% between 1960 and 1970, when a Latin American diaspora, 00:04:53.620 --> 00:04:57.550 align:middle line:84% primarily from Mexico but also from Central and South America, 00:04:57.550 --> 00:05:01.540 align:middle line:84% made its way to this urban refuge. 00:05:01.540 --> 00:05:04.060 align:middle line:84% The husband's affirmation of his ethnic difference 00:05:04.060 --> 00:05:07.450 align:middle line:84% further marks the couple in public space-- 00:05:07.450 --> 00:05:09.280 align:middle line:90% a defiance. 00:05:09.280 --> 00:05:12.760 align:middle line:84% She refuses to comply as well, but by other means. 00:05:12.760 --> 00:05:15.640 align:middle line:84% Her eyes avoid the camera's lens and our 00:05:15.640 --> 00:05:19.450 align:middle line:84% gaze, as latter-day onlookers, as though she was already 00:05:19.450 --> 00:05:22.270 align:middle line:84% skilled in so many narrative displacements 00:05:22.270 --> 00:05:25.210 align:middle line:84% about the social divisions in California 00:05:25.210 --> 00:05:28.870 align:middle line:84% and the cultural expectations and racialized meanings applied 00:05:28.870 --> 00:05:34.090 align:middle line:84% to her body in the closed field of white definition. 00:05:34.090 --> 00:05:36.610 align:middle line:84% Once, where she was from, she had 00:05:36.610 --> 00:05:40.480 align:middle line:84% committed to habit and memory, accepted as fact, 00:05:40.480 --> 00:05:43.540 align:middle line:84% the entitlements of lighter skin. 00:05:43.540 --> 00:05:47.260 align:middle line:84% Once, where she was from, hierarchies of color 00:05:47.260 --> 00:05:51.160 align:middle line:84% allowed for the overreporting of class status. 00:05:51.160 --> 00:05:56.500 align:middle line:84% Here, any visual haziness in the potent system of subordination 00:05:56.500 --> 00:05:59.110 align:middle line:84% sharpens into the field of perception, 00:05:59.110 --> 00:06:02.890 align:middle line:84% made absolute and unambiguous, owing to something 00:06:02.890 --> 00:06:04.330 align:middle line:90% here inaudible-- 00:06:04.330 --> 00:06:07.390 align:middle line:90% a heavily accented English. 00:06:07.390 --> 00:06:10.840 align:middle line:84% Every encouragement to pass conceals 00:06:10.840 --> 00:06:15.970 align:middle line:84% the heavily enforced borderlines of speech acts, even as time 00:06:15.970 --> 00:06:20.620 align:middle line:84% and again she will have endured with the unruffled dignity 00:06:20.620 --> 00:06:24.250 align:middle line:84% or aspirational pride of the petite bourgeois outsider, 00:06:24.250 --> 00:06:25.900 align:middle line:90% allergic to victimhood. 00:06:25.900 --> 00:06:29.860 align:middle line:84% The ineluctable nature of US American attitudes 00:06:29.860 --> 00:06:32.560 align:middle line:84% of exception and white supremacy. 00:06:32.560 --> 00:06:39.400 align:middle line:90% 00:06:39.400 --> 00:06:41.530 align:middle line:90% Where are you from? 00:06:41.530 --> 00:06:46.540 align:middle line:84% When asked, she ironizes with imaginative lines of flight. 00:06:46.540 --> 00:06:50.500 align:middle line:84% Sometimes the reply is simply South America, 00:06:50.500 --> 00:06:53.920 align:middle line:84% a term whose perplexing political cloudiness played 00:06:53.920 --> 00:06:57.340 align:middle line:84% evasive even as it assumed, rightly, 00:06:57.340 --> 00:07:01.540 align:middle line:84% her opponent's liable ignorance of geography. 00:07:01.540 --> 00:07:04.060 align:middle line:84% It preempts embarrassment of the other 00:07:04.060 --> 00:07:06.250 align:middle line:90% and a need for explanations. 00:07:06.250 --> 00:07:11.070 align:middle line:84% A little act of ingenuity and generosity. 00:07:11.070 --> 00:07:13.620 align:middle line:84% Increasingly, and because this is California, 00:07:13.620 --> 00:07:18.210 align:middle line:84% the rejoinder is Mexico, with the particulars, however, that 00:07:18.210 --> 00:07:23.730 align:middle line:84% make a fiction plausible, that enhance a narrative of passing. 00:07:23.730 --> 00:07:27.480 align:middle line:84% And so to avoid any association with her native Colombia, 00:07:27.480 --> 00:07:31.770 align:middle line:84% that is, in the media grotesque with narcotics and criminality, 00:07:31.770 --> 00:07:36.720 align:middle line:90% she adds from Mérida, Yucatán. 00:07:36.720 --> 00:07:39.480 align:middle line:90% Her preference for passing-- 00:07:39.480 --> 00:07:45.060 align:middle line:84% not quite, not white, not quite not a Mexican national, 00:07:45.060 --> 00:07:48.510 align:middle line:84% is a vernacular knowledge of her body as a sign of difference 00:07:48.510 --> 00:07:50.430 align:middle line:90% that exceeds the body. 00:07:50.430 --> 00:07:54.090 align:middle line:84% But she also knows, as Samira Kawash in another context 00:07:54.090 --> 00:07:57.690 align:middle line:84% observed, the visible becomes an insufficient guarantee 00:07:57.690 --> 00:07:59.010 align:middle line:90% of knowledge. 00:07:59.010 --> 00:08:02.070 align:middle line:84% As a result, the possibility of a gap 00:08:02.070 --> 00:08:08.290 align:middle line:84% opens up between what a body says and what a body means. 00:08:08.290 --> 00:08:18.700 align:middle line:84% [FEMALE VOICE SPEAKING WITH AN ACCENT] 00:08:18.700 --> 00:08:21.950 align:middle line:84% Similarly, an accent is a surplus, 00:08:21.950 --> 00:08:24.580 align:middle line:84% so culturally determined in social space 00:08:24.580 --> 00:08:28.030 align:middle line:84% it can never be understood properly on its own terms, 00:08:28.030 --> 00:08:31.630 align:middle line:84% but rather only as a measure of other incompetencies-- 00:08:31.630 --> 00:08:33.280 align:middle line:90% competencies. 00:08:33.280 --> 00:08:36.940 align:middle line:84% Poet Rosa Alcalá writes, an article in Time magazine 00:08:36.940 --> 00:08:40.390 align:middle line:84% on voice activation technology discusses the failure of this 00:08:40.390 --> 00:08:44.650 align:middle line:84% innovation to recognize female or foreign voices with thick 00:08:44.650 --> 00:08:46.240 align:middle line:90% accents. 00:08:46.240 --> 00:08:49.450 align:middle line:84% I sometimes worry that the ways in which we define poetry, she 00:08:49.450 --> 00:08:53.380 align:middle line:84% continues, and separates it into exclusionary camps 00:08:53.380 --> 00:08:55.480 align:middle line:84% is like creating a technology that 00:08:55.480 --> 00:08:58.510 align:middle line:84% recognizes only a few representative voices, 00:08:58.510 --> 00:09:02.080 align:middle line:84% or no voice at all, and can only accomplish 00:09:02.080 --> 00:09:03.640 align:middle line:90% a limited set of commands. 00:09:03.640 --> 00:09:07.590 align:middle line:90% 00:09:07.590 --> 00:09:12.180 align:middle line:84% My father died in 2016 and in the time elapsed 00:09:12.180 --> 00:09:14.820 align:middle line:84% since his passing, the meanings of his loss 00:09:14.820 --> 00:09:17.880 align:middle line:84% have become forever entangled in the mess that 00:09:17.880 --> 00:09:19.620 align:middle line:90% is the time of the now. 00:09:19.620 --> 00:09:22.290 align:middle line:84% What Naomi Klein refers to as the large scale 00:09:22.290 --> 00:09:25.560 align:middle line:84% shocks to society, the opportunistic occasions 00:09:25.560 --> 00:09:28.710 align:middle line:84% to advance an agenda auspicious for corporations 00:09:28.710 --> 00:09:32.250 align:middle line:84% and the brutal accumulation of wealth. 