WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.802 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.802 --> 00:00:01.760 align:middle line:90% Friends, are you ready? 00:00:01.760 --> 00:00:02.260 align:middle line:90% Are you. 00:00:02.260 --> 00:00:03.560 align:middle line:90% Are you OK with this? 00:00:03.560 --> 00:00:04.060 align:middle line:90% I'm nervous. 00:00:04.060 --> 00:00:09.957 align:middle line:90% 00:00:09.957 --> 00:00:14.940 align:middle line:84% So memoir about becoming a poet-- 00:00:14.940 --> 00:00:18.210 align:middle line:84% this particular essay, it bops around in time, 00:00:18.210 --> 00:00:20.550 align:middle line:90% but it opens in 1991. 00:00:20.550 --> 00:00:21.980 align:middle line:90% I'm 26. 00:00:21.980 --> 00:00:24.090 align:middle line:84% I'm in graduate school in New York City. 00:00:24.090 --> 00:00:27.210 align:middle line:84% I have also started traditional psychoanalysis, 00:00:27.210 --> 00:00:33.690 align:middle line:84% like on the couch, dude behind me going, say more about that. 00:00:33.690 --> 00:00:36.940 align:middle line:84% My work study job was to show slides. 00:00:36.940 --> 00:00:39.270 align:middle line:84% Do you guys remember slide carousels? 00:00:39.270 --> 00:00:44.310 align:middle line:84% So my work study job was to show slides for art history classes 00:00:44.310 --> 00:00:47.550 align:middle line:84% at the NYU grad school, which was housed 00:00:47.550 --> 00:00:50.280 align:middle line:84% in one of the robber baron mansions 00:00:50.280 --> 00:00:53.020 align:middle line:84% across from Central Park called Duke House. 00:00:53.020 --> 00:00:56.970 align:middle line:84% And so I used to sit up in this what had been the orchestra 00:00:56.970 --> 00:00:59.765 align:middle line:84% area overlooking the ballroom that 00:00:59.765 --> 00:01:02.390 align:middle line:84% had been turned into the lecture hall, and I would show slides. 00:01:02.390 --> 00:01:06.780 align:middle line:90% 00:01:06.780 --> 00:01:09.040 align:middle line:84% Gramercy Park makes an appearance. 00:01:09.040 --> 00:01:13.360 align:middle line:84% And if you've ever seen Gramercy Park, it's like a locked Eden. 00:01:13.360 --> 00:01:16.560 align:middle line:84% Only the people who live around Gramercy Park 00:01:16.560 --> 00:01:20.760 align:middle line:84% have a key to get into Gramercy Park, which just infuriated me 00:01:20.760 --> 00:01:23.730 align:middle line:84% when I moved to New York City because I wanted to get 00:01:23.730 --> 00:01:27.510 align:middle line:90% in there, and I could not. 00:01:27.510 --> 00:01:29.700 align:middle line:90% This is an essay on images. 00:01:29.700 --> 00:01:33.493 align:middle line:84% But we will visit my childhood, which had its troubles. 00:01:33.493 --> 00:01:36.410 align:middle line:90% 00:01:36.410 --> 00:01:42.470 align:middle line:84% There are 12 sections, and I hope that each section moves 00:01:42.470 --> 00:01:44.600 align:middle line:90% like a slide in a carousel. 00:01:44.600 --> 00:01:50.240 align:middle line:84% So when I say the number, the slide has shifted. 00:01:50.240 --> 00:01:52.850 align:middle line:90% Are we good? 00:01:52.850 --> 00:01:54.023 align:middle line:90% "House of Feels." 00:01:54.023 --> 00:01:57.015 align:middle line:90% 00:01:57.015 --> 00:01:57.515 align:middle line:90% One. 00:01:57.515 --> 00:02:00.340 align:middle line:90% 00:02:00.340 --> 00:02:03.160 align:middle line:84% I'm going to tell you about something that helped me once, 00:02:03.160 --> 00:02:06.340 align:middle line:84% when I was a young woman, living for the first time in New York 00:02:06.340 --> 00:02:10.860 align:middle line:90% City, grieving and unmoored. 00:02:10.860 --> 00:02:13.580 align:middle line:90% What was I grieving? 00:02:13.580 --> 00:02:16.090 align:middle line:90% An unhappy childhood. 00:02:16.090 --> 00:02:18.590 align:middle line:90% Why was I unmoored? 00:02:18.590 --> 00:02:21.560 align:middle line:84% I hadn't realized how unhappy I was, 00:02:21.560 --> 00:02:28.230 align:middle line:84% which is a testament to how far I lived outside my body then. 00:02:28.230 --> 00:02:31.050 align:middle line:84% Sometimes I'd skip the subway and make the long journey 00:02:31.050 --> 00:02:34.890 align:middle line:84% by foot between my fourth floor walk-up in the decidedly still 00:02:34.890 --> 00:02:38.730 align:middle line:84% grungy East Village to Duke House at East 78th and 5th 00:02:38.730 --> 00:02:39.810 align:middle line:90% Avenue. 00:02:39.810 --> 00:02:43.410 align:middle line:84% Duke House was the site of New York University's Institute 00:02:43.410 --> 00:02:47.610 align:middle line:84% of Fine Arts, where graduate students studied art history 00:02:47.610 --> 00:02:50.070 align:middle line:90% and curation and restoration, 00:02:50.070 --> 00:02:54.090 align:middle line:84% and where for them, I conducted the duties of my grad school 00:02:54.090 --> 00:02:56.610 align:middle line:84% work study job as a slide projectionist 00:02:56.610 --> 00:02:59.640 align:middle line:84% in the converted orchestra balcony above the ballroom 00:02:59.640 --> 00:03:03.190 align:middle line:90% that was now a lecture hall. 00:03:03.190 --> 00:03:06.220 align:middle line:84% I mostly showed slides for classes 00:03:06.220 --> 00:03:11.200 align:middle line:84% in Medieval European art, where religious images dominated. 