Acceptance Address for the Prince of Asturias Award

October 21, 2011

Your Majesty, Your Royal
Highnesses, Excellencies, members
Of the Jury, Distinguished Laureates
Ladies and Gentlemen:
It is a great honor to stand here before you
Tonight perhaps, like the great
Maestro Riccardo Muti
I am not used to standing in front of
An audience 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 Conde guitar
Which was made in Spain in
The great workshop at Number
7 Gravina Street a beautiful instrument
That I acquired over
40 years ago i took it out of the case and 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 García Lorca i could say
That when I was a
Young man, an 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 I read, even
In translation
The works of Lorca 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 it's 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
Await's us all
It must be done within the strict
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
Enjoy their sport
I wandered back to this park
Which I'd known since my
Childhood, and there was a
Young man playing a
Guitar he was playing a flamenco 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 captured me
It was the way I wanted to play and knew
That I would never be able to play
And I sat there with the
Other listeners for a
Few moments, and when there was a silence
An appropriate silence, I asked him if he
Would give me guitar
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 the 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
All out of tune" So
He took the guitar, and he tuned it he said
"It's not a bad guitar" It wasn't the Conde
But it wasn't a bad
Guitar so he handed it back to me he said
"Now play" i couldn't play any better

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 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 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 there
In that tennis court i did not know why
He took his life i was deeply saddened
Of 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 is 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