Welcome.

I am Philip Himberg, the executive director of MacDowell.

The music you were listening to just before we began is an abbreviated sampling by composers on which we have bestowed the Edward MacDowell medal in composition since 1960.

The first composer to receive the MacDowell medal in music was Aaron Copland in 1961.

So 60 years later, it is my special pleasure to honor and celebrate Rosanne Cash, the first woman to be awarded the Edward MacDowell medal in composition.

[applause] This particular medal day, this gathering, has been long in coming for reasons we all know too well.

And [inaudible] this liminal space between what has been and what awaits us, we have in partnership with New Hampshire PBS created what I hope will be a bit of cultural alchemy.

Last week, an essay in "The New York Times" described the ancient Japanese art of mending shattered pottery, an art called kintsugi, where broken shards are glued back together, and then the exposed cracks are dusted with silver and gold.

So now, the seams that ensure the integrity of this new vessel actually gleam and radiate a new kind of exquisiteness.

Kintsugi has also not surprisingly become a philosophy of living.

Bad things shatter us.

But we do not hide our wounds.

We wear them.

Our broken places are not only visible, but become a mark of beauty in an imperfect life.

March 2020 was like a rupture.

Yet with these fractures comes an opportunity for real transformation, open space for something new.

And here we are, on a cloudy summer's day, to celebrate together at MacDowell America's first artist residency.

A place, which for many, possesses a kind of rare vortex of creative energy, a power that has drawn over 8,000 artists to its heart for 114 years.

And as you know, we were hopeful this event would take place outside in the historic MacDowell amphitheater-- the sky as our ceiling, and from where we could view Mount Monadnock in the distance.

But alas, unsettled weather caused us some troubles.

But as the great Persian poet Rumi says, "The moment you accept what troubles you've been given, the door will open."

and so it has.

The portals of historic Bond Hall have received us and have given us refuge from the uncertain elements.

We are here in a space that has sheltered and nurtured MacDowell artists for many decades.

And we are here for a warm celebration of inspiration and accomplishment-- acknowledgment of the triumph of art.

In recognition of today's honoree, Rosanne Cash, we have made a theater here, sanctified by our collective presence, for what is theater-- or music-- but sitting among friends and strangers to witness?

To listen and to watch a story unfold.

And today, we will hear a story.

In fact, there are many stories being made at MacDowell right now.

Stories that are conceived and crafted by writers on pages, by painters on canvases, by composers on keyboards.

There are stories made of clay and metal.

Designs composed with mechanical pencils on digital machines with found objects.

This is what MacDowell has believed in and championed since 1907, that artists are in fact indispensable vital workers-- essential-- for without them, we truly are bereft of spirit.

We are profoundly grateful to our supporters, to New Hampshire PBS, to our wonderful board of directors, to our absolutely heroic staff, who not only assured our resilience over the last year, but allowed us to flourish.

[applause] And of course, our fellows, our artists in residence who define us.

Special thanks to Andy Senchak, our board president.

Nell Painter, our esteemed Madam Chairman.

[applause] David Macy, our resident director.

[applause] All of you lead with courage and with grace.

I've been thinking a lot in the last time about boundaries and perimeters, and how artists by definition defy the edges.

The most extraordinary artists have always worked at the margins.

Because by their nature, art makers are exploring the precipices of our universe.

That's what artists do.

Like inventors, artists render visible what has not been visible.

Marian MacDowell also imagined something that never was and brought it into being.

As we look ahead to our coming chapters, we look to embrace the largest range of voices at MacDowell ever, including voices on the perimeters, those voices that have not always been heard.

We look at artists across all spectrums, including and especially historically marginalized communities.

Because when artists in a society have been overlooked, those unimagined vital stories that have the power to change us are forever lost.

One of our recent MacDowell Fellows, filmmaker Isabel Sandoval, likens this juncture of time we now inhabit as the indentation at the beginning of a brand new paragraph.

Isabel says, "The indentation at the start of a new paragraph marks the beginning of a new train of thought.

We are right now at that precarious moment of beginning.

And artists and art institutions like MacDowell must step up to what the moment demands fully and passionately."

we promise you, Isabel, that we will.

Edward MacDowell, considered America's first classical composer, described MacDowell as a house of dreams.

A house of dreams.

MacDowell is this still.