00:03:11.200 --> 00:03:14.980 align:middle line:84% I began to notice in the details of paintings and altarpieces 00:03:14.980 --> 00:03:18.280 align:middle line:84% I projected on screen, the dispassionate way 00:03:18.280 --> 00:03:21.730 align:middle line:84% angels heralded the most extraordinary events: 00:03:21.730 --> 00:03:25.900 align:middle line:84% the virgin birth of a god, for instance, or the resurrection 00:03:25.900 --> 00:03:27.610 align:middle line:90% of the dead. 00:03:27.610 --> 00:03:31.690 align:middle line:84% These angels seemed creatures of supernatural calm 00:03:31.690 --> 00:03:34.940 align:middle line:84% because they were creatures of light? 00:03:34.940 --> 00:03:38.870 align:middle line:84% That was all I wanted then, light, 00:03:38.870 --> 00:03:42.145 align:middle line:90% to blast the feeling out of me. 00:03:42.145 --> 00:03:45.130 align:middle line:90% 00:03:45.130 --> 00:03:47.760 align:middle line:90% Two. 00:03:47.760 --> 00:03:50.460 align:middle line:84% Whenever I made the trek to Duke House by foot, 00:03:50.460 --> 00:03:53.700 align:middle line:84% I'd pass by the Psychoanalytic Institute. 00:03:53.700 --> 00:03:56.160 align:middle line:84% That's how I've kept it in mind all these years, 00:03:56.160 --> 00:03:57.660 align:middle line:84% though Google now tells me it must 00:03:57.660 --> 00:03:59.400 align:middle line:84% have been called The Postgraduate 00:03:59.400 --> 00:04:02.100 align:middle line:90% Center for Mental Health. 00:04:02.100 --> 00:04:05.370 align:middle line:84% Some blocks after walking by Gramercy Park, yearning 00:04:05.370 --> 00:04:09.100 align:middle line:84% for a key into that locked Eden, I would see it. 00:04:09.100 --> 00:04:11.710 align:middle line:84% At some point, I pushed through the heavy glass doors 00:04:11.710 --> 00:04:17.779 align:middle line:84% and found out I could go to therapy for $20 a pop. 00:04:17.779 --> 00:04:20.630 align:middle line:84% The floor on which I found the Office of Dr. Kane 00:04:20.630 --> 00:04:24.570 align:middle line:84% featured nothing but doors down a long white hallway. 00:04:24.570 --> 00:04:27.480 align:middle line:84% Each door was usually closed, and each door 00:04:27.480 --> 00:04:30.510 align:middle line:84% was painted a strong French blue, 00:04:30.510 --> 00:04:34.600 align:middle line:84% the white and the blue that has stayed with me. 00:04:34.600 --> 00:04:37.640 align:middle line:84% And the windows along that hallway, 00:04:37.640 --> 00:04:41.620 align:middle line:84% each pane, two pieces of glass, sandwiching 00:04:41.620 --> 00:04:44.820 align:middle line:90% a sheet of chicken wire. 00:04:44.820 --> 00:04:47.670 align:middle line:84% Dr. Kane welcomed me in through one of the blue doors 00:04:47.670 --> 00:04:49.150 align:middle line:90% and shut it behind me. 00:04:49.150 --> 00:04:52.360 align:middle line:84% He motioned to a chair and sat in the one opposite. 00:04:52.360 --> 00:04:55.350 align:middle line:90% He asked me why I'd come. 00:04:55.350 --> 00:04:57.120 align:middle line:84% I mumbled something about not being 00:04:57.120 --> 00:04:59.730 align:middle line:84% able to maintain intimate relationships with men, 00:04:59.730 --> 00:05:03.240 align:middle line:84% which sounded hollow the minute I said it. 00:05:03.240 --> 00:05:05.740 align:middle line:84% It wasn't hollow because it was untrue. 00:05:05.740 --> 00:05:09.510 align:middle line:84% It was hollow because my fitful relationships were a symptom, 00:05:09.510 --> 00:05:13.930 align:middle line:90% not the origin of my agon. 00:05:13.930 --> 00:05:15.760 align:middle line:90% Dr. Kane waited. 00:05:15.760 --> 00:05:20.890 align:middle line:84% Finally, I made my hand swim up and down like a seal, diving 00:05:20.890 --> 00:05:24.450 align:middle line:84% and coming up for air as it streamed from right to left. 00:05:24.450 --> 00:05:28.540 align:middle line:84% I can't take the this of things, I said. 00:05:28.540 --> 00:05:33.010 align:middle line:84% Then with great energy: I want everything to be like this, 00:05:33.010 --> 00:05:36.100 align:middle line:84% and with my hand, cut a steady horizontal 00:05:36.100 --> 00:05:37.500 align:middle line:90% flying through the air. 00:05:37.500 --> 00:05:41.390 align:middle line:90% 00:05:41.390 --> 00:05:44.010 align:middle line:90% Three. 00:05:44.010 --> 00:05:46.920 align:middle line:90% Why was I so averse to feeling? 00:05:46.920 --> 00:05:48.690 align:middle line:84% For the first 10 years of my life, 00:05:48.690 --> 00:05:51.840 align:middle line:84% especially my encounters with feeling were, on the whole, 00:05:51.840 --> 00:05:53.580 align:middle line:90% negative. 00:05:53.580 --> 00:05:56.820 align:middle line:84% A bipolar father, a rager, a plate thrower, 00:05:56.820 --> 00:05:59.340 align:middle line:84% mad Zeus to my mother's controlling, 00:05:59.340 --> 00:06:02.310 align:middle line:90% stone-faced, denying Hera. 00:06:02.310 --> 00:06:04.060 align:middle line:90% So many feelings. 