00:09:32.250 --> 00:09:34.770 align:middle line:84% To the conditions that gave way to a return 00:09:34.770 --> 00:09:38.100 align:middle line:84% of the repressed, to the preservation of whiteness 00:09:38.100 --> 00:09:41.640 align:middle line:84% and toxic masculinity, to the assault on immigrants 00:09:41.640 --> 00:09:44.700 align:middle line:84% and Indigenous rights, to anti-Black violence 00:09:44.700 --> 00:09:46.590 align:middle line:84% and other forms of racial aggression 00:09:46.590 --> 00:09:50.520 align:middle line:84% and religious intolerance, to unpredictable levels of cyber 00:09:50.520 --> 00:09:53.580 align:middle line:84% surveillance and the single-minded repeal of all 00:09:53.580 --> 00:09:56.070 align:middle line:90% our social safety nets. 00:09:56.070 --> 00:09:59.040 align:middle line:90% Not to speak of the environment. 00:09:59.040 --> 00:10:05.210 align:middle line:84% There's a particular form of immigrant sorrow 00:10:05.210 --> 00:10:08.570 align:middle line:84% that is loath to overstate the family narrative, 00:10:08.570 --> 00:10:10.700 align:middle line:84% even as it finds no place for all 00:10:10.700 --> 00:10:14.120 align:middle line:84% the fixed or misremembered scenes of prohibition 00:10:14.120 --> 00:10:19.880 align:middle line:84% and shame, all the violence and survival, all the contingencies 00:10:19.880 --> 00:10:23.120 align:middle line:84% and chances, the kindnesses and care, 00:10:23.120 --> 00:10:27.170 align:middle line:84% as anything but empty if not in a method of kinship 00:10:27.170 --> 00:10:29.810 align:middle line:84% with actors in the past and present, 00:10:29.810 --> 00:10:34.880 align:middle line:84% for whom the odds of time and space have not been favorable. 00:10:34.880 --> 00:10:37.430 align:middle line:84% Although my father was capable of gentleness, 00:10:37.430 --> 00:10:39.230 align:middle line:84% and there were moments in my adult life 00:10:39.230 --> 00:10:43.190 align:middle line:84% when we came close to being close, he was largely absent 00:10:43.190 --> 00:10:45.770 align:middle line:84% and ever the silent witness of my mother's 00:10:45.770 --> 00:10:50.300 align:middle line:84% aptitude for severity, beholden to aspirational decorum 00:10:50.300 --> 00:10:52.370 align:middle line:84% and to those Catholic pieties that 00:10:52.370 --> 00:10:56.300 align:middle line:84% serve as a cover story to disavow the precarious flux 00:10:56.300 --> 00:10:59.340 align:middle line:90% of sexual and social life. 00:10:59.340 --> 00:11:00.960 align:middle line:84% Even as my father and I were sort 00:11:00.960 --> 00:11:04.470 align:middle line:84% of strangers to each other, I found a renewed indebtedness 00:11:04.470 --> 00:11:07.440 align:middle line:84% to his lifelong commitment to dreaming 00:11:07.440 --> 00:11:11.370 align:middle line:84% despite what was for him, a physician who never practiced 00:11:11.370 --> 00:11:14.250 align:middle line:84% in the US, and therefore a subsistence wage 00:11:14.250 --> 00:11:17.670 align:middle line:84% professional immigrant who abided in the perplexing 00:11:17.670 --> 00:11:21.600 align:middle line:84% order of that uncertainty what was for him, the uneven playing 00:11:21.600 --> 00:11:27.100 align:middle line:84% field and the undeniable consequences of disadvantage. 00:11:27.100 --> 00:11:30.670 align:middle line:84% Insomuch as the concept of clear and open communication was 00:11:30.670 --> 00:11:34.660 align:middle line:84% alien to my upbringing, the charge to find the words that 00:11:34.660 --> 00:11:40.270 align:middle line:84% are true, to acknowledge the task as embodied, 00:11:40.270 --> 00:11:43.030 align:middle line:84% however embedded in the undeniable privileges 00:11:43.030 --> 00:11:47.080 align:middle line:84% in my possession, became a place of antagonism, 00:11:47.080 --> 00:11:50.320 align:middle line:84% of early and belated instructions about how I was 00:11:50.320 --> 00:11:55.130 align:middle line:84% to self-present and find mobility in the world by means 00:11:55.130 --> 00:11:59.060 align:middle line:84% of a provisional persona liable to render a self-- 00:11:59.060 --> 00:12:02.720 align:middle line:90% myself-- as something legible. 00:12:02.720 --> 00:12:06.020 align:middle line:84% It became as Philip Roth once remarked, a coup for me 00:12:06.020 --> 00:12:11.330 align:middle line:84% of recognition as a task of having likewise, over and over 00:12:11.330 --> 00:12:14.270 align:middle line:90% again, to fight for my fluency-- 00:12:14.270 --> 00:12:16.490 align:middle line:90% every paragraph, every sentence. 00:12:16.490 --> 00:12:24.770 align:middle line:90% 00:12:24.770 --> 00:12:29.600 align:middle line:84% In the hospital on his deathbed, my father experienced abrupt 00:12:29.600 --> 00:12:34.280 align:middle line:84% recollections from his youth, as when he had committed to memory 00:12:34.280 --> 00:12:37.730 align:middle line:84% the Spanish Golden Age poet Calderón de la Barca 00:12:37.730 --> 00:12:40.610 align:middle line:84% and the well-known soliloquy recited by the imprisoned 00:12:40.610 --> 00:12:45.470 align:middle line:84% Segismundo in the baroque drama La vida es sueño. 00:12:45.470 --> 00:12:51.260 align:middle line:84% Surrounded by walls, Segismundo wonders, ¿Qué es la vida? 00:12:51.260 --> 00:12:53.420 align:middle line:90% Un frenesí. 00:12:53.420 --> 00:12:54.950 align:middle line:90% ¿Qué es la vida? 00:12:54.950 --> 00:12:59.300 align:middle line:84% Una ilusión, una sombra, una ficción. 00:12:59.300 --> 00:13:01.520 align:middle line:90% Y el mayor bien es pequeño. 00:13:01.520 --> 00:13:06.710 align:middle line:84% Que toda la vida es sueño, y los sueños, sueños son. 00:13:06.710 --> 00:13:08.120 align:middle line:90% What is life? 00:13:08.120 --> 00:13:09.830 align:middle line:90% It's madness. 00:13:09.830 --> 00:13:11.030 align:middle line:90% What is life? 00:13:11.030 --> 00:13:13.400 align:middle line:84% An illusion, a shadow, a fiction. 00:13:13.400 --> 00:13:16.760 align:middle line:90% And all kindness is nothing. 00:13:16.760 --> 00:13:22.745 align:middle line:84% Interlude of a life dreamt by a dream inside another dream. 00:13:22.745 --> 00:13:26.020 align:middle line:90% 00:13:26.020 --> 00:13:28.150 align:middle line:84% I gained the dubious ability at times 00:13:28.150 --> 00:13:30.430 align:middle line:84% to so create a network of alliances 00:13:30.430 --> 00:13:33.190 align:middle line:84% as to dodge the sight lines of oppression 00:13:33.190 --> 00:13:37.741 align:middle line:84% and the physical or psychic battery of its vengefulness. 00:13:37.741 --> 00:13:42.100 align:middle line:84% The ferocity of family prepared me, perversely, 00:13:42.100 --> 00:13:46.090 align:middle line:84% for the equally unpredictable violence of system. 00:13:46.090 --> 00:13:51.100 align:middle line:84% For the times it has sought to render a body hypervisible 00:13:51.100 --> 00:13:53.980 align:middle line:84% in the way, especially, that sex and ethnicity refuse 00:13:53.980 --> 00:13:56.890 align:middle line:84% the false solaces of categories or when 00:13:56.890 --> 00:14:00.640 align:middle line:84% it, system, prefers the technologies of indifference 00:14:00.640 --> 00:14:02.620 align:middle line:90% and disregard. 00:14:02.620 --> 00:14:06.400 align:middle line:84% Here the lines by Dodie Bellamy come to my rescue. 00:14:06.400 --> 00:14:10.570 align:middle line:84% She says, I'm alone, thrust upon my own alterity, 00:14:10.570 --> 00:14:13.180 align:middle line:90% but who is ever not alone? 00:14:13.180 --> 00:14:15.550 align:middle line:84% To me, being queer, she says, means 00:14:15.550 --> 00:14:20.040 align:middle line:84% doing without the false solace of categories. 00:14:20.040 --> 00:14:23.820 align:middle line:84% Habit and nuance give way to the presentation 00:14:23.820 --> 00:14:26.610 align:middle line:84% of a person, biological inheritance, 00:14:26.610 --> 00:14:29.400 align:middle line:84% and learned enactments wherein, as in the poem 00:14:29.400 --> 00:14:30.480 align:middle line:90% by Robert Duncan. 