And today, we are excited to be here to honor an American artist who personifies the passionate dreamer.

In honoring Miss Cash today, we honor our past.

But most of all, we honor what lies ahead for Rosanne and for all the yet to be discovered and shared untold stories, by writers, architects, musicians, playwrights, filmmakers, visual artists, art that will in fact repair our shattered souls.

And like the reimagined shattered pottery, will make us humans glisten and shimmer once more.

And in fact, change our very world.

Thank you.

[applause] And now, it gives me great pleasure to introduce Cheryl Savageau.

Cheryl is an Abenaki poet, memoirist, storyteller, and textile artist.

A three time MacDowell fellow, she's the author of several volumes of poetry and a children's picture book.

Her new book is, "Out of the Crazy Woods," a memoir about bipolar disorder.

She's the former editor of Dawnland Voices.

2.0.

She teaches indigenous literature and creative writing at the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College.

It's our honor, Cheryl.

[applause] Thank you, Phillip.

I'm very honored to be here today.

[non-english speech] Hello.

My name is Cheryl Savageau.

My people are Abenaki from Western Maine, the White Mountains Quebec, and Quinsigamond.

I say thank you to the Dawnland.

I thank you to the people of the Dawnland, the Abenaki, Koasek, and Pennacook.

And welcome, friends.

We are here in the unseeded Homeland of the Abenaki people.

We have never had a treaty here.

We have been here for 12,000 years.

Although our stories say we've been here longer.

Our stories say, that we have, in fact, been created from the trees.

That we are the trees up and walking around.

And those stories are very true in their essence, because our entire lives came from the forest.

The very atoms of our body were from the forest.

Abenaki-- Abenaki-- aben means dawn, aki means land.

And so, we are named for the place where we live, the Dawnland, the first place on this continent where the sun rises.

Before the coming of the Europeans, we lived within the common pot.

We lived in an economy and a world in which everyone gave from what they had and everyone took what they needed.

When the Europeans arrived, we welcomed them into the common pot, but they had their own ideas.

So we're still trying to convince them.

[laughter] And I wanted to bring up the idea of the common pot, because I think in a lot of ways that's very much what art is.

If we're lucky, we grow up with the arts, with story, with song, all of those things feeding us.

And when we get older, we give back to the pot.

We give back the gift we've received.

And I feel so much that MacDowell is part of that tradition.

Having this place where artists can come, giving us this wonderful space, and then the artists working and giving back-- the stories, the art, all the beauty that they make.

So again, I want to say, [non-english speech] Welcome to the Abenaki country.

Thank you.

[applause] Thank you, Cheryl.

And now, it gives me great pleasure to introduce our esteemed Madam Chairman, Nell Painter.

[applause] Thank you, Cheryl.

Thank you, Phillip.

Thank you, Rosanne.

And thank all of you.

Greetings, in person, and with profound thanks from MacDowell in Peterborough, New Hampshire.

Celebrating medal day, this time in honoring-- an honoring that the coronavirus delayed from last year, 2020, we honor Rosanne Cash, who's the first woman to win the medal in composition.

Her honor breaks tradition in honoring a woman composer.

Composer, though Edward MacDowell was a composer, and his widow Marian, the motivating force behind the establishment of MacDowell was a woman.

Rosanne Cash's medal reflects changes occurring right now in US and MacDowell history-- changes that began before 2020.

But the events of 2020 galvanized.

When I say, galvanizing events of 2020, I'm not referring to McDowell's choice of Rosanne Cash as a medal winner.

She was selected before COVID-19, before the massive demonstrations against the murder of George Floyd, and white supremacy, and support of Black Lives Matter.

And before the events of 2020, MacDowell embraced a dedication to diversity, equity, inclusion, and access.

A dedication that continues today and tomorrow.

Along with recognition of systems of inequality that reach into heritage institutions like MacDowell, we also recognize the needs to change how we operate going forward.

I need to point to the ongoing DEI work within the MacDowell staff, reaching from Peterborough to New York and soon beyond.

But today, I want to look backwards to the 20th century, and forward to the possibility of repair.

Repair also goes by the name [non-english speech].. And it also goes by the more emphatic term, reparations, which I want to embrace as Madame Chairman of MacDowell.

And even though most of us would not initially associate a need for reparations with our beloved MacDowell-- which today is proudly multicultural.