00:06:04.060 --> 00:06:06.960 align:middle line:84% My sisters and I were not allowed to have many. 00:06:06.960 --> 00:06:11.770 align:middle line:84% Feelings belonged first to my father, then to my mother. 00:06:11.770 --> 00:06:14.800 align:middle line:84% The magma of rage that boiled up in my father 00:06:14.800 --> 00:06:16.940 align:middle line:90% at the slightest provocation, 00:06:16.940 --> 00:06:20.680 align:middle line:84% a newspaper not folded, a skirt steak cut with the grain, 00:06:20.680 --> 00:06:23.800 align:middle line:90% was our daily natural disaster. 00:06:23.800 --> 00:06:28.830 align:middle line:84% He was tall, he was big, and his voice was volcanic. 00:06:28.830 --> 00:06:32.100 align:middle line:84% Have you ever experienced the human voice in anger 00:06:32.100 --> 00:06:34.840 align:middle line:90% blasting the air? 00:06:34.840 --> 00:06:37.030 align:middle line:84% More times than I can count, dinner 00:06:37.030 --> 00:06:40.180 align:middle line:84% ended in an explosion of yelling and dishes of meat 00:06:40.180 --> 00:06:41.750 align:middle line:90% smashed to the floor. 00:06:41.750 --> 00:06:44.860 align:middle line:84% For years, I associated these scenes with the phrase, 00:06:44.860 --> 00:06:47.400 align:middle line:90% "bloody murder." 00:06:47.400 --> 00:06:50.130 align:middle line:84% My daily vigils between my father's eruptions 00:06:50.130 --> 00:06:52.290 align:middle line:84% and the wall of my mother's face were sometimes 00:06:52.290 --> 00:06:56.040 align:middle line:84% punctuated by the door-kicking wrath of my middle sister. 00:06:56.040 --> 00:06:57.930 align:middle line:84% She was the only one of the sisters 00:06:57.930 --> 00:06:59.720 align:middle line:90% to claim rage for herself. 00:06:59.720 --> 00:07:02.370 align:middle line:84% My oldest sister and I shrank from it. 00:07:02.370 --> 00:07:05.910 align:middle line:84% Once, in a squabble about chores, she lunged at my father 00:07:05.910 --> 00:07:10.580 align:middle line:84% with a fork, upon which he socked her in the eye. 00:07:10.580 --> 00:07:12.530 align:middle line:84% Whenever the feelings of others welled, 00:07:12.530 --> 00:07:16.040 align:middle line:84% I fled upstairs to my room, site of imaginal escape, 00:07:16.040 --> 00:07:18.110 align:middle line:84% reading, drawing, the construction 00:07:18.110 --> 00:07:21.200 align:middle line:84% of elaborate scenes of dolls and figurines and whatnots 00:07:21.200 --> 00:07:23.240 align:middle line:90% arranged on the tops of books. 00:07:23.240 --> 00:07:25.460 align:middle line:84% These served as platforms for dramas 00:07:25.460 --> 00:07:28.190 align:middle line:84% that finally disappointed because they would not 00:07:28.190 --> 00:07:30.960 align:middle line:90% come alive outside my head. 00:07:30.960 --> 00:07:34.470 align:middle line:84% I built these tableaux anyway, discovering in construction 00:07:34.470 --> 00:07:36.940 align:middle line:90% a method of self-forgetting. 00:07:36.940 --> 00:07:40.660 align:middle line:84% The solitary play disturbed my mother, who would inevitably 00:07:40.660 --> 00:07:43.480 align:middle line:84% come upstairs, throw open the bedroom door and demand I 00:07:43.480 --> 00:07:45.440 align:middle line:90% go outside. 00:07:45.440 --> 00:07:49.340 align:middle line:84% Going outside meant being accosted by the gangly girl who 00:07:49.340 --> 00:07:51.330 align:middle line:90% lived two doors down. 00:07:51.330 --> 00:07:56.550 align:middle line:90% I will call her A. 00:07:56.550 --> 00:07:58.830 align:middle line:90% Four. 00:07:58.830 --> 00:08:03.510 align:middle line:84% Once, welling with feeling, A grabbed and held my arm down 00:08:03.510 --> 00:08:05.880 align:middle line:84% by the wrist, threatening to take my blood with a needle 00:08:05.880 --> 00:08:09.460 align:middle line:84% and tube she stole from her grandmother's nurse bag. 00:08:09.460 --> 00:08:11.110 align:middle line:84% She liked to lock me in a closet when 00:08:11.110 --> 00:08:12.940 align:middle line:90% it was time for me to go home. 00:08:12.940 --> 00:08:15.490 align:middle line:84% She liked to pinch my pudgy stomach under the table 00:08:15.490 --> 00:08:18.060 align:middle line:84% while her unreadable mother served us a snack, 00:08:18.060 --> 00:08:20.350 align:middle line:84% pinch and hold on for as long and as hard 00:08:20.350 --> 00:08:23.440 align:middle line:84% as she could while I stayed silent. 00:08:23.440 --> 00:08:26.590 align:middle line:84% Taunts at the bus stop, petty ambushes, 00:08:26.590 --> 00:08:29.530 align:middle line:84% hair yanks, back shoves, side pinches, 00:08:29.530 --> 00:08:33.929 align:middle line:84% mimicking my protests and cries with a sneer. 00:08:33.929 --> 00:08:39.380 align:middle line:84% Occasionally, I stood frozen, as A tortured someone else. 00:08:39.380 --> 00:08:42.380 align:middle line:84% Once, as she egged him on, her silent brother 00:08:42.380 --> 00:08:45.230 align:middle line:90% came at me with a 2 by 4. 