00:14:30.480 --> 00:14:36.090 align:middle line:84% Often, I am permitted to return, rehearse, regard, resemble, 00:14:36.090 --> 00:14:38.760 align:middle line:84% even as the union of inner weather and outer shell 00:14:38.760 --> 00:14:41.400 align:middle line:84% did not always provide the skills to navigate 00:14:41.400 --> 00:14:46.960 align:middle line:84% the unrelenting grip of cultural authority and its dismissals. 00:14:46.960 --> 00:14:50.650 align:middle line:84% So I came, then, to see childhood, my own, 00:14:50.650 --> 00:14:54.700 align:middle line:84% in images like those by Graciela Iturbide, as inquiries 00:14:54.700 --> 00:14:59.380 align:middle line:84% into the division of private and public life in terms of age, 00:14:59.380 --> 00:15:02.590 align:middle line:84% into the developing mind and body suspended 00:15:02.590 --> 00:15:05.590 align:middle line:84% between the spontaneous life of the imagination 00:15:05.590 --> 00:15:09.220 align:middle line:84% and the margins of social constraint. 00:15:09.220 --> 00:15:13.960 align:middle line:84% I saw it in the image of three boys depicted at a window, 00:15:13.960 --> 00:15:16.210 align:middle line:84% pressing their faces behind a curtain, one 00:15:16.210 --> 00:15:18.790 align:middle line:84% of them raising a toy pistol to the side of his head 00:15:18.790 --> 00:15:23.230 align:middle line:84% as if to illustrate Walter Benjamin's observation of how, 00:15:23.230 --> 00:15:27.370 align:middle line:84% for children, the home often becomes an arsenal of masks, 00:15:27.370 --> 00:15:30.610 align:middle line:84% and how the child, hidden behind a curtain himself becomes 00:15:30.610 --> 00:15:35.290 align:middle line:84% a blank thing moved by the wind, a ghost enclosed 00:15:35.290 --> 00:15:37.030 align:middle line:90% by the material world. 00:15:37.030 --> 00:15:41.710 align:middle line:84% A world that is tremendously accurate and approaching him 00:15:41.710 --> 00:15:45.400 align:middle line:90% in a way that is ineffable. 00:15:45.400 --> 00:15:48.160 align:middle line:84% The photographer had encapsulated the early fear 00:15:48.160 --> 00:15:49.990 align:middle line:90% and fantasy of the inanimate. 00:15:49.990 --> 00:15:53.770 align:middle line:84% Those diminutive terrors by which child and adult 00:15:53.770 --> 00:15:58.780 align:middle line:84% coexist in incommensurable fields of understanding. 00:15:58.780 --> 00:16:01.960 align:middle line:84% In another, she monumentalized the antagonisms 00:16:01.960 --> 00:16:04.690 align:middle line:84% of child and guardian that is the line that 00:16:04.690 --> 00:16:10.120 align:middle line:84% divides formative identity from those of paternal intent. 00:16:10.120 --> 00:16:14.080 align:middle line:84% Suspended in the contradiction of vulnerability and victory 00:16:14.080 --> 00:16:16.600 align:middle line:84% of retrospection and the radius needed 00:16:16.600 --> 00:16:20.050 align:middle line:84% to calculate the plenitude of experience, as ever, 00:16:20.050 --> 00:16:21.775 align:middle line:90% subject to scale. 00:16:21.775 --> 00:16:31.630 align:middle line:90% 00:16:31.630 --> 00:16:34.430 align:middle line:90% I began to see-- 00:16:34.430 --> 00:16:38.840 align:middle line:84% I began to seek a society of alternate belonging. 00:16:38.840 --> 00:16:41.210 align:middle line:84% The varieties of masculine expression, 00:16:41.210 --> 00:16:46.130 align:middle line:84% bodies in public space, the structure of social appearance, 00:16:46.130 --> 00:16:47.960 align:middle line:84% internal and external differences 00:16:47.960 --> 00:16:50.720 align:middle line:84% that make a subject indistinguishable. 00:16:50.720 --> 00:16:53.810 align:middle line:84% And moreover, to confirm my liminal status 00:16:53.810 --> 00:16:56.840 align:middle line:90% as an outsider-insider. 00:16:56.840 --> 00:16:59.960 align:middle line:90% And there were counter forms. 00:16:59.960 --> 00:17:03.710 align:middle line:84% Take this promo poster of the Syrian pop-punk trio, 00:17:03.710 --> 00:17:05.150 align:middle line:90% The Plugz. 00:17:05.150 --> 00:17:09.230 align:middle line:84% Bandleader Tito Larriva is flanked by Barry McBride 00:17:09.230 --> 00:17:11.510 align:middle line:90% and Chalo Quintana. 00:17:11.510 --> 00:17:15.050 align:middle line:84% Commenting on the scene's appeal for the many Latinos involved, 00:17:15.050 --> 00:17:18.770 align:middle line:84% Larriva exclaimed, I think the fuck you attitude of punk 00:17:18.770 --> 00:17:21.270 align:middle line:90% was great for Latinos. 00:17:21.270 --> 00:17:24.180 align:middle line:84% You could assimilate into a new culture that 00:17:24.180 --> 00:17:27.300 align:middle line:84% was evolving without compromising who you were, 00:17:27.300 --> 00:17:29.580 align:middle line:90% or having to be segregated. 00:17:29.580 --> 00:17:32.940 align:middle line:84% Sean Carrillo reminds us that when the LA punk scene was 00:17:32.940 --> 00:17:35.940 align:middle line:84% born, Latinos were integrally involved 00:17:35.940 --> 00:17:39.120 align:middle line:84% and throughout its lifespan, the contributions of Ron Reyes 00:17:39.120 --> 00:17:42.480 align:middle line:84% and Dez Cadena of Black Flag, Gerardo Velazquez 00:17:42.480 --> 00:17:45.780 align:middle line:84% of Nervous Gender, Joe Ramirez of the Eyes, 00:17:45.780 --> 00:17:49.000 align:middle line:84% as well as the Brat and the Odd Squad, among others, 00:17:49.000 --> 00:17:52.800 align:middle line:84% were an undeniable part of its history and growth. 00:17:52.800 --> 00:17:56.460 align:middle line:84% A list of those others, I would add, include Alice Bag, 00:17:56.460 --> 00:17:59.250 align:middle line:84% or Alicia Armendariz, of the Bags, 00:17:59.250 --> 00:18:02.040 align:middle line:84% Eddie Muñoz and Louie Ramirez of the Plimsouls, 00:18:02.040 --> 00:18:03.900 align:middle line:90% Charles Ramirez a.k.a. 00:18:03.900 --> 00:18:07.350 align:middle line:84% Chuck Roast of the Suburban Lawns, and Juan 00:18:07.350 --> 00:18:11.370 align:middle line:90% Gomez of the Human Hands. 00:18:11.370 --> 00:18:14.370 align:middle line:84% The idiosyncratic short-lived quintet from Los Angeles, 00:18:14.370 --> 00:18:18.180 align:middle line:84% the Human Hands were, from left to right, Juan Gómez, guitar, 00:18:18.180 --> 00:18:22.500 align:middle line:84% bass, vocals; David Wiley, vocals, guitar, 00:18:22.500 --> 00:18:26.130 align:middle line:84% saxophone and percussion; Bill Noland, keyboards, coronet, 00:18:26.130 --> 00:18:30.240 align:middle line:84% vocals; Dennis Duck, drums and percussion, keyboards, vocals; 00:18:30.240 --> 00:18:36.000 align:middle line:84% and Rick Potts, bass guitar, saxophone, saw, and vocals. 00:18:36.000 --> 00:18:38.730 align:middle line:84% They might have passed for office clerks, record store 00:18:38.730 --> 00:18:40.830 align:middle line:84% employees, or aerospace engineers who 00:18:40.830 --> 00:18:44.610 align:middle line:84% sought the aural nightmare of sonic shapes 00:18:44.610 --> 00:18:49.380 align:middle line:84% in comic book colors, unyielding of the climate's hard edge 00:18:49.380 --> 00:18:51.990 align:middle line:84% and in spite of their relish for cartoon 00:18:51.990 --> 00:18:55.010 align:middle line:90% logic and the false problem. 00:18:55.010 --> 00:18:57.950 align:middle line:90% Trains can't fly into the air. 00:18:57.950 --> 00:19:01.370 align:middle line:90% Planes can't swim into the sea. 00:19:01.370 --> 00:19:04.250 align:middle line:84% Trains can't jump over buildings. 00:19:04.250 --> 00:19:07.100 align:middle line:90% Planes can't crawl into tunnels. 