But looking backwards, we must admit that today's MacDowell, like the values of today's USA, have not always prevailed.

Though established in 1907, MacDowell did not admit African-American artists until the mid 1950s.

James Baldwin, for whom the library is now named, was one of the first African-Americans to come to the MacDowell Colony in 1954.

At MacDowell, Baldwin wrote part of "Notes of a Native Son," his 1955 collection of essays, taking issue with race and civil rights in America.

Baldwin always called MacDowell his favorite sanctuary for writing, a sentiment I would repeat, adding-- for drawing.

Like Alice Childress in 1965, Benny Andrews, Miyoko Ito, and Audre Lorde in the 1970s, several other prominent artists of color came to MacDowell before the turn of the 21st century.

But their numbers remained small, and they sometimes felt tokenized, even as they appreciated MacDonald's legendary freedom to create, and even though MacDowell's sole criterion for fellowships is excellence.

Things have changed in MacDowell since the 20th century.

But last year reappraisal of US history and institutions encourages a look backwards at the generations of American artists whom the prevailing racism, sexism, and ableism of the 20th century sidelined and discouraged.

Artists who felt MacDowell was not for them.

And for so many in the 20th century, MacDowell was not for them.

Many of them have passed away or relinquished the practice of their art.

But some survive, and some persist.

To them, I think, we owe reparations.

Here's my McDowell's reparations proposal.

Every year, we provide one or two 20th century fellowships to artists born before 1968 who are still practicing.

They belong to a segregated generation, a generation when unspoken barriers of racism, sexism, and ableism hindered artist's careers in the 20th century.

What would be the criteria?

I suggest two-- being born before 1968, and persisting in one's artist's practice.

Rosanne Cash and I both would qualify.

[laughter] We could be 20th century fellows.

But while she and I both managed to keep working in our fields, we can point to artist peers whose careers racism, sexism, and/or tribalism hindered.

Artists whose bona fides equal or even exceed our own.

Rosanne, born into country music royalty, has written eloquently of her own self-doubt as an artist, finding encouragement in the art of Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

If even Rosanne Cash needed encouragement, what if the 20th century artists without royalty or without Sister Rosetta Tharpe?

Even though MacDowell can address the former ways of the world of art patronage only on a very limited basis, McDowell's symbolic reparation for past discouragement can make an eloquent statement about a new future.

We cannot move more fully forward unless we acknowledge habits of the past that still influence how we see and how we think about excellence in art.

I would like to introduce Kurt Andersen, who is going to present the award with me.

Kurt?

[applause] Hello.

It is my great honor to be here as well.

As Philip and Nell said, my friend here, Rosanne Cash, is the 61st MacDowell medalist.

I also noticed-- because I have this obsessive pattern recognition quirk-- she's the 16th composer.

So if I were a numerologist, I would reverse those numbers and find magic in this appointment.

But as has also been alluded to, the company of MacDowell medalists that she now joins is so illustrious.

Just thinking about the composers-- Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein, Steve Reich.

Sonny Rollins, and Stephen Sondheim, to name a few.

And as Philip said, Rosanne Cash is the-- and maybe Nell as well-- the first female composer-- yes-- [applause] --to get the MacDowell medal.

But she is the 14th-- by my count-- 14th woman to be a MacDowell medalist.

And by the way, if anybody ever doubts that the late 1960s and early 1970s were indeed a great lurch forward for progress, of the 10 MacDowell medals awarded in the decade starting in 1967, half went to women.

[applause] So the place has set a model for its future already.

Including in 1976, Lillian Hellman, the writer.

Who interestingly, it was the very next female MacDowell medalist after her, the writer Mary McCarthy, who around that time went on a national network TV talk show, and said of Hellman that, quote, "Every word she writes is a lie, including and, and the."

[laughter] Good times.

[laughter] I am truly, as I say, honored to be here, because of the illustrious of the previous presenters.

So Rosanne, thank you for letting me be the Mike Nichols to your Edward Albee, the George Plimpton to your William Styron, the Elizabeth Hardwick to your Joan Didion.

I was tempted just to swipe the text for this from a different arts prize awarded recently, to a different beloved and important American singer songwriter.

That is, as the Nobel committee said of Bob Dylan in 2016, "For having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition."

Rosanne Cash has done that.