00:08:45.230 --> 00:08:48.500 align:middle line:84% Once, as she egged him on, her silent brother 00:08:48.500 --> 00:08:50.790 align:middle line:84% threw a neighbor girl in the swimming pool 00:08:50.790 --> 00:08:53.255 align:middle line:84% after she told us she couldn't swim. 00:08:53.255 --> 00:08:57.042 align:middle line:90% 00:08:57.042 --> 00:08:59.210 align:middle line:90% Five. 00:08:59.210 --> 00:09:01.730 align:middle line:84% This went on for years, until looming puberty 00:09:01.730 --> 00:09:03.360 align:middle line:90% turned A's attention. 00:09:03.360 --> 00:09:05.410 align:middle line:84% Why did I keep going over to her house? 00:09:05.410 --> 00:09:07.280 align:middle line:90% Because my mother told me to. 00:09:07.280 --> 00:09:09.830 align:middle line:90% I was an obedient child. 00:09:09.830 --> 00:09:12.570 align:middle line:84% And I wasn't the only kid suffering at A's hands. 00:09:12.570 --> 00:09:14.870 align:middle line:90% Why didn't we all protest? 00:09:14.870 --> 00:09:18.210 align:middle line:84% Because the 2 by 4 did not connect with my head. 00:09:18.210 --> 00:09:20.930 align:middle line:90% The neighbor girl didn't drown. 00:09:20.930 --> 00:09:23.990 align:middle line:84% Mainly what A waged was psychological terror, 00:09:23.990 --> 00:09:26.570 align:middle line:90% meant to decimate the spirit. 00:09:26.570 --> 00:09:32.220 align:middle line:84% I think now, her spirit must have been trapped in a secret. 00:09:32.220 --> 00:09:34.560 align:middle line:84% My automatic response to A's assaults 00:09:34.560 --> 00:09:38.010 align:middle line:84% was to withstand them as the rage at home had taught me. 00:09:38.010 --> 00:09:40.140 align:middle line:84% And whatever the neighborhood kids were enduring 00:09:40.140 --> 00:09:43.750 align:middle line:84% at their homes, the fact was, it was the 1970s. 00:09:43.750 --> 00:09:46.260 align:middle line:84% Most of us were being raised by the stoic children 00:09:46.260 --> 00:09:47.950 align:middle line:90% of the silent generation. 00:09:47.950 --> 00:09:50.220 align:middle line:84% Like them, we were supposed to adhere 00:09:50.220 --> 00:09:54.920 align:middle line:84% as best we could to an inviolable domestic omerta. 00:09:54.920 --> 00:09:58.640 align:middle line:90% One did not tell. 00:09:58.640 --> 00:10:01.710 align:middle line:84% The few times I reached some limit of endurance and risk 00:10:01.710 --> 00:10:02.720 align:middle line:90% to complaint, 00:10:02.720 --> 00:10:04.730 align:middle line:84% finally confessing to my mother what 00:10:04.730 --> 00:10:07.310 align:middle line:84% my feelings, what the feelings of others were doing to me, 00:10:07.310 --> 00:10:10.520 align:middle line:84% she would say, what are you talking about? 00:10:10.520 --> 00:10:12.410 align:middle line:84% She lobbed versions of this at anything 00:10:12.410 --> 00:10:14.900 align:middle line:84% that hurt or disturbed me so often that going 00:10:14.900 --> 00:10:18.440 align:middle line:84% to her for solace and solution was as risky as trudging outside 00:10:18.440 --> 00:10:21.090 align:middle line:90% to go play. 00:10:21.090 --> 00:10:24.550 align:middle line:84% The intensity of her rhetorical incredulity, 00:10:24.550 --> 00:10:27.930 align:middle line:84% I only realized when I was much older, was in direct proportion 00:10:27.930 --> 00:10:30.130 align:middle line:84% to how much she just could not hear about it. 00:10:30.130 --> 00:10:34.380 align:middle line:84% She was too busy bracing for my father's next violent rage 00:10:34.380 --> 00:10:36.530 align:middle line:90% or crater. 00:10:36.530 --> 00:10:39.930 align:middle line:90% What are you talking about? 00:10:39.930 --> 00:10:42.523 align:middle line:90% Thus began my literary training. 00:10:42.523 --> 00:10:46.820 align:middle line:90% 00:10:46.820 --> 00:10:48.830 align:middle line:90% Six. 00:10:48.830 --> 00:10:51.860 align:middle line:84% Despite the suggestion of the chicken wired windows, 00:10:51.860 --> 00:10:54.230 align:middle line:84% I was not suicidal the day I finally pushed 00:10:54.230 --> 00:10:56.840 align:middle line:84% through the heavy doors of the Psychoanalytic Institute 00:10:56.840 --> 00:10:59.330 align:middle line:84% and waited in the hall for Dr. Kane. 00:10:59.330 --> 00:11:04.280 align:middle line:84% I was 25, which felt to me like a first version of being old. 00:11:04.280 --> 00:11:08.850 align:middle line:84% I had begun to realize I had survived something. 00:11:08.850 --> 00:11:11.280 align:middle line:84% Deep in the well under the navel's door 00:11:11.280 --> 00:11:14.220 align:middle line:84% huddled the exhausted captive spirit. 00:11:14.220 --> 00:11:19.070 align:middle line:84% It had taken the shape of a child born into violence. 00:11:19.070 --> 00:11:21.830 align:middle line:84% What is it to grow up in a household 00:11:21.830 --> 00:11:25.420 align:middle line:84% where violence is done to the spirit? 00:11:25.420 --> 00:11:28.320 align:middle line:90% It's hard to talk about. 