your majesty your Royal highnesses excellencies members of the jury distinguished laurates ladies and gentlemen it is a great honor to stand here before you tonight perhaps like the great Maestro Ricardo Muti I am not used to standing in front of an audience audence without an orchestra behind me but I will do my best as a solo artist tonight I stayed up all night last night wondering what I might say to this August assembly and after I had eaten all the chocolate bars and peanuts in the mini bar I scribbled a few words I don't think
I have to refer to them obviously I am deeply touched to be recognized by the foundation but I've come here tonight to express another dimension of gratitude I think I can do it in three or four minutes and I will try when I was packing in Los Angeles to come here I had a sense of unease because I've always felt some ambiguity about an award for poetry poetry comes from a place that no one commands and no one conquers so I feel somewhat like a charlatan to accept an award for an activity which I do
not command in other words if I knew where the good songs came from I'd go there more often I was compelled in the midst of that ordeal of packing to go and open my guitar I have a Kai guitar which was made in Spain in the great workshop at number seven gravina Street a beautiful instrument that I acquired over 40 years ago I took it out of the case I lifted it it seemed to be filled with helium it was so light and I brought it to my face I put my face close to the
beautifully designed rosette and I inhaled the fragrance of the Living Wood you know that wood Never Dies I inhaled the fragrance of Cedar as fresh as the first day that I acquired the guitar and a voice seemed to say to me you are an old man and you have not said thank you you have not brought your gratitude back to the soil from which this fragrance arose and so I come here tonight to thank the soil and the soul of this people that has given me so much because I know just as an identity card
is not a man a credit rating is not a country now you know of my deep Association and confraternity with the poet Federico Galco I could say that when I was a young man and Adolescent and I hungered for a voice I studied the English poets and I knew their work well and I copied their Styles but I could not find a voice it was only when when I read even in Translation The Works of Lura that I understood that there was a voice it is not that I copied his voice I would not dare
but he gave me permission to find a voice to locate a voice that is to locate a self a self that is not fixed a self that struggles for its own existence and As I Grew Older I understood that instructions came with this voice what were these instructions the instructions were never to lament casually and if one is to express the great Inevitable Defeat that awaits us all it must be done within the strength confines of dignity and beauty and so I had a voice but I did not have an instrument I did not have
a song and now I'm going to tell you very briefly a story of how I got my song because I was an indifferent guitar player I banged the chords I only knew a few of them I sat around with my college friends drinking and singing the folk songs or the popular songs of the day but I never in a thousand years thought of myself as a musician or as a singer one day in the early 60s I was visiting my mother's house in Montreal the house is beside a park and in the park there's a
tennis court where many people come to watch the beautiful young tennis players uh uh uh enjoy their sport I wandered back to this park which I had known since my childhood and there was a young man playing a guitar he was playing a flamco guitar and he was surrounded by two or three girls and boys who were listening to him I loved the way he played there was something about the way he played that that captured me it was the way I wanted to play and knew that I would never be able to play and
I sat there there with the other listeners for a few moments and when there was a a silence an appropriate silence I asked him if he would give me guitar [Music] lessons he was a young man from Spain and we could only communicate in my broken French and his broken French he didn't speak English and he agreed to give me guitar lessons I pointed to my mother's house which you could see from the tennis court and we made an appointment we settled a price and he came to my mother's house the next day and he
said let me hear you play something I tried to play something he said you don't know how to play do you I said no I really don't know how to play he said first of all let me tune your guitar it's It's All Out Of Tune so he took the guitar and and he tuned it he said it's not a bad guitar it wasn't the cone but it wasn't a bad guitar so he hand it back to me he said now play couldn't play any better he said let me show you some chords and he
took the guitar and he produced a sound from that guitar that I'd never heard and he he played a sequence of chords with a tremolo and he said now you do it I said it's out of the question I can't possibly do it he said let me put your fingers on the Frets and he he put my fingers on the Frets and he said now now play it was a mess he said I'll come back tomorrow he came back tomorrow he put my hands on the guitar he placed it on my lap in the way
that was appropriate and and I began again with those six chords six chord progression that many many flamco songs are based on I was a little better that day the third day improved somewhat improved but I knew the chords now and I knew that although I couldn't coordinate my fingers with my thumb to produce the correct tremolo pattern I knew the chords I knew them very very well by this point the next day he didn't come he didn't come I had the number of his of his boarding house in Montreal I phoned to find out
why he had missed the appointment and they told me that he'd taken his life that he committed suicide I knew nothing about the man I I did not know what part of Spain he came from I did not know why he came to Montreal I did not know why he stayed there I did not know why he appeared in that tennis court I did not know why he took his life I I was deeply saddened of [Music] course but now I disclose something that I've never spoken in public it was those six chords it was
that guitar pattern that has been the basis of all my songs and all my music so now you will begin to understand the dimensions of the Gratitude I have for this country everything that you have found favorable in my work comes from this place everything everything that you have found favorable in my songs and my poetry are inspired by this soil so I thank you so much for the warm Hospitality that you have shown my work because it is really yours and you have allowed me to affix my signature to the bottom of the page
thank you so much ladies and gentlemen [Music]