[applause] By the way, "Synchronicity," "Girl from the North Country," the great Bob Dylan song, both Rosanne Cash and her father recorded that song-- one of them with Bob Dylan.

But Rosanne sings her own songs, mostly, because she is a magnificent writer of songs, which is why we celebrate her today.

Now, we writers who don't set our words to music, or sing them, seldom call ourselves artists, for whatever reason historically.

Whereas every musical performer is automatically referred to as an artist-- a performing artist, a musical artist.

But Rosanne Cash-- actually unequivocally the real thing.

Now, what kind of artist is Rosanne?

My favorite kind.

The kind who can't easily be stuck in a pigeonhole.

She's a writer and performer of country songs, yes, but also a writer and performer of folk songs, and of rock songs, and of blues songs, and songs that become extremely popular.

So a writer, I guess, of pop songs as well.

Plus, she has published a book of short stories-- very lovely book of short stories indeed-- and with her collaborator slash husband, John Leventhal, has a Broadway musical in the works.

Each of those genres is a hybrid of previous genres.

So her songs-- all of her songs-- constitute a new hybrid.

Which is really just another way of saying, Rosanne Cash is an American artist who knows the histories of each tributary of that musical river she navigates.

From the Delta, from Appalachia, from the Celtic lands.

It's a funny thing about country music.

When I was a little kid in Nebraska, it didn't have-- country music-- any particular political tint.

But then, came the Vietnam War, and the anti-war movement, and the backlash to the anti-war movement, and the exploitation of that backlash by a president.

And in 1969, as protests-- some of you here may remember-- were peaking, Merle Haggard's anti-protester, anti-hippie, "Okie from Muskogee," became the number one country song in America.

And the rest is history.

In fact, I think over the next generation, the music of country music also started to change.

And that change was analogous to what was happening to America in general then.

That is, starting to lose connections to its roots.

Becoming slick and shiny and all about money.

Beset by a new pseudo conservatism that wasn't conserving a lot of the best old spirit.

Starting to become a kind of grotesque mummified version of itself.

Meanwhile, back then, brand new country music star Rosanne Cash remained true to her inherited musical legacy-- to its best deepest parts, and did not go with its flow politically either.

Something I realized contemplating her life, she is like a fictional character.

This wonderful heroine invented to embody America.

The protagonist of a fantastic novel.

Fantastic in both senses-- wonderful and also kind of implausible.

I mean, a father who grows up poor on an experimental New Deal homestead picking cotton near the Mississippi River and becomes an iconic musician.

A mother, the granddaughter of Sicilian immigrants made good, and the great, great granddaughter of an enslaved Black woman.

As a child, our heroine moves West with her family from Memphis to Southern California to Johnny Carson's house.

[laughter] And then, she becomes a musical star herself.

Act three, or chapter 23, she gets too artistically ambitious for her record label.

Her father tells her, screw em, you belong in New York.

Where she finds a perfect romantic and professional partner, does her best work yet, and after dramatic setbacks-- one involving brain surgery-- heads toward a happy ending.

[sniffs] But seriously.

And I just wanted to say, her brain problem, which is called a chiari deformation, I thought that sounds familiar.

And I looked it up.

And I was right.

Chiari is, in the land of one of her homelands-- Italy-- it means luminous.

But seriously, I can count on no more than two hands the living American singer songwriters as artistically ambitious and fine as Rosanne Cash, with a body of work of an incredible breadth and depth.

Her songs are full of beauty and dreamy pleasures, but also unflinching pictures of reality, and history, and thus of anguish and tragedy.

Like all good art, hers is complicated.

And let me tell you, she works at it.

After her early success, she trained herself to be the artist she felt was worthy of that success.

And she knows what every artist knows.

I'm quoting her now, "I am always a beginner, again and again."

Don't just take my word for it though.

Let me read a few bits from a few of her lyrics from a few of her records.

They're like core samples from some mother load of precious metal.

[laughter] From her most recent album, "She Remembers Everything," a title I love.

Also, I love the title of the song, which is "Particle and Wave."

Light is particle and wave, reflections of this place, refractions of our grace.

It reveals what we hold dear.

And then this bridge.

That's not a line, that's me.

We owe everything, everything, everything, to this rainbow of suffering.

An American roots song about quantum mechanics.

My sweet spot.