00:19:07.100 --> 00:19:10.130 align:middle line:90% Trains vs. Planes. 00:19:10.130 --> 00:19:12.920 align:middle line:84% On April 6, 1980, in the Los Angeles Times, 00:19:12.920 --> 00:19:16.370 align:middle line:84% writer Terry Atkinson offered the following assessment-- 00:19:16.370 --> 00:19:18.830 align:middle line:84% Human Hands is a quintet for Pasadena 00:19:18.830 --> 00:19:22.400 align:middle line:84% that has become one of the punk circuit's leading attractions. 00:19:22.400 --> 00:19:24.410 align:middle line:84% This despite the fact that the group is hardly 00:19:24.410 --> 00:19:26.420 align:middle line:90% a typical hardcore outfit. 00:19:26.420 --> 00:19:29.480 align:middle line:84% Instead of spiky hair and black leather jackets, 00:19:29.480 --> 00:19:32.780 align:middle line:84% this punk band features an almost aggressively normal 00:19:32.780 --> 00:19:33.440 align:middle line:90% look. 00:19:33.440 --> 00:19:36.512 align:middle line:84% Lots of horn-rimmed glasses, haircuts 00:19:36.512 --> 00:19:38.720 align:middle line:84% that might have been done by the neighborhood barber, 00:19:38.720 --> 00:19:42.290 align:middle line:84% and clothes apparently bought at Sears. 00:19:42.290 --> 00:19:43.820 align:middle line:84% Though the group's music contains 00:19:43.820 --> 00:19:45.860 align:middle line:84% its share of slashing punk anthems, 00:19:45.860 --> 00:19:47.750 align:middle line:84% its scope also includes influences 00:19:47.750 --> 00:19:53.740 align:middle line:84% like Brian Eno, Talking Heads, Wire, and even Stockhausen. 00:19:53.740 --> 00:19:56.860 align:middle line:84% As if to overcompensate for their ordinary surface of, 00:19:56.860 --> 00:20:00.880 align:middle line:84% I tried so hard to look like myself, lead singer David Wiley 00:20:00.880 --> 00:20:03.730 align:middle line:84% snarls, but then I look so different, 00:20:03.730 --> 00:20:06.160 align:middle line:90% I look like everyone else. 00:20:06.160 --> 00:20:07.690 align:middle line:90% I've got the new look. 00:20:07.690 --> 00:20:09.490 align:middle line:90% Does it look good to you? 00:20:09.490 --> 00:20:10.960 align:middle line:90% I've got the new look. 00:20:10.960 --> 00:20:12.415 align:middle line:90% It's really nothing new. 00:20:12.415 --> 00:20:14.980 align:middle line:90% 00:20:14.980 --> 00:20:17.550 align:middle line:84% A band's band, further showered with critical favor 00:20:17.550 --> 00:20:19.290 align:middle line:84% in the years they played the circuit, 00:20:19.290 --> 00:20:21.060 align:middle line:84% the Human Hands produced a catalog 00:20:21.060 --> 00:20:25.170 align:middle line:84% of tracks that never found their home in album format. 00:20:25.170 --> 00:20:29.250 align:middle line:84% Time passes, and I learned that after moving back to his native 00:20:29.250 --> 00:20:34.110 align:middle line:84% Phoenix, David Wiley had died of HIV in 1986 and Juan Gómez went 00:20:34.110 --> 00:20:36.660 align:middle line:84% on to other bands, the Romans, among them, 00:20:36.660 --> 00:20:39.420 align:middle line:84% while serving also in his parallel life as a very 00:20:39.420 --> 00:20:42.720 align:middle line:84% esteemed librarian at the Huntington in Pasadena. 00:20:42.720 --> 00:20:46.170 align:middle line:84% But from 1980-- from 1978 to 1981, 00:20:46.170 --> 00:20:49.170 align:middle line:84% the band engaged in the willful inversion of punk 00:20:49.170 --> 00:20:51.480 align:middle line:84% noir aesthetics, of indictment that 00:20:51.480 --> 00:20:53.580 align:middle line:84% informed much of punk's more politically 00:20:53.580 --> 00:20:56.560 align:middle line:90% inclined lyrics of the time. 00:20:56.560 --> 00:20:59.110 align:middle line:84% Gómez and Wiley, who wrote most of the songs, 00:20:59.110 --> 00:21:03.280 align:middle line:84% countered outrage with joy by holding tight to desire 00:21:03.280 --> 00:21:06.620 align:middle line:90% and to the bodily absurd. 00:21:06.620 --> 00:21:10.970 align:middle line:84% I used a needle and thread to sew a stitch in my head. 00:21:10.970 --> 00:21:13.490 align:middle line:84% My dreams came apart at the seams 00:21:13.490 --> 00:21:17.060 align:middle line:90% until I took a tailor to bed. 00:21:17.060 --> 00:21:20.420 align:middle line:84% And keyboardist Bill Noland penned 00:21:20.420 --> 00:21:23.120 align:middle line:84% a track whose lyrics endure and are as fine 00:21:23.120 --> 00:21:25.430 align:middle line:84% as any short poem of the moment, certainly one 00:21:25.430 --> 00:21:27.500 align:middle line:90% I wish I'd written. 00:21:27.500 --> 00:21:30.910 align:middle line:84% It's a poem about the world as potential, 00:21:30.910 --> 00:21:35.710 align:middle line:84% as it wasn't in childhood, to terrify and to touch 00:21:35.710 --> 00:21:39.340 align:middle line:84% and to edify a knowledge as enclosed in books 00:21:39.340 --> 00:21:42.760 align:middle line:84% or otherwise curved, but never entirely containable 00:21:42.760 --> 00:21:45.400 align:middle line:84% no matter how long we wait in the shadows 00:21:45.400 --> 00:21:47.710 align:middle line:90% in order to trust in the day. 00:21:47.710 --> 00:21:48.580 align:middle line:90% It's called Lurk. 00:21:48.580 --> 00:21:52.820 align:middle line:90% 00:21:52.820 --> 00:21:57.410 align:middle line:84% Something made me crouch, like little night noises 00:21:57.410 --> 00:22:00.840 align:middle line:90% that crease electric wires. 00:22:00.840 --> 00:22:03.360 align:middle line:90% Hallways and metal rooms. 00:22:03.360 --> 00:22:06.150 align:middle line:84% Convivial nighthawks reach me with their voices 00:22:06.150 --> 00:22:08.100 align:middle line:84% while inside, they've got shelves 00:22:08.100 --> 00:22:11.430 align:middle line:90% with bookends of human heads. 00:22:11.430 --> 00:22:15.960 align:middle line:84% The heads still live and talk about the books next door. 00:22:15.960 --> 00:22:18.600 align:middle line:84% They compete for your attention regardless 00:22:18.600 --> 00:22:20.520 align:middle line:90% of what you're there for. 00:22:20.520 --> 00:22:24.720 align:middle line:84% School bus pulls up outside and we look for a seat. 00:22:24.720 --> 00:22:27.000 align:middle line:90% Door seals us in metal room. 00:22:27.000 --> 00:22:30.060 align:middle line:90% We get ready for the day. 00:22:30.060 --> 00:22:34.770 align:middle line:84% All that I can see and all that I can hear 00:22:34.770 --> 00:22:36.765 align:middle line:90% are surrounded by these walls. 00:22:36.765 --> 00:22:40.420 align:middle line:90% 00:22:40.420 --> 00:22:43.810 align:middle line:84% Born at the crossroads with the punk performance art scene 00:22:43.810 --> 00:22:48.100 align:middle line:84% and music scene of Los Angeles in the 1970s and early 1980s, 00:22:48.100 --> 00:22:49.990 align:middle line:84% were budding intellectual passions 00:22:49.990 --> 00:22:51.700 align:middle line:90% for experimental theater. 00:22:51.700 --> 00:22:55.420 align:middle line:84% It included, for example, the Actors Gang, and its version 00:22:55.420 --> 00:22:59.350 align:middle line:84% of Alfred Jarry's Ubu the King, directed by recent UCLA 00:22:59.350 --> 00:23:02.080 align:middle line:90% graduate, the actor Tim Robbins. 00:23:02.080 --> 00:23:04.450 align:middle line:84% As well as the electrifying social experience 00:23:04.450 --> 00:23:08.530 align:middle line:84% that was Luis Valdez's Zoot Suit, performed at the Aquarius 00:23:08.530 --> 00:23:12.520 align:middle line:90% Theater in Los Angeles in 1979. 