00:11:28.320 --> 00:11:30.390 align:middle line:90% No one beat me. 00:11:30.390 --> 00:11:35.750 align:middle line:84% I had a yard with a kidney bean shaped swimming pool. 00:11:35.750 --> 00:11:38.000 align:middle line:84% At night, under my pink comforter, 00:11:38.000 --> 00:11:42.350 align:middle line:84% I willed myself to be still and stiff and silent as possible, 00:11:42.350 --> 00:11:45.470 align:middle line:84% as if by freezing myself, I could suspend my trek 00:11:45.470 --> 00:11:51.400 align:middle line:84% through time until the father raging downstairs subsided. 00:11:51.400 --> 00:11:55.720 align:middle line:84% My bed was a flower at the tip of a long ascending stalk, 00:11:55.720 --> 00:11:59.590 align:middle line:84% swaying a little as it climbed into space, 00:11:59.590 --> 00:12:04.450 align:middle line:84% cold, dark, crystalline space with its spray of stars, 00:12:04.450 --> 00:12:08.065 align:middle line:84% where I was safe because I was alone. 00:12:08.065 --> 00:12:12.016 align:middle line:90% 00:12:12.016 --> 00:12:14.020 align:middle line:90% Seven. 00:12:14.020 --> 00:12:17.390 align:middle line:84% But these lived facts are not the reason 00:12:17.390 --> 00:12:19.420 align:middle line:90% I want to tell you something. 00:12:19.420 --> 00:12:24.650 align:middle line:84% They are merely the reason I have something to tell. 00:12:24.650 --> 00:12:28.260 align:middle line:84% I don't remember the first time it ballooned up in my mind, 00:12:28.260 --> 00:12:33.110 align:middle line:84% if it came during my time with Dr. Kane or soon after. 00:12:33.110 --> 00:12:36.230 align:middle line:90% I received an image. 00:12:36.230 --> 00:12:39.530 align:middle line:84% It was an image of an enormous hall. 00:12:39.530 --> 00:12:41.840 align:middle line:84% It didn't have a ceiling, as much as a feeling 00:12:41.840 --> 00:12:43.430 align:middle line:90% of extraordinary height, 00:12:43.430 --> 00:12:47.990 align:middle line:84% a sense of walls climbing into a stratosphere of clouds. 00:12:47.990 --> 00:12:51.830 align:middle line:84% The entire hall seemed made of crystal glass. 00:12:51.830 --> 00:12:56.710 align:middle line:84% It didn't have walls, as much as lit matrices of exposed beams. 00:12:56.710 --> 00:12:58.340 align:middle line:90% Everything glinted. 00:12:58.340 --> 00:13:03.240 align:middle line:84% Everything was sharp, bladed, and reflective. 00:13:03.240 --> 00:13:06.630 align:middle line:84% For all its height, the hall was narrow. 00:13:06.630 --> 00:13:09.750 align:middle line:84% It extended so far beyond its entrance, 00:13:09.750 --> 00:13:13.590 align:middle line:84% you couldn't see the border of its back wall if it had one. 00:13:13.590 --> 00:13:17.610 align:middle line:84% Instead, a light in the shape of a diamond, 00:13:17.610 --> 00:13:20.760 align:middle line:84% nearly telescopic it was so far away. 00:13:20.760 --> 00:13:24.600 align:middle line:84% It pulsed there so bright you knew you could not 00:13:24.600 --> 00:13:27.450 align:middle line:90% get close and endure it, 00:13:27.450 --> 00:13:29.820 align:middle line:84% and on either side of this crystal hall, 00:13:29.820 --> 00:13:36.480 align:middle line:84% extending towards that light, rows and rows of closed doors. 00:13:36.480 --> 00:13:39.620 align:middle line:90% Behind each door was a feeling. 00:13:39.620 --> 00:13:43.620 align:middle line:90% 00:13:43.620 --> 00:13:46.240 align:middle line:90% Eight. 00:13:46.240 --> 00:13:50.560 align:middle line:84% I called this lit and bladed place the Hall of Emotions. 00:13:50.560 --> 00:13:52.780 align:middle line:84% I think now it was the destination 00:13:52.780 --> 00:13:56.050 align:middle line:84% of a journey in images begun three years earlier after I 00:13:56.050 --> 00:13:57.810 align:middle line:90% had graduated college. 00:13:57.810 --> 00:14:00.550 align:middle line:84% I had left Southern California and followed 00:14:00.550 --> 00:14:03.010 align:middle line:84% friends across the country to New England towns 00:14:03.010 --> 00:14:08.080 align:middle line:84% on either side of the Piscataqua River, Kittery Point, Maine, 00:14:08.080 --> 00:14:09.820 align:middle line:84% and Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where 00:14:09.820 --> 00:14:13.120 align:middle line:90% my life and images intensified. 00:14:13.120 --> 00:14:16.480 align:middle line:84% I told Dr. Kane about it, how all my life I had lived 00:14:16.480 --> 00:14:19.270 align:middle line:84% in the desert, had just spent three years in Claremont 00:14:19.270 --> 00:14:22.270 align:middle line:84% on a campus set in California's high chaparral, 00:14:22.270 --> 00:14:24.730 align:middle line:84% and how, before moving East, I had never 00:14:24.730 --> 00:14:28.540 align:middle line:84% seen a bird as striking as a cardinal: scarlet streak 00:14:28.540 --> 00:14:31.840 align:middle line:84% in the brush, then a swoop up alighting on a tree top 00:14:31.840 --> 00:14:33.740 align:middle line:90% to make its piercing call. 00:14:33.740 --> 00:14:36.700 align:middle line:84% You could hear it before catching sight of it, 00:14:36.700 --> 00:14:40.840 align:middle line:84% brilliant bird, so shy of being seen. 00:14:40.840 --> 00:14:44.650 align:middle line:84% I decided it was my heart escaped my body. 00:14:44.650 --> 00:14:48.070 align:middle line:84% I wrote about it obsessively off and on for the three years 00:14:48.070 --> 00:14:49.690 align:middle line:90% I lived in Portsmouth. 