[laughter] In fact, so much of Rosanne's writing depicts those kinds of exquisite dualities.

It's gorgeous.

It's painful.

It's both.

And along with the existential cultural allusions and wit.

Like in her song, "World Without Sound."

I wish I was John Lennon, free as a bird.

Then all of you who sit and stare would hang on my every word.

And the chorus of that song.

But who do I believe in this world without sound?

Who do I believe once they put you in the ground?

And finally, a song she wrote last summer after George Floyd's murder and the reckonings it inspired, called "The Killing Fields."

There was cotton on the killing fields.

It blows down through the years.

Sticks to me just like a burn.

Fills my eyes and ears.

And then, this remarkable last verse.

Goodbye to the killing fields.

I'll break every single bow.

All that came before you.

All that came before me.

All that came before us, is not who we are now.

[applause] Sure.

Youth may be wasted on the young.

But I know for a fact that age is not wasted on Rosanne Cash.

[laughter] She is still constantly distilling her time alive into wisdom.

But also, she is as imperfect as all of us.

And in her work, lets us know that she knows she's imperfect.

Which confirms the wisdom.

Rosanne and I are both writers.

We both creatively feed on history and dream of time travel.

We both left the provinces for New York City.

If I'm still allowed to call California and Nebraska and Tennessee the provinces.

[laughter] We are both lucky in many, many ways.

I am lucky to know her.

American culture is lucky to have her.

Speaking of New York and luck, another hero of mine, EB White, in the hot, hot summer of 1948, in a hot, hot room at the Algonquin Hotel in New York City, wrote a great essay called, "Here is New York."

It makes me think of this person as-- or vice versa, I'm not sure which.

White in that piece says, there are three New Yorks, of natives, commuters, and, quote, "The New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something.

The greatest is the last.

The city of final destination.

The city that is a goal.

It accounts for New York's high-strung disposition.

Its poetical deportment.

Its dedication to the arts.

The settlers give it passion.

Each embraces New York with the intense excitement of first love.

Each absorbs New York with the fresh eyes of an adventurer.

Strangers who have pulled up stakes somewhere and come to town seeking sanctuary, or fulfillment, or some greater or lesser grail.

It can destroy an individual, or it can fulfill him, depending a good deal on luck.

No one should come to New York to live, unless he is willing to be lucky."

Willing to be lucky.

I love that phrase.

I have quoted it many times over the years, including at the two wedding ceremonies at which I officiated.

[laughter] I recommend it for those purposes.

[laughter] But only now, preparing for this, did I realize it could be a great line in a song by Rosanne Cash.

And I think the EB White estate probably would allow that.

Anyhow, I want to end with another great remark by EB White.

Quote, "All that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love this world. "

I am with him.

And I have a feeling that Rosanne Cash is as well.

Thank you very much.

[applause] I am so pleased and honored to give Rosanne Cash this Edward MacDowell medal, which-- [laughter] Can everybody see it?

[laughter] Rosanne.

[applause] I should just toss my speech out Kurt.

[laughter] I will never be able to thank you enough for that.

To be seen like that is the greatest gift.

Wow, And I really treasure our friendship.

So thank you.

And thank you to Roz Chast, who had this conversation with me at the library yesterday.

I'd like to continue that conversation for life.

And thank you to Emmylou Harris, my friend of 40 years.

I just got to get my [audio out] together.

[laughter] Oh my God, that was on television.

[laughter] Sorry.

When I was making my first album, I nearly quit in exasperation, because I kept comparing myself to Emmylou.

And I had to learn to stand in awe of you, Emmylou, without sacrificing myself.

And in the fulcrum of the late 1970s hot stew of rock and roots music, your exquisite instincts and that voice lighted the path for so many of us, myself included of course.

And the fact that you're here on this day fills me with so much gratitude that these circles have closed.

Thank you so much.

[applause] And I want to thank everyone in the MacDowell community for creating this really unusual medal day through all the trouble, and making it so beautiful, and welcoming so warmly.

And my visit with the artists yesterday was so inspiring, and gave real context for this.

So thank you for that.

So every year, when I get a new date book, I write the same quote in the front cover.

Same quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson.

And it says, "Do not the great.

Always live extempore, mounting to heaven by the stairs of surprise."

So I may not be great, but I do find myself on the stairs of surprise quite often, like today.