00:23:12.520 --> 00:23:15.790 align:middle line:84% Notably performed in the distinctive vocal and physical 00:23:15.790 --> 00:23:20.050 align:middle line:84% stylizations of actor Edward James Olmos, the mythical stage 00:23:20.050 --> 00:23:23.350 align:middle line:84% creation that was Zoot Suit's El Pachuco endures 00:23:23.350 --> 00:23:27.820 align:middle line:84% in video documentation and in author Luis Valdez's own 1981 00:23:27.820 --> 00:23:31.510 align:middle line:84% film adaptation of his 1978 play. 00:23:31.510 --> 00:23:36.160 align:middle line:84% Clad in solid black drapes and matching fedora, gold crucifix 00:23:36.160 --> 00:23:38.710 align:middle line:84% worn over a high collar crimson shirt, 00:23:38.710 --> 00:23:43.180 align:middle line:84% El Pachuco submits a smooth display of diagonal attitude 00:23:43.180 --> 00:23:46.660 align:middle line:84% and self-possession, immortalized as much 00:23:46.660 --> 00:23:51.400 align:middle line:84% in Ignacio Gomez's iconic 1978 poster and Aquarius Theater 00:23:51.400 --> 00:23:53.860 align:middle line:90% outdoor mural. 00:23:53.860 --> 00:23:56.320 align:middle line:84% Poet Joshua Escobar recently reminds me 00:23:56.320 --> 00:23:59.200 align:middle line:84% that El Pachuco, a figure demonized 00:23:59.200 --> 00:24:01.750 align:middle line:84% at the height of 1940s racial tensions 00:24:01.750 --> 00:24:04.630 align:middle line:84% and in the widely covered legal trials afterwards, 00:24:04.630 --> 00:24:09.280 align:middle line:84% becomes terrifically inverted through Valdez's stagecraft. 00:24:09.280 --> 00:24:12.730 align:middle line:84% A wildly liminal figure able to slide between foreground 00:24:12.730 --> 00:24:15.550 align:middle line:84% and background to instigate and protect, 00:24:15.550 --> 00:24:20.990 align:middle line:84% whose voice nearly exceeds the framework of the play. 00:24:20.990 --> 00:24:22.790 align:middle line:84% His most memorable lines were those 00:24:22.790 --> 00:24:26.570 align:middle line:84% delivered in Brechtian self-referential and rhyming 00:24:26.570 --> 00:24:29.540 align:middle line:90% self-address. 00:24:29.540 --> 00:24:33.290 align:middle line:84% Ladies and gentlemen, our particular reality 00:24:33.290 --> 00:24:37.310 align:middle line:84% will only make sense if you grasp the mystification. 00:24:37.310 --> 00:24:40.310 align:middle line:84% The Pachuco style was an act in light. 00:24:40.310 --> 00:24:42.920 align:middle line:90% His language was a new creation. 00:24:42.920 --> 00:24:45.140 align:middle line:84% His will to be was an awesome force-- 00:24:45.140 --> 00:24:48.050 align:middle line:90% his reality, existential. 00:24:48.050 --> 00:24:50.580 align:middle line:84% But he was an actor on the street, 00:24:50.580 --> 00:24:54.560 align:middle line:90% both profane and reverential. 00:24:54.560 --> 00:24:58.490 align:middle line:84% It is a secret fantasy of every vato, living in or out 00:24:58.490 --> 00:25:04.370 align:middle line:84% of the [? ticanada, ?] to put on the zoot suit 00:25:04.370 --> 00:25:05.600 align:middle line:90% and play the myth. 00:25:05.600 --> 00:25:11.630 align:middle line:90% 00:25:11.630 --> 00:25:13.820 align:middle line:84% I speak as an actor on the stage. 00:25:13.820 --> 00:25:17.700 align:middle line:84% The Pachuco was existential, for he was an actor on the street, 00:25:17.700 --> 00:25:20.150 align:middle line:90% both profane and reverential. 00:25:20.150 --> 00:25:23.690 align:middle line:84% Words that echo a method already employed as early 00:25:23.690 --> 00:25:27.950 align:middle line:84% as 1967 in Delano, California by Luis Valdez and El Teatro 00:25:27.950 --> 00:25:29.360 align:middle line:90% Campesino. 00:25:29.360 --> 00:25:31.490 align:middle line:84% Following the United Farm Worker's leadership 00:25:31.490 --> 00:25:34.160 align:middle line:84% of Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta 00:25:34.160 --> 00:25:36.800 align:middle line:84% and the stage guidance of budding director Valdez, 00:25:36.800 --> 00:25:38.930 align:middle line:84% Mexican-American farmworkers further 00:25:38.930 --> 00:25:41.600 align:middle line:84% enhance the ability to organize and advocate 00:25:41.600 --> 00:25:47.390 align:middle line:84% for change in labor practices by means of popular stagecraft. 00:25:47.390 --> 00:25:50.420 align:middle line:90% Rasquache and Existential-- 00:25:50.420 --> 00:25:53.660 align:middle line:84% Tomás Ybarra-Frausto linked the rough and tumble performance 00:25:53.660 --> 00:25:57.740 align:middle line:84% style of El Teatro Campesino to the delight and refinement 00:25:57.740 --> 00:26:01.490 align:middle line:84% found in what is more generally deemed banal, lowly, 00:26:01.490 --> 00:26:03.140 align:middle line:90% or uncouth. 00:26:03.140 --> 00:26:07.160 align:middle line:84% Although witty and ironic, the ethos of Rasquache was rarely 00:26:07.160 --> 00:26:10.280 align:middle line:84% mean-spirited, even when Valdez and his company lampooned 00:26:10.280 --> 00:26:13.610 align:middle line:84% the contradictions proper to evolving Mexican-American 00:26:13.610 --> 00:26:17.060 align:middle line:84% and Chicano cultural values, as in Los Vendidos-- 00:26:17.060 --> 00:26:20.690 align:middle line:84% The Sellouts-- first performed in 1967 for a Brown Beret 00:26:20.690 --> 00:26:22.940 align:middle line:84% meeting at Elysian Park in East LA-- 00:26:22.940 --> 00:26:26.525 align:middle line:84% later a 1972 Emmy award-winning Public Broadcasting teleplay. 00:26:26.525 --> 00:26:29.140 align:middle line:90% 00:26:29.140 --> 00:26:31.090 align:middle line:84% As El Teatro Campesino transition 00:26:31.090 --> 00:26:35.230 align:middle line:84% from its makeshift rural stages to an urban environment, 00:26:35.230 --> 00:26:38.830 align:middle line:84% its creators posed questions about the place of volunteerism 00:26:38.830 --> 00:26:41.080 align:middle line:84% in the circuitry of social production, 00:26:41.080 --> 00:26:45.790 align:middle line:84% and about commitments to ethnic self, family, society, 00:26:45.790 --> 00:26:46.750 align:middle line:90% history-- 00:26:46.750 --> 00:26:49.150 align:middle line:84% insofar as the promises of these values 00:26:49.150 --> 00:26:52.870 align:middle line:84% are the absurd stuff of tragic comedy. 00:26:52.870 --> 00:26:56.650 align:middle line:84% El Teatro Campesino had made charm and swift comic timing 00:26:56.650 --> 00:26:59.170 align:middle line:84% crucial to its own pedagogy of the oppressed, 00:26:59.170 --> 00:27:01.960 align:middle line:84% deflating the power of so-called social fact 00:27:01.960 --> 00:27:05.800 align:middle line:84% by empowering laborers to indulge in the productive play 00:27:05.800 --> 00:27:07.210 align:middle line:90% of role reversal. 00:27:07.210 --> 00:27:10.060 align:middle line:84% Valdez claims, put the rancher on the stage, 00:27:10.060 --> 00:27:12.430 align:middle line:90% but we'll do the acting. 00:27:12.430 --> 00:27:15.730 align:middle line:84% In the style of the skeptical Pachuco archetype 00:27:15.730 --> 00:27:18.730 align:middle line:84% of what is required to be an actor on the street, 00:27:18.730 --> 00:27:20.800 align:middle line:84% El Teatro Campesino's through-line 00:27:20.800 --> 00:27:23.560 align:middle line:84% can be read allegorically as one that 00:27:23.560 --> 00:27:26.830 align:middle line:84% asks the existential questions driving the secret fear 00:27:26.830 --> 00:27:29.980 align:middle line:84% and fantasy of action and agency, 00:27:29.980 --> 00:27:33.190 align:middle line:84% especially when the cultural manifestations and living 00:27:33.190 --> 00:27:38.260 align:middle line:84% styles practiced by a people are subsumed in a recovery 00:27:38.260 --> 00:27:41.290 align:middle line:84% process that later renders them symbolic 00:27:41.290 --> 00:27:44.410 align:middle line:90% of a preordained authenticity. 