00:14:49.690 --> 00:14:51.940 align:middle line:84% And life became a living theater, 00:14:51.940 --> 00:14:55.060 align:middle line:84% wandering the wooded areas around town in winter, 00:14:55.060 --> 00:14:58.510 align:middle line:84% startling my red heart through snow banked branches, 00:14:58.510 --> 00:15:02.050 align:middle line:84% as if one of the tableaux I had built in my childhood bedroom 00:15:02.050 --> 00:15:04.980 align:middle line:90% had finally come to life. 00:15:04.980 --> 00:15:09.060 align:middle line:84% I started a long sectioned poem about it that I never finished. 00:15:09.060 --> 00:15:12.510 align:middle line:84% But I knew the end, which I transcribed into my journal 00:15:12.510 --> 00:15:13.860 align:middle line:90% over and over, 00:15:13.860 --> 00:15:16.500 align:middle line:84% along with all the other stanzas detailing 00:15:16.500 --> 00:15:20.100 align:middle line:90% the drama of my fugitive heart. 00:15:20.100 --> 00:15:23.730 align:middle line:84% When the scalpel draws the line from throat to navel, 00:15:23.730 --> 00:15:28.140 align:middle line:84% when the flesh is peeled back and the ribs exposed, 00:15:28.140 --> 00:15:31.950 align:middle line:84% it will be the cardinal there, red and beating 00:15:31.950 --> 00:15:34.980 align:middle line:90% against a cage of bone. 00:15:34.980 --> 00:15:38.425 align:middle line:90% 00:15:38.425 --> 00:15:40.820 align:middle line:90% Nine. 00:15:40.820 --> 00:15:42.800 align:middle line:84% When I moved to New York, the cardinal 00:15:42.800 --> 00:15:46.700 align:middle line:84% fell away, and I found myself assailed by the open chest only, 00:15:46.700 --> 00:15:49.220 align:middle line:84% burst open from the mid-line, shudders 00:15:49.220 --> 00:15:52.220 align:middle line:90% of flesh flung violently back. 00:15:52.220 --> 00:15:54.260 align:middle line:84% And in place of my heart, there would 00:15:54.260 --> 00:15:57.800 align:middle line:84% be a human eye or an eye of Horus, a bird of prey, 00:15:57.800 --> 00:15:59.580 align:middle line:90% or a spiral galaxy, 00:15:59.580 --> 00:16:03.770 align:middle line:84% galleries of objects which rotated as if on a lazy Susan, 00:16:03.770 --> 00:16:07.780 align:middle line:90% globe, egg, hand, skull. 00:16:07.780 --> 00:16:10.780 align:middle line:84% It was as if when my heart fled my chest, 00:16:10.780 --> 00:16:13.060 align:middle line:90% it left a space for a theater. 00:16:13.060 --> 00:16:17.350 align:middle line:84% In my inner eye, as I walked up the long avenues of Manhattan, 00:16:17.350 --> 00:16:19.630 align:middle line:84% the flesh curtains would slam back 00:16:19.630 --> 00:16:22.390 align:middle line:84% and there would be the changing cast of objects, 00:16:22.390 --> 00:16:25.750 align:middle line:90% each in turn appearing on stage. 00:16:25.750 --> 00:16:30.030 align:middle line:84% But none of them were singing yet. 00:16:30.030 --> 00:16:31.960 align:middle line:90% I told Dr. Kane about it. 00:16:31.960 --> 00:16:34.680 align:middle line:84% Each session with him was like entering that theater, 00:16:34.680 --> 00:16:38.580 align:middle line:84% finding myself, both audience and actor in scenes, grueling 00:16:38.580 --> 00:16:40.800 align:middle line:90% and revealing. 00:16:40.800 --> 00:16:44.400 align:middle line:84% And then one day, I can't remember 00:16:44.400 --> 00:16:47.310 align:middle line:84% if it came towards the end of my time with Dr. Kane 00:16:47.310 --> 00:16:50.460 align:middle line:84% or soon after, I found myself standing 00:16:50.460 --> 00:16:53.820 align:middle line:84% between high, bright latticed walls, doors 00:16:53.820 --> 00:16:57.530 align:middle line:90% extending infinitely beyond me. 00:16:57.530 --> 00:17:00.920 align:middle line:84% It was as if the ice-limbed crowns of trees in the winter 00:17:00.920 --> 00:17:03.050 align:middle line:84% woods I used to wander in New England 00:17:03.050 --> 00:17:07.490 align:middle line:84% had touched down in my mind and grown unbelievably tall, 00:17:07.490 --> 00:17:11.089 align:middle line:84% so tall I could not see where the tips of their branches 00:17:11.089 --> 00:17:15.909 align:middle line:84% ended, composing a crystal nave in a house of fields. 00:17:15.909 --> 00:17:19.839 align:middle line:90% 00:17:19.839 --> 00:17:20.339 align:middle line:90% 10. 00:17:20.339 --> 00:17:22.240 align:middle line:84% There's 12, So we're almost done. 00:17:22.240 --> 00:17:24.910 align:middle line:90% 10. 00:17:24.910 --> 00:17:27.339 align:middle line:84% That you could walk in and out of each room 00:17:27.339 --> 00:17:29.500 align:middle line:90% was the first miraculous thing, 00:17:29.500 --> 00:17:33.540 align:middle line:90% that each one had a door. 00:17:33.540 --> 00:17:36.030 align:middle line:84% I don't know why this felt so revelatory. 