Artists are in a service industry.

The premier service industry for the heart and soul.

We are bound by an imperative to create, connect, reveal, and to practice artful subversion.

And I live by that imperative.

But I have never created a single thing in a vacuum, or provided any soul service outside of a larger power composed of all the writers, composers, and performers I admire, the traditions I build upon, my own DNA, and this numinous creative force that can't be defined.

I stand on shoulders.

And I stand shoulder to shoulder with those whose attention span is longer, and whose musical ability is more refined, like my husband John, who is also my best reader, my North Star, and who is kind enough to tell me when something I've written or sung is not worthy of my instincts.

And he mostly tells me in a nice way.

[laughter] We should all be so lucky to have that person in our lives.

The person we dream of before we meet them.

Too, I should say that in the last couple of decades, John is my chief collaborator too.

So I moved to New York City 30 years ago and really began to understand myself in the backdrop of the city, as you talk about, Kurt, in the midst of writers and artists working at the top of their game, which provoked this healthy sense of competition.

And also, by the anonymity-- which as a performer, I perversely crave.

And in the inspiration just outside my door every single day.

And I also fulfilled that adage.

We always thought she was weird.

Turns out she's just a New Yorker.

[laughter] But my list of aberrations is so satisfying.

And what got me here today-- this implacable curiosity and serial obsessions that sometimes drive me to the point of madness, and at the same time give ballast to my melancholy, and the sense of urgency, and the need to connect.

When I was young, I dreamed of the rhythm of language, and the prose of notes, and of learning to navigate those mysteries.

But they were all in raw potential.

And if I could only learn to assemble them into something that resembled art, I knew I would find myself.

As I began to work with those native materials, I discovered that in my mind, songs look like paintings before they become songs.

I think that's why I feel such a powerful kinship with visual artists.

Many of the songs I've written have begun with an image.

Headlights on a Texas road, a woman who lost an election walking on a beach, Shakespeare and my father arguing in the afterlife.

[laughter] Little girls like dolls in party dresses who are struck numb with loss.

A ship carrying my children sailing over the curvature of the Earth into their future and away from mine.

Inside these pictures, I found our chord changes, and [inaudible],, and backbeats, and harmony.

And along with dreams of creating, I longed for a community of like minded souls, who spend their lives navigating their own beautiful compulsions in the heart and soul service industry I just didn't know that MacDowell existed back then.

And here I am, and here you are.

So yearning must be alchemy, because we manifested each other.

So you honor me as the first woman in composition, but you also honor the particular genres I work in.

It's an essentially American songbook, as Kurt mentioned, of folk, blues, Appalachian, country, and all of the feeder streams that go in and out.

And that acknowledgment is an added thrill.

So as far as I can tell, the only absolute truth is in nature.

There is no artifice in nature.

Nature doesn't panic over imperfections, or regret over what didn't bloom.

It doesn't measure the petunia against the rain forest.

And nature doesn't attempt to manipulate the market.

There's nothing but pure expression, freed from theory and self-consciousness, but realized with exquisite precision.

A fractal is truth.

But we have our individual truths-- sometimes misremembered, or discounted, and secret.

And we are like radios, trying to pick up each other's signals.

What happened to you?

Where did you come from?

What floods you with the revelations you most require for your own sanity and sustenance?

What colors have sound?

Which sounds are iridescent?

How deep is the eye of your inner beholder?

Which blue is the sky?

And which are the blues of the songs of suffering?

So those questions are really an answer.

And the answer is, I see you.

And that's how we walk each other home through this world.

It's receiving this medal, it tempts me to look in the rearview mirror.

[laughs] And I'm back to when I felt myself in that maelstrom of unformed desires, and desperate with this need to create curious to a pathological degree, but lacking the skills to execute these ideas, and this feeling they were in the feelings and images.

But I'd love to travel back and show my young self this day, or just play Kurt's speech for her.

[laughter] It's like a scene from a play by another medal recipient, Thornton Wilder, like my own version of "Our Town," but with only half the anguish of the omniscient.

[laughter] My younger self would still have to figure out how to get from there to here.

But the knowledge that this day waits in her future might sustain her during the inevitable moments of despair and insecurity that are liberally scattered through the years.

And that still today arrive.

And I expect always will.

