WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.640 align:middle line:90% 00:00:06.640 --> 00:00:07.140 align:middle line:90% All right. 00:00:07.140 --> 00:00:08.628 align:middle line:90% So this is the last one. 00:00:08.628 --> 00:00:09.420 align:middle line:90% It's a little long. 00:00:09.420 --> 00:00:12.160 align:middle line:84% It's a little longer than the other ones. 00:00:12.160 --> 00:00:14.520 align:middle line:90% It's called "Postscript." 00:00:14.520 --> 00:00:17.120 align:middle line:84% And it circles back to that first slide 00:00:17.120 --> 00:00:22.640 align:middle line:84% in which I posited that this book was kind of a spreadsheet. 00:00:22.640 --> 00:00:26.300 align:middle line:84% And it's also a little bit of an ars poetica 00:00:26.300 --> 00:00:29.620 align:middle line:90% or maybe manifesto, lowercase m. 00:00:29.620 --> 00:00:33.080 align:middle line:90% 00:00:33.080 --> 00:00:35.000 align:middle line:90% "Postscript." 00:00:35.000 --> 00:00:36.920 align:middle line:84% "If this book is a spreadsheet, it 00:00:36.920 --> 00:00:41.720 align:middle line:84% is also a spell, an incantation, a windshield flashing 00:00:41.720 --> 00:00:47.340 align:middle line:84% with sun and rain, a document of grass crowding sidewalks, 00:00:47.340 --> 00:00:52.280 align:middle line:84% dropping flower and seed out of season like me. 00:00:52.280 --> 00:00:57.000 align:middle line:84% Russian thistle spun to tumbleweed without our tending. 00:00:57.000 --> 00:01:01.480 align:middle line:84% It's also a book about poems as pockets of resistance, 00:01:01.480 --> 00:01:05.200 align:middle line:84% a taxi stalled at a rush hour intersection, 00:01:05.200 --> 00:01:08.280 align:middle line:84% about our attempts to slip out from under the heel 00:01:08.280 --> 00:01:14.080 align:middle line:84% of capitalism, about a refusal to be complicit with atrocities 00:01:14.080 --> 00:01:17.480 align:middle line:84% committed in the name of citizenship. 00:01:17.480 --> 00:01:22.520 align:middle line:84% A burning tent, a library stormed by flame. 00:01:22.520 --> 00:01:24.540 align:middle line:84% If this book is a check registry, 00:01:24.540 --> 00:01:27.840 align:middle line:84% it's also a love letter, an indictment, the memory 00:01:27.840 --> 00:01:31.260 align:middle line:84% of the woman screaming, murderer, murderer, 00:01:31.260 --> 00:01:39.600 align:middle line:84% murderer on the G train, another anthem, deny, defend, depose. 00:01:39.600 --> 00:01:42.840 align:middle line:84% I want whiteness to become as thin as a paycheck. 00:01:42.840 --> 00:01:47.640 align:middle line:84% I want capitalism to fray like the social safety net. 00:01:47.640 --> 00:01:51.020 align:middle line:84% If this book is a series of monthly statements, 00:01:51.020 --> 00:01:53.140 align:middle line:90% it's also a ledger of questions. 00:01:53.140 --> 00:01:56.400 align:middle line:84% Can we collaborate instead of nation? 00:01:56.400 --> 00:01:59.320 align:middle line:84% How do we root without becoming a gun 00:01:59.320 --> 00:02:03.480 align:middle line:84% in a glove box, an armored vehicle in the desert? 00:02:03.480 --> 00:02:06.400 align:middle line:90% How do we photosynthesize? 00:02:06.400 --> 00:02:11.250 align:middle line:84% Be a circle of soft green arrows on a classroom poster. 00:02:11.250 --> 00:02:12.870 align:middle line:90% You be the watershed. 00:02:12.870 --> 00:02:14.890 align:middle line:90% I'll be the nimbus cloud. 00:02:14.890 --> 00:02:18.830 align:middle line:84% How do we untangle the lyric from capitalism, from whiteness, 00:02:18.830 --> 00:02:20.450 align:middle line:90% from award season? 00:02:20.450 --> 00:02:23.130 align:middle line:84% How much would you give up because trying 00:02:23.130 --> 00:02:26.250 align:middle line:90% to hold on costs too much? 00:02:26.250 --> 00:02:28.090 align:middle line:84% If this book is about money, it's 00:02:28.090 --> 00:02:31.270 align:middle line:84% also about the rupture, the rupture of rain and drought, 00:02:31.270 --> 00:02:34.730 align:middle line:84% about our attempts to remain in the wake of the category 5, 00:02:34.730 --> 00:02:37.830 align:middle line:90% the wildfire, the polar vortex. 00:02:37.830 --> 00:02:40.890 align:middle line:84% You should not need to be perfect to be safe. 00:02:40.890 --> 00:02:42.750 align:middle line:90% The money makes the weather. 00:02:42.750 --> 00:02:45.110 align:middle line:84% The wire transfers write history. 00:02:45.110 --> 00:02:47.610 align:middle line:84% The people who authorize our payments 00:02:47.610 --> 00:02:50.970 align:middle line:84% sift through the sky like an archive. 00:02:50.970 --> 00:02:54.170 align:middle line:90% The satellites ChatGPT us. 00:02:54.170 --> 00:02:59.690 align:middle line:84% The night learns to read our writing about the night. 00:02:59.690 --> 00:03:03.070 align:middle line:84% I humbly submit to my board of directors, 00:03:03.070 --> 00:03:06.490 align:middle line:84% whomever you think you are, that my plan for growth 00:03:06.490 --> 00:03:10.890 align:middle line:84% is rebellion and rest, riot, strike, riot, improvise, 00:03:10.890 --> 00:03:11.930 align:middle line:90% and nest. 00:03:11.930 --> 00:03:14.570 align:middle line:84% This book does not want to be a long of my-- 00:03:14.570 --> 00:03:16.730 align:middle line:90% log of my productivity. 00:03:16.730 --> 00:03:19.050 align:middle line:84% Was the investment worth the payout? 00:03:19.050 --> 00:03:21.290 align:middle line:90% Couldn't she have done more? 00:03:21.290 --> 00:03:27.530 align:middle line:84% My genre is national hunger, economic trauma, debt. 00:03:27.530 --> 00:03:32.730 align:middle line:84% This book is not inscribed onto bullets that kill CEOs, does not 00:03:32.730 --> 00:03:36.650 align:middle line:84% kill fascists but wants to sing along with those who will 00:03:36.650 --> 00:03:39.330 align:middle line:90% sing the oligarchs to death. 00:03:39.330 --> 00:03:45.050 align:middle line:84% We refuse to be frayed as that social safety net. 00:03:45.050 --> 00:03:49.450 align:middle line:84% Let's poetry the tech prose, lines breaking into shivs, 00:03:49.450 --> 00:03:51.990 align:middle line:90% the metaphors making tire irons. 00:03:51.990 --> 00:03:57.290 align:middle line:84% May we assemble like a sonnet, get projective in the streets, 00:03:57.290 --> 00:04:02.970 align:middle line:84% revise a history of soot into our seedling." 00:04:02.970 --> 00:04:03.930 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:04:03.930 --> 00:04:06.980 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:04:06.980 --> 00:04:22.000 align:middle line:90%