Hey, it's Major. Today's episode is courtesy of the poet Jason Schneiderman.

Don't worry, I'll return to your feeds on June 12th.

I'm Jason Schneiderman, and this is the slowdown.

My attention is obsessive. I would rather watch the same movie over and over again than watch

every movie by a particular director or actor. I would rather read the same poem over and over

again than work my way slowly through an author's complete works. In my youth, art was

inextricably linked to objects. Music meant a vinyl record or a cassette tape or a CD in a

jewel case. Photographs required cameras of varying sizes, and roles of film, and photo albums,

or carousels of slides. Those objects were talismans, a kind of sacred representation of who one was.

One of the most important objects that carried art into my life wasn't even my own.

When I was in middle school, I found a VHS tape of the movie Cabaret,

in a local library, and I was obsessed. I lost track of how many times I had watched the film.

I made my own soundtrack by holding a cassette recorder up to the television speaker and recording

all of the songs. The film stars Liza Manelli as a cabaret performer who is as talented a singer

as she is a disaster as a person. As a bit of a self-proclaimed disaster, I loved the idea

that talent might redeem an irredeemable life. I loved the idea that talent is a kind of force,

one that makes its own demands on the person with the talent. Liza's larger-than-life

screen presence gave me permission to put art at the center of my life. Of course,

this means that the size of one's passion often matches the size of one's suffering.

Today's poem is a sonnet from Julia Alvarez's sonnet sequence 33.

While Alvarez is perhaps better known as a novelist, I have returned to her poems

obsessively, cherishing the way they are warm and clever at the same time.

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