But she should also know that those dark moments are as necessary to the journey as learning how to play a G chord.

So I am more relentless than gifted, truly.

But relentlessness is also a gift.

My early feelings of urgency have never gone away, and are more intense now because I have the sword of time hanging over me.

Nothing is perfect, thank God.

But the search for it fuels the happy desperation.

I have mournful Celtic ballads, and Appalachian laments, and the songs of suffering from the Delta in my cellular memory.

And strangely, they all make me happy.

I'm an acolyte of the patron saint of minor chords.

[laughter] And she's an exacting but generous mistress.

So the stairs of surprise, they exist outside linear time.

I don't have to travel back to give the news to the girl of my past, because she's emerged from her tunnel of noisy colors, happy desperation, with her fractals as benediction against perfection, with her North Star by her side, and her radio turned to your station, to say, I see you.

And thank you for seeing me.

[applause] And now, really I think a first for MacDowell.

A kind of, let the art tell the story.

Rosanne's two dear comrades and artistic collaborators are here to help us fully celebrate what today is all about the music.

First, one of our world's most extraordinary singer songwriters, admired and beloved, winner of 13 Grammy Awards, composer, lyricist, poet, Emmylou Harris.

And performing with Miss Harris, musician, songwriter, and music producer, winner of six Grammys-- plus he gets to be the husband of Rosanne-- John Leventhal.

Please welcome, Emmylou and John.

[cheering and applause] I'm a bit verklemmt.

All the words she said about me.

[guitar strumming] You know, Rose, as she said, we've known each other for decades.

And she sort of came into my musical family.

And I think, we as artists, we need that family.

We need those people to bounce off of, and to have their support, and to support them.

And because as Rosanne said, nothing comes in a vacuum.

But all I know is that, when Rose came into my life, and I heard maybe just that very first song-- I don't remember which one it was.

To me, she was fully formed.

It was amazing that the words, when she says, I see you, I felt she saw me.

She saw into my heart.

She saw into the voice.

That she has a way of understanding, especially, I think, a woman's journey through this world, and through the travels of the heart and the soul.

So grateful that she came into my life and has been a friend for so long.

And grateful that she asked me to come and be a part of this extraordinary event.

Well-deserved for her, and to discover MacDowell, which it was something that I didn't know about.

And so, kudos to everyone here for being a part of MacDowell.

And I'm just going on, because I'm afraid to start.

[laughter] This song-- so many songs I could have picked of Rose's that I love.

And this one is probably one of her most deeply personal.

And I shouldn't be singing it, because it's so personal about her relationship with her father.

Which I witnessed, because I got to know John when I got to know Rose.

But I love it so much.

And I was so touched by it the first time I heard it.

And so, with her blessing, I'll do it for you now.

[MUSIC - ROSANNE CASH, "I WAS WATCHING YOU"] (SINGING) Headlights on a Texas road.

Hank Williams on the radio.

Church wedding they spent all they had.

Deal is done to become mom and dad.

But I was watching you from afar.

Long before life there was love.

See those little girls dressed like China dolls.

All for one, then one by one they fall.

High on a hill, let the world pass us by.

You never came back with, I know you tried.

Because I was watching you from afar.

When it all falls apart, there's love.

All those years to prove how much I care.

I didn't know it, but you were always there.

Till that September, when you slipped away.

Metal of my life on the longest day.

I heard you say, I'll be watching you from afar.

Because long after life, there is love.

Baby, I'll be watching you from above.

Long after life there's love.

[applause] Thank you Emmylou.

And now, I believe another first for an historic MacDowell medal ceremony.

We are fortunate to hear a performance by the medalist herself.

[applause] Music essayist Greil Marcus said this about Rosanne.

"When you are in the room with that voice, you know something is at stake.

That something is unsettled.

And so, it is the tone of voice that leads you to listen for the rest of the story."

Please welcome Rosanne Cash and John, singing her composition, "An Undiscovered Country."

This is actually a song that I wrote the lyrics and John wrote the music.

[guitar strumming] Since he is here today, I thought I would take advantage of him.

And "The Undiscovered Country" as you probably know, is something I stole from Shakespeare.

I feel if you steal from Shakespeare, it's fine.

Nobody cares, because everybody does it.

Man, I'm still nervous, following Emmylou.

That'll never change.

That will never change.

