WEBVTT

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Get into a little music here.

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I guess it's been--
three years ago,

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September, I first
started trying

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to learn how to play saxophone.

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So I guess that's going to
have some kind of influence.

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A tenor sax.

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Anyway, I know that language--
there is power in language,

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you know, and
really concentrating

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on what things mean
and how they mean,

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not the usual media run
of magazines and so on,

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where it's very cheap.

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But I know that
words can do things.

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They do have power.

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So I wrote this poem.

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And I know that powers--

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that poems can be very useful.

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So I wrote this poem
called "Healing Animal"

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to heal a sore throat.

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I've heard it works.

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You know, we'll see.

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And so I was putting things
in it that might help.

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And I also have
always wanted to-- you

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put this story in a poem that
Josiah Moore told me about.

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He was telling me
about his uncle.

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They call it Chief Russell
Moore is what they called him.

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And he played the trombone.

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And he used to play
in all these big bands

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and these great bands.

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And I guess he told about
sometime during the '30s

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and '40s, these bands would
go from New York to California

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on trains.

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And one time, they stopped
out at, I guess, Santa Rosa

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or out on the Papago Reservation
and played for the people.

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And I've always liked
that image of this band's

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out there in the desert
playing for the Papago people.

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So that's another
reason I wanted to--

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I wrote this poem is I
wanted to put that in here.

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And then thinking about music,
and saxophone, and so on,

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the throat is very
much involved.

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So this is called
"Healing Animal."

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On this day, when you have
needed to sleep forever.

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To forgive the pained animal
needing your throat, sleep,

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your back curled
against my belly.

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I will make you
something to drink

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from a cup of frothy stars.

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From the somewhere, there is
the perfect sound called up

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from the best-told stories
of benevolent gods, who

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have nothing better to do.

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And I ask you what
bitter words are ruining

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your soft-skinned village.

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Because I want to
make a poem that

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will cup the inside
of your throat

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like the fire in the palm of
a healing animal, like the way

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Coltrane knew love
in the fluid shape

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of a saxophone that could change
into the wings of a blue angel.

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He tasted the bittersweet
roots of this crazy world

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and spit it out into the
center of our musical globe.

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Josiah's uncle brought his
music to the Papago center

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of the world.

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And music climbed
out of his trombone,

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into the collective
heartbeat of his tribe.

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They had never heard
anything like it.

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But it was the way
they had remembered,

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the way Chief Russell
Moore must have known when

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he sang for the very first
time through the brass-boned

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monster.

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All through the
last few nights, I

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have watched you fight
for yourself with the eyes

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I was warned against opening.

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You think you are asleep
when you turn off the lights.

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And we blend into the
same hot-skinned sky.

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The land called Miracle is the
daughter you never died for.

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And she stands at
the edge of the bed

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with her slim hand
against your cheek.

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Your music is a crystal
wall with a thousand

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mouths, kin to trains and sounds
that haven't yet been invented.

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And you walk back and
forth through it to know

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that it won't betray you.

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And in the last seconds
before the breaking light,

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when you are nearly broken
with a secret antelope

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of compassion, when the lost
guardian angel has flown west

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to the Pacific to
see someone else

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through their nightly
death, a home fire

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is slowly kindled in the
village of your body.

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And the smoke of dawn turns
all your worded enemies

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into ashes that will never rise.

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Mythic cattle graze in your
throat, washing it with milk.

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And you will sing forever.

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[APPLAUSE]

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OK.

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