00:17:36.030 --> 00:17:39.090 align:middle line:84% I had been walking in and out of feelings for years 00:17:39.090 --> 00:17:41.440 align:middle line:90% in the theaters of art. 00:17:41.440 --> 00:17:44.890 align:middle line:84% And even if these theaters of art were made by other people 00:17:44.890 --> 00:17:48.820 align:middle line:84% to house their own feelings, I could safely visit. 00:17:48.820 --> 00:17:53.210 align:middle line:84% Within the borders of frames, screens, binding, pages, 00:17:53.210 --> 00:17:57.500 align:middle line:84% I could safely feel a little bit at a time. 00:17:57.500 --> 00:18:01.480 align:middle line:84% I was accustomed to feelings, accosting and possessing. 00:18:01.480 --> 00:18:04.460 align:middle line:84% That's what I had witnessed all through my childhood, 00:18:04.460 --> 00:18:09.860 align:middle line:84% in my father, in my mother's steely brace of control, in A, 00:18:09.860 --> 00:18:13.040 align:middle line:84% in my sister kicking a hole in the bathroom door while 00:18:13.040 --> 00:18:16.420 align:middle line:90% I cowered behind it. 00:18:16.420 --> 00:18:19.810 align:middle line:84% Unlike the feelings of parents, the feelings in art 00:18:19.810 --> 00:18:21.700 align:middle line:90% came to an end. 00:18:21.700 --> 00:18:24.910 align:middle line:84% You weren't forced to feel them forever. 00:18:24.910 --> 00:18:27.020 align:middle line:84% You could walk out of the theater. 00:18:27.020 --> 00:18:30.270 align:middle line:90% You could close the book. 00:18:30.270 --> 00:18:32.340 align:middle line:84% For a while, the Hall of Emotions 00:18:32.340 --> 00:18:34.260 align:middle line:90% came to me only as setting, 00:18:34.260 --> 00:18:37.140 align:middle line:84% the vanishing ceiling of the crystalline structure, 00:18:37.140 --> 00:18:39.480 align:middle line:84% its glass and edge, the facing rows 00:18:39.480 --> 00:18:43.500 align:middle line:84% of doors, the far off diamond light. 00:18:43.500 --> 00:18:46.020 align:middle line:84% And at some point, the image arrived, 00:18:46.020 --> 00:18:48.720 align:middle line:84% and I walked through a door into a room 00:18:48.720 --> 00:18:51.640 align:middle line:90% and entered a miasmic cloud. 00:18:51.640 --> 00:18:55.470 align:middle line:84% In it, I could sense, could see, a huddled figure, 00:18:55.470 --> 00:18:58.440 align:middle line:84% a brown smudge, and a fog of feeling. 00:18:58.440 --> 00:19:02.040 align:middle line:84% If the figure was hazy, the feeling was not. 00:19:02.040 --> 00:19:08.820 align:middle line:84% This room was misery, and I knew it was the room I knew best. 00:19:08.820 --> 00:19:11.490 align:middle line:84% And I realized there were so many doors 00:19:11.490 --> 00:19:15.120 align:middle line:84% along that infinite hallway to so many rooms of feeling. 00:19:15.120 --> 00:19:19.160 align:middle line:84% And I had only ever dwelled in a few. 00:19:19.160 --> 00:19:25.290 align:middle line:84% And then because there was a door, I finally understood, 00:19:25.290 --> 00:19:28.040 align:middle line:84% I could walk out of misery's room. 00:19:28.040 --> 00:19:31.270 align:middle line:90% 00:19:31.270 --> 00:19:33.930 align:middle line:90% 11. 00:19:33.930 --> 00:19:36.690 align:middle line:84% It's astonishing to me that I never once realized 00:19:36.690 --> 00:19:38.340 align:middle line:84% that this crystal hall of emotions 00:19:38.340 --> 00:19:41.130 align:middle line:84% had its chicken-wired analog in the hallway 00:19:41.130 --> 00:19:43.880 align:middle line:90% at the Psychoanalytic Institute, 00:19:43.880 --> 00:19:48.800 align:middle line:84% not until today, writing this draft, 30 years later, 00:19:48.800 --> 00:19:52.550 align:middle line:84% or that hall with its infinite length of rooms, each one 00:19:52.550 --> 00:19:54.590 align:middle line:84% housing a particular feeling, had 00:19:54.590 --> 00:19:58.190 align:middle line:84% arrived just as I was working on the art of housing 00:19:58.190 --> 00:20:01.820 align:middle line:90% moods in stanzas, 00:20:01.820 --> 00:20:05.360 align:middle line:84% or that in that first meeting with Dr. Kane, 00:20:05.360 --> 00:20:08.690 align:middle line:84% when I cut that steady horizontal through the air, 00:20:08.690 --> 00:20:12.840 align:middle line:84% I was drawing a picture of flatline: 00:20:12.840 --> 00:20:18.690 align:middle line:84% flatline, the preferred state, so I had declared. 00:20:18.690 --> 00:20:20.850 align:middle line:90% But I had not meant dying. 00:20:20.850 --> 00:20:23.050 align:middle line:90% I had meant not feeling. 00:20:23.050 --> 00:20:25.230 align:middle line:90% Feeling meant anxiety. 00:20:25.230 --> 00:20:28.200 align:middle line:84% And from my earliest experiences of being alive, 00:20:28.200 --> 00:20:29.800 align:middle line:90% I had been trapped in it. 00:20:29.800 --> 00:20:33.510 align:middle line:84% I was a fat, clumsy, brainy, dreamy child, 00:20:33.510 --> 00:20:36.300 align:middle line:84% navigating a dread inextricably bound 00:20:36.300 --> 00:20:39.650 align:middle line:84% to the society in which I was supposed to feel at home: 00:20:39.650 --> 00:20:44.080 align:middle line:84% my neighbors, my schoolmates, my parents. 