00:27:44.410 --> 00:27:46.690 align:middle line:84% For a subject in social production, 00:27:46.690 --> 00:27:49.450 align:middle line:84% there are no guidelines for the collective enterprise that 00:27:49.450 --> 00:27:53.080 align:middle line:84% echews a view of the past as fixed and unchanging-- 00:27:53.080 --> 00:27:54.160 align:middle line:90% a museum-- 00:27:54.160 --> 00:27:58.000 align:middle line:84% but rather optimistically, as the open-ended possibility 00:27:58.000 --> 00:28:01.400 align:middle line:90% of the ephemeral archive. 00:28:01.400 --> 00:28:05.570 align:middle line:84% Hazy sun seeps through a window, enhancing 00:28:05.570 --> 00:28:08.210 align:middle line:84% the indoor fluorescent light as it 00:28:08.210 --> 00:28:11.920 align:middle line:84% imbues the scene with a lulled manila glow. 00:28:11.920 --> 00:28:13.960 align:middle line:84% The large window pane at the upper right 00:28:13.960 --> 00:28:17.950 align:middle line:84% is framed in relation to the lighting fixture overhead, 00:28:17.950 --> 00:28:21.070 align:middle line:90% angled at the uppermost left. 00:28:21.070 --> 00:28:23.830 align:middle line:84% These spatial elements occupy the greater area 00:28:23.830 --> 00:28:24.850 align:middle line:90% of the picture-- 00:28:24.850 --> 00:28:29.050 align:middle line:84% the room itself staggered into planes and angles, 00:28:29.050 --> 00:28:30.670 align:middle line:90% as in a stage set-- 00:28:30.670 --> 00:28:33.040 align:middle line:84% even as you begin to configure the couple seated side 00:28:33.040 --> 00:28:37.480 align:middle line:84% by side on a couch, each immersed in reading, possibly 00:28:37.480 --> 00:28:40.060 align:middle line:84% out loud to one another from the printed matter 00:28:40.060 --> 00:28:42.600 align:middle line:90% held in their hands. 00:28:42.600 --> 00:28:44.940 align:middle line:84% The lean youth wears a white T-shirt 00:28:44.940 --> 00:28:47.910 align:middle line:84% and brown corduroy jeans that match his Adidas suede 00:28:47.910 --> 00:28:49.050 align:middle line:90% sneakers. 00:28:49.050 --> 00:28:52.200 align:middle line:84% He leans closer, just barely to the friend 00:28:52.200 --> 00:28:55.170 align:middle line:84% with whom he shares a flocked upholstery 00:28:55.170 --> 00:28:59.080 align:middle line:84% couch of a neo-California colonial design. 00:28:59.080 --> 00:29:01.510 align:middle line:84% That's his jacket and spiral notebook strewn 00:29:01.510 --> 00:29:03.340 align:middle line:90% on the floor next to him. 00:29:03.340 --> 00:29:07.180 align:middle line:84% She sports a black leather coat, shin-high white-strapped 00:29:07.180 --> 00:29:10.690 align:middle line:84% sandals and a deep, red-patterned mini dress 00:29:10.690 --> 00:29:13.870 align:middle line:84% accentuating her smooth, crossed legs. 00:29:13.870 --> 00:29:16.150 align:middle line:84% With her hair styled in an up-do, 00:29:16.150 --> 00:29:19.450 align:middle line:84% her face betrays a self-conscious, or undecided 00:29:19.450 --> 00:29:21.120 align:middle line:90% smile. 00:29:21.120 --> 00:29:23.400 align:middle line:84% Does she ponder her companion's remark, 00:29:23.400 --> 00:29:25.710 align:middle line:84% or is it something about the pages in front of her 00:29:25.710 --> 00:29:27.540 align:middle line:90% that occupies her thoughts? 00:29:27.540 --> 00:29:30.660 align:middle line:84% Or rather, is it the sudden presence of the photographer 00:29:30.660 --> 00:29:32.040 align:middle line:90% clicking the shutter? 00:29:32.040 --> 00:29:34.020 align:middle line:84% Are the ocher hues in this interior 00:29:34.020 --> 00:29:36.690 align:middle line:84% due to an overcast layer through the foliage, 00:29:36.690 --> 00:29:41.080 align:middle line:84% or to the 40-year fade of a slide transparency? 00:29:41.080 --> 00:29:45.010 align:middle line:84% The moment hangs on such questions of physical relation 00:29:45.010 --> 00:29:47.830 align:middle line:84% and style across time, as it does 00:29:47.830 --> 00:29:49.480 align:middle line:84% on the different shades of their skin 00:29:49.480 --> 00:29:53.470 align:middle line:84% and the indeterminate time of day. 00:29:53.470 --> 00:29:57.040 align:middle line:84% In the early 1970s, photographer Oscar Castillo was in his mid 00:29:57.040 --> 00:29:59.380 align:middle line:84% to late 20s, not much older than the two 00:29:59.380 --> 00:30:01.270 align:middle line:90% students in the photograph. 00:30:01.270 --> 00:30:04.270 align:middle line:84% Chicano identity, too, was still in the making, 00:30:04.270 --> 00:30:07.600 align:middle line:84% working through its own internal conflicts and its association 00:30:07.600 --> 00:30:11.880 align:middle line:84% with the struggle of other oppressed peoples. 00:30:11.880 --> 00:30:14.730 align:middle line:84% A few years before this picture was taken, 00:30:14.730 --> 00:30:18.090 align:middle line:84% the former Los Angeles Times journalist Rubén Salazar 00:30:18.090 --> 00:30:21.600 align:middle line:84% reported that quote, relations between Mexican-Americans 00:30:21.600 --> 00:30:23.880 align:middle line:84% and Black activists in California colleges 00:30:23.880 --> 00:30:26.640 align:middle line:84% and universities, which are cool at best, 00:30:26.640 --> 00:30:29.790 align:middle line:84% have deteriorated as a result of a Chicano walkout during 00:30:29.790 --> 00:30:33.300 align:middle line:84% an educational opportunity workshop at UC Santa Barbara, 00:30:33.300 --> 00:30:35.520 align:middle line:90% end quote. 00:30:35.520 --> 00:30:38.100 align:middle line:84% Castillo, an alumnus of San Fernando Valley State 00:30:38.100 --> 00:30:40.200 align:middle line:84% College, later Cal State Northridge, 00:30:40.200 --> 00:30:42.630 align:middle line:84% was seasoned in the Mexican-American student 00:30:42.630 --> 00:30:44.700 align:middle line:84% movement that advanced civil rights even 00:30:44.700 --> 00:30:47.700 align:middle line:84% as it ignited youthful conviction across university 00:30:47.700 --> 00:30:49.020 align:middle line:90% campuses. 00:30:49.020 --> 00:30:51.810 align:middle line:84% Students had already called for a curricular restructuring 00:30:51.810 --> 00:30:54.120 align:middle line:84% so that the education universities provided 00:30:54.120 --> 00:30:56.400 align:middle line:84% could speak to the knowledge and histories 00:30:56.400 --> 00:30:58.890 align:middle line:84% of underrepresented communities-- 00:30:58.890 --> 00:31:02.370 align:middle line:90% the rise of Chicano studies. 00:31:02.370 --> 00:31:05.640 align:middle line:84% Castillo was among the handful of photographers 00:31:05.640 --> 00:31:08.520 align:middle line:84% who had documented the Chicano Moratorium, 00:31:08.520 --> 00:31:11.160 align:middle line:84% the Anti-Vietnam War demonstration in East Los 00:31:11.160 --> 00:31:13.650 align:middle line:84% Angeles that led to police hostility 00:31:13.650 --> 00:31:16.320 align:middle line:84% and subsequent outbreak resulting 00:31:16.320 --> 00:31:20.310 align:middle line:84% in considerable property damage, 400 arrests, and three 00:31:20.310 --> 00:31:21.240 align:middle line:90% fatalities. 00:31:21.240 --> 00:31:25.860 align:middle line:90% 00:31:25.860 --> 00:31:30.090 align:middle line:84% Most shocking was the death of Rubén Salazar, 00:31:30.090 --> 00:31:33.270 align:middle line:84% who had sought respite in the Silver Dollar Café from 00:31:33.270 --> 00:31:37.350 align:middle line:84% the violence being waged against the protesters outside. 00:31:37.350 --> 00:31:40.320 align:middle line:84% In the already disproportionate police offensive, 00:31:40.320 --> 00:31:44.220 align:middle line:84% Deputy Sheriff Thomas Wilson fired a tear gas projectile 00:31:44.220 --> 00:31:46.110 align:middle line:90% at Salazar's head. 00:31:46.110 --> 00:31:48.150 align:middle line:84% The journalist was killed instantly. 