WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:13.130 align:middle line:90% 00:00:13.130 --> 00:00:14.270 align:middle line:90% Transmitter. 00:00:14.270 --> 00:00:18.790 align:middle line:90% 00:00:18.790 --> 00:00:22.420 align:middle line:84% In Judy Baca's mural, The Great Wall, 00:00:22.420 --> 00:00:27.970 align:middle line:84% A Chichimeca woman on a comet tail of field corn 00:00:27.970 --> 00:00:31.040 align:middle line:84% Hovers and whispers in the ear of Edison, 00:00:31.040 --> 00:00:37.030 align:middle line:84% the Zacatecan, the secrets of the light bulb. 00:00:37.030 --> 00:00:41.320 align:middle line:84% Órale, my mom texts, but autocorrect 00:00:41.320 --> 00:00:44.740 align:middle line:90% sends Oracle instead. 00:00:44.740 --> 00:00:49.180 align:middle line:84% I remember as a kid looking up from the passenger seat 00:00:49.180 --> 00:00:50.420 align:middle line:90% at the work badge 00:00:50.420 --> 00:00:53.110 align:middle line:84% My grandmother, after each shift, 00:00:53.110 --> 00:00:58.060 align:middle line:84% clipped to the rear view mirror's wood bead rosary. 00:00:58.060 --> 00:01:02.860 align:middle line:84% A dashboard milagro in the dial light of her Chevy, 00:01:02.860 --> 00:01:06.020 align:middle line:84% Its toothed clasp bit into the Hail Marys 00:01:06.020 --> 00:01:10.920 align:middle line:84% as if to test the solder of that circuitry. 00:01:10.920 --> 00:01:14.370 align:middle line:84% She often tells me of Mexican movie stars-- 00:01:14.370 --> 00:01:20.430 align:middle line:84% María Félix, Jorge Negrete, Pedro Infante-- 00:01:20.430 --> 00:01:23.820 align:middle line:84% How they toured the US movie houses and signed the ticket 00:01:23.820 --> 00:01:30.330 align:middle line:84% stubs she sold from a box office skinny as a phone booth. 00:01:30.330 --> 00:01:33.480 align:middle line:84% A transmitter made from goldbeater's skin 00:01:33.480 --> 00:01:36.090 align:middle line:90% stretched across a hoop drum, 00:01:36.090 --> 00:01:41.490 align:middle line:84% Bell's phonautograph used pig bristle for a stylus 00:01:41.490 --> 00:01:46.920 align:middle line:84% to sign his speech waves on a plate of smoked glass. 00:01:46.920 --> 00:01:51.700 align:middle line:84% I watched on YouTube Infante stand with 11 mariachis, 00:01:51.700 --> 00:01:57.330 align:middle line:84% gallant in silk ties and epaulets, to serenade Paloma. 00:01:57.330 --> 00:02:01.800 align:middle line:84% His tenor crooning about the unrequited man turned 00:02:01.800 --> 00:02:06.540 align:middle line:84% dove with grief to the actress in bedclothes 00:02:06.540 --> 00:02:11.970 align:middle line:84% And bewitched as I imagine Helmholtz, the pianist, 00:02:11.970 --> 00:02:15.240 align:middle line:84% Holding a tuning fork to an electric magnet 00:02:15.240 --> 00:02:18.620 align:middle line:90% and hearing it vibrate. 00:02:18.620 --> 00:02:22.460 align:middle line:84% Trying to picture that man wasting away in heartache 00:02:22.460 --> 00:02:25.120 align:middle line:90% and so hollowed to bird bones 00:02:25.120 --> 00:02:29.150 align:middle line:84% I reread this morning Socrates telling Phaedrus, 00:02:29.150 --> 00:02:31.790 align:middle line:84% outside the city walls of cicadas 00:02:31.790 --> 00:02:36.260 align:middle line:84% How they were men before muses brought them song. 00:02:36.260 --> 00:02:40.040 align:middle line:84% Unaware that cost, I climbed mesquite limbs 00:02:40.040 --> 00:02:44.690 align:middle line:84% for the discarded skins brittle as chicharrones 00:02:44.690 --> 00:02:48.730 align:middle line:84% and cupped their matchlight in my boy hands. 00:02:48.730 --> 00:02:53.770 align:middle line:84% Hearing, it's said, is touch at a distance. 00:02:53.770 --> 00:02:56.440 align:middle line:90% Ola is amp and trough. 00:02:56.440 --> 00:03:00.800 align:middle line:84% Frequency equals waves passing a given point. 00:03:00.800 --> 00:03:05.080 align:middle line:84% My nana's voice is creosote and Parliaments-- 00:03:05.080 --> 00:03:08.500 align:middle line:84% Tenor and rasp, that side winds cell 00:03:08.500 --> 00:03:12.130 align:middle line:84% towers over chevrons of ocotillo, 00:03:12.130 --> 00:03:14.470 align:middle line:90% through ironwood and arroyo 00:03:14.470 --> 00:03:18.705 align:middle line:84% Moving in the megahertz her hands made. 00:03:18.705 --> 00:03:22.220 align:middle line:90% 00:03:22.220 --> 00:03:23.480 align:middle line:90% Thank you so much. 00:03:23.480 --> 00:03:26.230 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:03:26.230 --> 00:03:38.000 align:middle line:90%