00:20:44.080 --> 00:20:47.830 align:middle line:84% Peace seemed an abstraction, wholly unlived. 00:20:47.830 --> 00:20:50.320 align:middle line:84% That finding it seemed to involve 00:20:50.320 --> 00:20:54.070 align:middle line:84% excruciating light, rather than the engulfing darkness, 00:20:54.070 --> 00:20:55.900 align:middle line:90% interests me now. 00:20:55.900 --> 00:20:58.890 align:middle line:84% Was this what they call saving grace? 00:20:58.890 --> 00:21:01.180 align:middle line:90% It felt like an instinct. 00:21:01.180 --> 00:21:06.390 align:middle line:84% Illumination would save me, not the body-killing plunge. 00:21:06.390 --> 00:21:09.970 align:middle line:84% I could see it in the faces of angels at Duke House, 00:21:09.970 --> 00:21:13.280 align:middle line:84% in the slides I projected three times a week. 00:21:13.280 --> 00:21:15.910 align:middle line:90% 00:21:15.910 --> 00:21:18.160 align:middle line:90% 12. 00:21:18.160 --> 00:21:22.510 align:middle line:84% Many years after these events, when I was in my late 30s, 00:21:22.510 --> 00:21:25.960 align:middle line:84% the alcohol and opiates my middle sister took to endure 00:21:25.960 --> 00:21:29.530 align:middle line:84% a complicated, trying life failed her, and she died, 00:21:29.530 --> 00:21:33.460 align:middle line:84% four years after my parents died, father and then mother, 00:21:33.460 --> 00:21:35.620 align:middle line:90% six months apart. 00:21:35.620 --> 00:21:38.350 align:middle line:84% Soon after I received news of my sister's death, 00:21:38.350 --> 00:21:42.820 align:middle line:84% I had one session with a Jungian analyst, S, the wife of a friend 00:21:42.820 --> 00:21:44.840 align:middle line:90% who offered. 00:21:44.840 --> 00:21:47.060 align:middle line:84% In that session, she asked if I had 00:21:47.060 --> 00:21:49.280 align:middle line:90% an image for how I was feeling. 00:21:49.280 --> 00:21:52.910 align:middle line:84% I told her I kept seeing the same scene, my surviving 00:21:52.910 --> 00:21:55.820 align:middle line:84% sister and myself exhausted, barely 00:21:55.820 --> 00:22:01.390 align:middle line:84% clinging to a makeshift raft, an endless open sea. 00:22:01.390 --> 00:22:05.410 align:middle line:84% She told me to let the image change. 00:22:05.410 --> 00:22:07.640 align:middle line:90% This was strangely hard. 00:22:07.640 --> 00:22:10.000 align:middle line:90% I've never been sure why. 00:22:10.000 --> 00:22:12.670 align:middle line:84% Maybe letting go of the image of the raft 00:22:12.670 --> 00:22:16.000 align:middle line:90% felt the same as drowning. 00:22:16.000 --> 00:22:19.270 align:middle line:84% But then, behind my closed eyes, the scene 00:22:19.270 --> 00:22:22.660 align:middle line:84% began to change to the back yard of my childhood 00:22:22.660 --> 00:22:27.370 align:middle line:84% home, my inner eye trained on our bean-shaped pool, especially 00:22:27.370 --> 00:22:30.620 align:middle line:84% the concrete border that traced round it, 00:22:30.620 --> 00:22:34.400 align:middle line:84% and the brick walls separating our backyard from the backyards 00:22:34.400 --> 00:22:35.540 align:middle line:90% of our neighbors. 00:22:35.540 --> 00:22:41.160 align:middle line:84% S noted how the endless open sea had transformed into a contained 00:22:41.160 --> 00:22:44.370 align:middle line:84% swimming pool, something familiar and familial 00:22:44.370 --> 00:22:46.830 align:middle line:90% firmly lodged in experience. 00:22:46.830 --> 00:22:50.460 align:middle line:84% She said, even more than from the shock of your sister 00:22:50.460 --> 00:22:53.200 align:middle line:84% dying so soon after your parents, 00:22:53.200 --> 00:22:56.340 align:middle line:84% your suffering stems from not having a shape 00:22:56.340 --> 00:22:57.860 align:middle line:90% for what has happened to you. 00:22:57.860 --> 00:23:01.050 align:middle line:90% 00:23:01.050 --> 00:23:03.630 align:middle line:84% I'd said I was going to tell you about something 00:23:03.630 --> 00:23:08.810 align:middle line:84% that helped me once when I was young, grieving, and unmoored. 00:23:08.810 --> 00:23:10.220 align:middle line:90% Once. 00:23:10.220 --> 00:23:12.930 align:middle line:84% Didn't I mean, this time of shipwreck too? 00:23:12.930 --> 00:23:16.310 align:middle line:84% Didn't I mean all the times I was helped, when I was lost, 00:23:16.310 --> 00:23:20.640 align:middle line:84% when I didn't understand the shape of my life? 00:23:20.640 --> 00:23:25.230 align:middle line:84% Every person is born with a mind for images, 00:23:25.230 --> 00:23:28.440 align:middle line:84% vessels ready to respond to a call, 00:23:28.440 --> 00:23:32.730 align:middle line:84% to ferry you towards or away, wherever survival is, 00:23:32.730 --> 00:23:36.970 align:middle line:90% to conjure against annihilation. 00:23:36.970 --> 00:23:41.410 align:middle line:90% This is an essay on figuration. 00:23:41.410 --> 00:23:42.430 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:23:42.430 --> 00:23:46.080 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:23:46.080 --> 00:24:00.000 align:middle line:90%