00:31:48.150 --> 00:31:50.790 align:middle line:90% 00:31:50.790 --> 00:31:53.250 align:middle line:84% Appropriate to the subject of reading 00:31:53.250 --> 00:31:55.350 align:middle line:84% is the permanent marker graffiti on the wall 00:31:55.350 --> 00:31:57.390 align:middle line:90% behind the studious couple-- 00:31:57.390 --> 00:32:01.530 align:middle line:84% Victor de El Centro; Manuel Carrillo de Aztlán. 00:32:01.530 --> 00:32:04.920 align:middle line:84% For me, the photograph similarly holds a place for what Ramón 00:32:04.920 --> 00:32:08.340 align:middle line:84% Gutiérrez calls the spatial concept of community. 00:32:08.340 --> 00:32:11.850 align:middle line:84% Just prior to the protests, or the collective demonstrations, 00:32:11.850 --> 00:32:14.610 align:middle line:84% and despite the inter-ethnic arguments of the kind 00:32:14.610 --> 00:32:17.460 align:middle line:84% represented by the walkout at an educational opportunity 00:32:17.460 --> 00:32:22.020 align:middle line:84% workshop, instead the picture insinuates the promise 00:32:22.020 --> 00:32:26.370 align:middle line:84% of less visible moments of intimacy and alliance, that is, 00:32:26.370 --> 00:32:29.250 align:middle line:90% of politics by other means. 00:32:29.250 --> 00:32:32.070 align:middle line:84% To the extent that the picture hinges on the desire 00:32:32.070 --> 00:32:36.600 align:middle line:84% to take action, are the youth studying, or drawing up plans 00:32:36.600 --> 00:32:39.005 align:middle line:90% for an imminent demonstration? 00:32:39.005 --> 00:32:40.380 align:middle line:84% The then and there of the picture 00:32:40.380 --> 00:32:44.460 align:middle line:84% can only be as undecided as that inscrutable smile, 00:32:44.460 --> 00:32:47.610 align:middle line:84% or as inadvertent as the connection still activated 00:32:47.610 --> 00:32:49.230 align:middle line:90% within the frame. 00:32:49.230 --> 00:32:51.420 align:middle line:84% Proper names on the wall behind them, 00:32:51.420 --> 00:32:55.710 align:middle line:84% everyday life at California Polytechnic University, 00:32:55.710 --> 00:32:58.590 align:middle line:84% the gladness of working together and the complicity 00:32:58.590 --> 00:33:01.830 align:middle line:84% of joint effort, and the social possibility-- 00:33:01.830 --> 00:33:05.460 align:middle line:84% our present-- awaiting those eventual graduates 00:33:05.460 --> 00:33:07.170 align:middle line:90% beyond the amber glow. 00:33:07.170 --> 00:33:10.210 align:middle line:90% 00:33:10.210 --> 00:33:13.870 align:middle line:84% In that glow, or glimmer, is marked 00:33:13.870 --> 00:33:17.260 align:middle line:84% the poetic justice required to tell narratives of sight 00:33:17.260 --> 00:33:20.290 align:middle line:90% and sound in transformation. 00:33:20.290 --> 00:33:24.190 align:middle line:84% To be in surplus of a scene is to be simultaneously attached 00:33:24.190 --> 00:33:27.670 align:middle line:84% to the setting and estranged from it. 00:33:27.670 --> 00:33:29.980 align:middle line:84% Looking back at episodes past both 00:33:29.980 --> 00:33:34.930 align:middle line:84% lived and unlived I can view such excess as a value, 00:33:34.930 --> 00:33:39.280 align:middle line:84% as that which makes something accessible to experience out 00:33:39.280 --> 00:33:43.030 align:middle line:84% of a general diminishing, a glimmer reflecting 00:33:43.030 --> 00:33:46.240 align:middle line:84% that unremarked violence at the picture's margin that 00:33:46.240 --> 00:33:51.250 align:middle line:84% gives surface reality a natural semblance, a neutral one. 00:33:51.250 --> 00:33:53.440 align:middle line:90% My conflict is this-- 00:33:53.440 --> 00:33:57.130 align:middle line:84% the impossibility of a viewpoint poised at the places 00:33:57.130 --> 00:33:58.990 align:middle line:84% that determine for me and inclusion 00:33:58.990 --> 00:34:02.830 align:middle line:84% in, or an exclusion from, categories greater 00:34:02.830 --> 00:34:06.440 align:middle line:84% than the individual, but that so dislocate me 00:34:06.440 --> 00:34:08.870 align:middle line:84% from my surroundings as to resist too 00:34:08.870 --> 00:34:11.840 align:middle line:90% easy allocations of meaning-- 00:34:11.840 --> 00:34:13.940 align:middle line:90% an ethics. 00:34:13.940 --> 00:34:16.570 align:middle line:84% There is no mystery other than the values 00:34:16.570 --> 00:34:20.949 align:middle line:84% of a self, attributes, there is no-- excuse 00:34:20.949 --> 00:34:22.960 align:middle line:84% me, there is no mystery other than the values 00:34:22.960 --> 00:34:26.170 align:middle line:84% a self attributes to the situational world 00:34:26.170 --> 00:34:29.830 align:middle line:84% where, under a dimming glow, symbolic actions have 00:34:29.830 --> 00:34:33.280 align:middle line:84% a stake in escaping the instrumental life. 00:34:33.280 --> 00:34:35.710 align:middle line:84% The quality of light and subjectivity 00:34:35.710 --> 00:34:38.290 align:middle line:84% that is a provisional glimmer reminds us 00:34:38.290 --> 00:34:42.159 align:middle line:84% that the world can readily be stripped of its halo. 00:34:42.159 --> 00:34:46.150 align:middle line:84% When all that is solid melts into air, marks, 00:34:46.150 --> 00:34:49.239 align:middle line:84% and we are made to see the real conditions of our lives, 00:34:49.239 --> 00:34:51.820 align:middle line:84% the syllabic self seeks reflection 00:34:51.820 --> 00:34:54.699 align:middle line:84% in settings of experience and experiment. 00:34:54.699 --> 00:34:59.380 align:middle line:84% The cover of ground, if only as a temporary residence. 00:34:59.380 --> 00:35:03.250 align:middle line:84% That transience may quicken us to substitute the vanishing 00:35:03.250 --> 00:35:07.330 align:middle line:84% with so many constituent parts, reanimated. 00:35:07.330 --> 00:35:11.620 align:middle line:84% The artwork or poem, even when deprived of a halo, 00:35:11.620 --> 00:35:14.680 align:middle line:84% even when released from its fixity and essence, 00:35:14.680 --> 00:35:18.460 align:middle line:84% is not without a radiance of a convenient forgetting, 00:35:18.460 --> 00:35:22.090 align:middle line:84% as when in any quest account, the amulet found 00:35:22.090 --> 00:35:24.190 align:middle line:90% is really a refinding-- 00:35:24.190 --> 00:35:26.110 align:middle line:90% Freud. 00:35:26.110 --> 00:35:28.930 align:middle line:84% In its unhurried measure, inasmuch as speed 00:35:28.930 --> 00:35:31.870 align:middle line:84% for speed's sake endangers the sensual opportunity 00:35:31.870 --> 00:35:35.380 align:middle line:84% of the world and, everyday-- because so beckoning-- 00:35:35.380 --> 00:35:37.150 align:middle line:90% its recurring custody-- 00:35:37.150 --> 00:35:40.750 align:middle line:84% the words exact a style of integrity. 00:35:40.750 --> 00:35:43.150 align:middle line:90% You can hear its command. 00:35:43.150 --> 00:35:46.900 align:middle line:84% Do we want humanity at the service of justice, 00:35:46.900 --> 00:35:49.540 align:middle line:84% or justice at the service of humanity? 00:35:49.540 --> 00:35:53.280 align:middle line:90% 00:35:53.280 --> 00:35:55.890 align:middle line:84% In Wartime Kiss, Alexander Nemerov 00:35:55.890 --> 00:35:58.260 align:middle line:84% describes the act of making history, 00:35:58.260 --> 00:36:01.080 align:middle line:84% of being in the presence of the past, 00:36:01.080 --> 00:36:05.730 align:middle line:84% as a search for fragments, for images, for archival documents, 00:36:05.730 --> 00:36:08.880 align:middle line:84% for connections that feel like a disturbance 00:36:08.880 --> 00:36:11.610 align:middle line:90% on the surface of things. 