You, Maggie.
And thank you for inviting me.
I'm not going to be too long tonight for several reasons.
You're not waiting for me.
You're waiting for two people.
And the other reason is that my daughter, Siobhan's,
in the audience, and if I'm too long, I'm going to get heck.
So I will be brief.
But I will say this--
when I learned I would be speaking to you this evening,
I was in New York City when I got the invitation.
And perhaps that is why I thought
of a woman who had lived on Park Avenue in New York City.
And she actually died there.
She lived in New York for many years,
but she drew some of her strongest inspiration
from this very part of the country.
And she was a woman who bridged many worlds and who
created many others.
And she was the writer of the words I hope
you are looking at right now.
They passed out a Xerox.
It's Willa Cather.
And I Xeroxed in preparation for this
a brief paragraph from a 1955 short story
called "A Wagner Matinee."
OK?
It's a very brief selection, and I'll read it to you now.
I hope you're looking at the selection.
But if you're not, I'll read slowly.
The story takes place during a Wagner concert.
"During the intermission before the second half of the concert,
I questioned my aunt and found that the Prize Song was not
new to her.
Some years before there had drifted
to the farm and Red willow County
a young German, a tramp cow-puncher,
who had sung the chorus at Baireuth, when he was a boy,
along with the other peasant boys and girls.
Of a Sunday morning, he used to sit on his gingham-sheeted bed
in the hands' bedroom, which opened off the kitchen,
cleaning the leather boots of his--
cleaning the leather of his boots and saddle,
singing the Prize Song, while my aunt went about her work
in the kitchen.
She had hovered about him until she had prevailed upon him
to join the country church, though his sole fitness
for the step, insofar as I could gather,
lay in his boyish face and his possession
of this divine melody."
Of course, the divine melody is the Prize Song from Wagner.
Now, this little scene has stayed with me for many years.
I have never forgotten the wonderful images
Cather gives us in this scene from her story.
The young singer coming to America
in the late 19th century, and coming
from the cultural center that had
produced what was then called--
Wagner's music was then called the music of the future.
It does not really matter what you think of Wagner's music
or what I think of his ideas.
That's not the point.
The point here is that this young man was a messenger.
This young man from the chorus at Baireuth.
He had come from the old world to the new,
bringing a new music to people who were eagerly
waiting for this melody.
And I ask you now to take a moment
to think along with me of the world
that Willa Cather presents to us.
It was the world without--
and you'll have to believe me on this--
It was a world without radio, without TV,
without sound recordings, without CDs.
And I'm really stretching credulity here when
I say without call waiting.
It was a world without any electricity.
And in Cather's late 19th century,
you might hear reports about a new art or a new music,
but you could only dream about them.
You could only dream about them.
And the people in that America could only
dream about the music of the future.
And they could only imagine what it
must have been like until they actually
heard this young singer, this person, who had been,
you might say, present at the creation.
And we can see how much the people
in the small American community of Willa Cather's story
treasured this ambassador's song.
For them, he was a messenger from another world.
Bringing a music never heard before,
he possessed in every sense a divine melody.
And just about now, you might be wondering
what on Earth all of this has to do with our speakers
tonight, the two artists, whose presence enrich us so much
this evening, and whose work I treasure so much Well,
our century--
our own century-- has seen many dramatic changes in art,
and literature, and music.
And on many levels, we are experiencing
much the same feeling that people
had in Willa Cather's America, that same sense
that we are in the presence of new art forms,
that we are engaged with, and engaged in something quite new.
And we feel it so strongly when we encounter
the work of our own two artists tonight, Joy Harjo and Leslie
Marmon Silko.
Here are new productive voices.
And even though they have both been publishing for many years
now, each new novel, each new poem,
each new collection is always just that--
it's new.
It's fresh.
It's profound.
And it's always giving new directions.
And despite the fact that they are just entering their best
years, they have both done so much and influenced so many.
And I wonder, as I look out on these faces tonight,
how many people in this room have been influenced by them,
and how many people far beyond this room will in the future
continue to be influenced.
I think it's quite large and growing number.
I, myself, I cherish the prose and the poetry
of both of our writers tonight.
But I do not always think of them
as novelists, or poets, or prose writers, or essayists,
or whatever.
Whenever I pick up their work, I think of them in the same way
that the people in Willa Cather's America
saw that young singer from Baireuth.
I see them as messengers.
He was a messenger from the old world to the new.
He was a bringer of new music to waiting and appreciative
people.
And Joy Harjo and Leslie Marmon Silko
are indeed the new singers of a new music.
The music of our present.
And just as Willa Cather's young singer brought Wagner's Prize
Song from Europe to America, our writers today,
our writers this evening, bring beauty and meaning to us
from worlds we never knew existed
or that we have, unfortunately, forgotten.
And this is what we are so fortunate to experience
this evening.
I do not know what they will share with us,
and I do not even know who will speak first.
But one thing I do know--
that both are in full possession of that divine melody.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]