Leonard Cohen @ Fundación Principe de Asturias Oct 2011
How he got his song.
"Your majesty, your royal highnesses, excellencies, members of the jury, distinguished laureates, ladies and gentlemen:
It is a great honour to stand here before you tonight.
Perhaps, like the great maestro, Riccardo Muti, I’m 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 assembly. After I had eaten all the chocolate bars and peanuts from the
minibar, I scribbled a few words. I don’t think I have to refer to them.
Obviously, I’m deeply touched to be recognized by the Foundation. But I have
come here tonight to express another dimension of gratitude; I think I can do
it in three or four minutes.
When I was packing in Los Angeles, 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, that 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 would 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. I pick up an instrument I acquired over 40
years ago. I took it out of the case, I lifted it, and it seemed to be filled
with helium it was so light. And I brought it to my face and I put my face
close to the beautifully designed rosette, and I inhaled the fragrance of the
living wood. We know that wood never dies. I inhaled the fragrance of the 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 land that has given
me so much.
Because I know that 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 Frederico Garcia 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 that is not fixed, a self that struggles for its own
existence.
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 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 and 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 sixties, I was visiting my mother’s
house in Montreal. Her house was beside a park and in the park was 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 that 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 and settled a
price.
He came to my mother’s house the next day and he said, “Let
me hear you play something.” I tried to play something, and he said, “You don’t
know how to play, do you?’
I said, “No, I 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 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 I had never heard. And 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 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 I began again with
those six chords – a six chord progression. Many, many flamenco songs are based
on them.
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.
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 had 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 played there. I did not know why he he appeared there at 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 favourable in my work comes
from this place. Everything , everything that you have found favourable 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."