00:36:11.610 --> 00:36:16.140 align:middle line:84% Mexican artist Magali Lara provides an attendant animation 00:36:16.140 --> 00:36:19.740 align:middle line:84% of that disturbance in terms of self estrangement, 00:36:19.740 --> 00:36:23.940 align:middle line:84% the custody that which is prone to perish 00:36:23.940 --> 00:36:27.660 align:middle line:84% and guaranteed to die, a cellular striving ever 00:36:27.660 --> 00:36:29.940 align:middle line:84% to be more when patterns of the organism 00:36:29.940 --> 00:36:31.920 align:middle line:90% structure the imagination. 00:36:31.920 --> 00:36:37.080 align:middle line:84% Life or lifelike varieties in mutual and ever regenerate 00:36:37.080 --> 00:36:38.868 align:middle line:90% transfigurations. 00:36:38.868 --> 00:40:42.254 align:middle line:90% [MUSIC PLAYING] 00:40:42.254 --> 00:40:45.780 align:middle line:90% 00:40:45.780 --> 00:40:50.280 align:middle line:84% My desire is to assemble scenes and daydreams in search 00:40:50.280 --> 00:40:53.430 align:middle line:90% of a surrogate autobiography. 00:40:53.430 --> 00:40:57.720 align:middle line:84% Memoirs by other means, group portraits with liminal figures 00:40:57.720 --> 00:41:00.030 align:middle line:84% that make possible an understanding 00:41:00.030 --> 00:41:04.590 align:middle line:84% of our involvements with others, both familiar and unfamiliar-- 00:41:04.590 --> 00:41:06.780 align:middle line:90% an ephemeral archive. 00:41:06.780 --> 00:41:09.210 align:middle line:84% I want this immigrant couple from the perspective 00:41:09.210 --> 00:41:13.590 align:middle line:84% of the present and the vantage point of Griffith Park in 1970 00:41:13.590 --> 00:41:16.500 align:middle line:84% to gaze back at me with the historical consciousness 00:41:16.500 --> 00:41:20.430 align:middle line:84% of a present that views the past only as an image which flashes 00:41:20.430 --> 00:41:22.950 align:middle line:84% up at the instant when it can be recognized, 00:41:22.950 --> 00:41:25.630 align:middle line:90% and is never seen again. 00:41:25.630 --> 00:41:28.680 align:middle line:84% The experience of departure, disappearance, 00:41:28.680 --> 00:41:30.630 align:middle line:84% and the fleeting social relations 00:41:30.630 --> 00:41:34.470 align:middle line:84% that is a premonition of demise, adjoin to Walter Benjamin's 00:41:34.470 --> 00:41:38.160 align:middle line:84% well-worn but always stunning formulation, whereby 00:41:38.160 --> 00:41:40.530 align:middle line:84% to articulate the past historically 00:41:40.530 --> 00:41:43.530 align:middle line:84% is to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up 00:41:43.530 --> 00:41:46.830 align:middle line:90% at a moment of danger. 00:41:46.830 --> 00:41:48.725 align:middle line:84% I want the alternate futures that 00:41:48.725 --> 00:41:50.100 align:middle line:84% might have been possible for them 00:41:50.100 --> 00:41:53.370 align:middle line:84% once looming below in the city expanse 00:41:53.370 --> 00:41:57.270 align:middle line:84% to stagger now the conclusions of our historical circumstance, 00:41:57.270 --> 00:42:00.000 align:middle line:84% the present, as being anything but composed 00:42:00.000 --> 00:42:03.600 align:middle line:84% of so many loose ends, false starts, scrap 00:42:03.600 --> 00:42:07.290 align:middle line:84% remainders of experience, or public opinion, the stuff 00:42:07.290 --> 00:42:11.310 align:middle line:84% of self-conscious gestures, cruel ironies, 00:42:11.310 --> 00:42:15.630 align:middle line:84% unsubstantiated exchange or contrast, a frame through which 00:42:15.630 --> 00:42:19.830 align:middle line:84% to view the horizon of relations. 00:42:19.830 --> 00:42:23.970 align:middle line:84% Wittgenstein famously described certain phenomena 00:42:23.970 --> 00:42:27.210 align:middle line:84% as such a wonder at the existence of the world, 00:42:27.210 --> 00:42:30.450 align:middle line:84% that one is inclined to use such phrases as, 00:42:30.450 --> 00:42:33.480 align:middle line:84% how extraordinary that anything should exist, 00:42:33.480 --> 00:42:37.650 align:middle line:84% or how extraordinary that the world should exist. 00:42:37.650 --> 00:42:39.630 align:middle line:84% The philosopher of family resemblance 00:42:39.630 --> 00:42:42.570 align:middle line:84% came to see that these nonsensical expressions were 00:42:42.570 --> 00:42:45.180 align:middle line:84% not nonsensical, only that he had not yet 00:42:45.180 --> 00:42:48.030 align:middle line:90% found the correct expressions. 00:42:48.030 --> 00:42:49.920 align:middle line:84% What he sought in those terms was 00:42:49.920 --> 00:42:52.350 align:middle line:84% to go beyond the world, that is to say 00:42:52.350 --> 00:42:54.840 align:middle line:90% beyond significant language. 00:42:54.840 --> 00:42:58.470 align:middle line:84% Ethics and aesthetics for Wittgenstein 00:42:58.470 --> 00:43:02.220 align:middle line:84% were this hopeless, absolutely hopeless inclination 00:43:02.220 --> 00:43:05.430 align:middle line:84% to brush up against the walls of our cage. 00:43:05.430 --> 00:43:08.160 align:middle line:84% That is, to ask whether it is possible to be 00:43:08.160 --> 00:43:11.130 align:middle line:84% both autonomous and foreign to myself, 00:43:11.130 --> 00:43:13.530 align:middle line:90% diagonal and self-possessed. 00:43:13.530 --> 00:43:17.110 align:middle line:90% 00:43:17.110 --> 00:43:19.420 align:middle line:90% But it never really works. 00:43:19.420 --> 00:43:22.930 align:middle line:84% The liminal figures I evoke in my doubling evanesce 00:43:22.930 --> 00:43:26.020 align:middle line:84% as suddenly as they appear, convenient placeholders 00:43:26.020 --> 00:43:30.010 align:middle line:84% of inaction or the projections of an empathic experience, 00:43:30.010 --> 00:43:33.770 align:middle line:90% now foreboding, now hopeful. 00:43:33.770 --> 00:43:36.590 align:middle line:84% One day I'll have to line the words and images 00:43:36.590 --> 00:43:40.220 align:middle line:84% of my surrogate cells into a talk that, like Magali Lara's 00:43:40.220 --> 00:43:44.360 align:middle line:84% animation, so reflects the irrepressible life as 00:43:44.360 --> 00:43:47.810 align:middle line:84% to ask whether those apparitions make legible an emotion, 00:43:47.810 --> 00:43:52.200 align:middle line:84% or so ground it as to be sufficient to its life form. 00:43:52.200 --> 00:43:54.480 align:middle line:84% To wonder, with my liminal figures, 00:43:54.480 --> 00:43:58.470 align:middle line:84% about the everyday evictions from an already impermanent 00:43:58.470 --> 00:44:02.490 align:middle line:84% home that makes of my racial selfhood an uncanny kinship 00:44:02.490 --> 00:44:04.540 align:middle line:90% with others. 00:44:04.540 --> 00:44:07.870 align:middle line:84% If I fail to see myself in the picture, at least 00:44:07.870 --> 00:44:12.730 align:middle line:84% I can find provisional solace again in the amber glow, 00:44:12.730 --> 00:44:18.910 align:middle line:84% in a fight for fluency, in the finding and re-finding, 00:44:18.910 --> 00:44:22.360 align:middle line:84% in the quest for the correct expression, 00:44:22.360 --> 00:44:28.820 align:middle line:84% my disturbance on the surface of things, an ephemeral archive, 00:44:28.820 --> 00:44:33.270 align:middle line:84% all that I can see and all that I can hear 00:44:33.270 --> 00:44:36.190 align:middle line:90% are surrounded by these walls. 00:44:36.190 --> 00:44:40.180 align:middle line:84% How extraordinary that anything should exist. 00:44:40.180 --> 00:44:41.500 align:middle line:90% Thanks. 00:44:41.500 --> 00:44:42.000 align:middle line:90%