WEBVTT

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This is-- I have a
passion for Peking opera.

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And this is a poem called
"Duration of Water,"

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and it's written after--

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a princess Yang Kuei-Fei who
was married to the prince

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but the emperor fell in
love with her and it--

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all the complications,
she finally

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hung herself with a white scarf.

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"Duration of Water."

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"So that I make you a
microcosm or symbolic center

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of the public like a
theater with hundreds

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of painted scenes
combining and recombining

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in order to exaggerate
situations of joy or pain

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on stage.

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Instead of five short
songs about you,

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accompanying dancers who
seem to float on their backs

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in still water, as the empyrean.

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They would be the water motor.

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Three stones protrude
from the water,

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and three instruments combine
and repeat a simple scale,

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but some passions only
resolve with fire and weather

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catastrophes.

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The orchestra
nevertheless clears

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like foliage for
Yang Kuei-Fei's sigh

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when she hears the
emperor wants her.

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There is a red line on
the boards I can follow

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in the thick smoke or mist.

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The shoulders of the
man changed scale

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as if I had been manipulating
the field inside a small box

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to see how light can
transform me into foliage

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as a sexual punishment.

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The music can take
on the cold or heat

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of the air like blue chameleons
on the limbs of the tree

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as is if you could look through
the leaves into the empyrean.

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I can turn back my sleeve
with a multiplicity

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of detail of the battleground.

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The colors combine into
legible hues at a distance.

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There is a craft at work
to reconcile emotion

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in a purely speculative
ambience tracking

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the last area like a
duration of water, which

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is a piece of white silk."