That's absolutely right.

[MUSIC - ROSANNE CASH, "THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY"] (SINGING) All those who go before us, the mothers and the kings.

Shakespeare and my father kick dust up in my dreams.

If you're too close to the voices, you can stray far from the track.

So goodbye my friends, it's my turn.

I won't look back.

The ghosts have had their moments.

They fade into the sun.

Shining like a carousel, when summer's just begun.

Bonded for their silence, and I threw away the key.

And someone's going down.

But it's not me.

All because I'm thankful for what we don't understand.

The undiscovered country in every woman, every man.

All those who follow after are children who we pledge to a story of some sailors who float beyond the edge.

Their little box of wishes, we want them to retire just beyond their grasp, and plain desires.

The old men never helped us.

They took our every vow.

They turned them into money, and look where we are now.

Waiting for a savior, but she walks along the see.

And someone's going down, she went down for me.

And still she says she's thankful for what we don't understand.

The undiscovered country in every woman, every man.

Some day will come the questions with no answers, but we ask, just the same when we were children, which was sweet but doesn't last.

From the undiscovered country, we hear the old refrain.

The sky is blue for the few who remain.

Still we must be thankful for the things we never planned.

The undiscovered country in every woman, every man.

Raise a glass, be thankful for what we don't understand, the undiscovered country in every woman, every man.

[applause] John Leventhal.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I used to complain about having to get up and speak after Michael Chapin.

But that was nothing.

[laughter] Thank you, Rosanne, for that exquisite song, for those shivers.

So I have a small benediction for the afternoon.

On behalf of Nell, Philip, Andy, and the entire board, we collectively want to extend a profound thanks to everybody who works at the MacDowell Colony and makes this place what it is.

And a special callout to the folks closest to medal day, Gina Hsu, Brett Solomon, Ann Hayashi, Deborah Marsh, John Sieswerda, and Chef Scott Tyle.

[applause] And while we're giving up some love, McDowell's board of directors need a salute for their clear eyed and extraordinary generosity in supporting the staff and the program through what hasn't been a terribly easy year.

[applause] So it's my pleasure to start the beginning of the end of this program by thanking New Hampshire Public Broadcasting, Danny Khan, who's Rosanne's manager, I had a wonderful time with you this week.

[applause] And Emmylou's guitar whisperer, Maple Byrne.

[applause] Thank you to you Anne Stark [inaudible],, I know you're here somewhere.

And to Kurt.

And for supporting future composer's fellowships.

And to John Hargreaves, and Nancy Newcomb, and Bob Larsen and Sylvia Larsen, who I think are also here today.

[applause] And I know that some of our representatives from Boston Private are here today.

So thank you for being lead sponsors, together with Yankee Publishing, and also to Welsh and Forbes, Putnam Foundation, the New Hampshire Humanities Council.

It is this support that made the day possible.

And I have just this to say today.

In Rosanne's lyrics, and in her memoir composed, she does not shy away from exploring life's struggles.

And when reading the memoir, my attention snapped to when she quoted one of my favorite musical shapeshifters, T Bone Burnett.

And this feels like an extra special medal day, in that I have a feeling that when Milton Babbitt lauded Edgar Varese, he did not quote anybody named T Bone.

[laughter] T Bone said to Joe Henry, "Don't stop the working, but do stop worrying."

And those words struck me as almost a precise description of what the MacDowell fellowship condenses for the artists who are here.

As an organization, we fend off distractions.

We try to make ideal working conditions for all creative artists.

So it's a profound respect for the artists and their creative work that's the gravity holding MacDowell's universe together.

And at MacDowell, respect is visible in the beautiful gardens, the delightful meals, the well-kept studios, and the James Baldwin library.

Before Edward MacDowell died, Marian had already transformed her own fierce desire to support his creativity into a passion for helping all creative artists.

And we, together with your help, are sustaining that passion and continuing to expand and live up to the founding intentions of Marian and those who supported the program early.

And as you walked from your cars to Bond Hall this morning, you saw a vast array of solar panels.

Those are only the latest expression of respect.

This time for the environment and for the legacy we will leave to future artists.

So before the echoes have entirely resonated out of this room, Bond Hall, I want to end by saying, that your smiles and good energy-- in those smiles and good energy, I sense the presence of some many friends who are not here this year, including board members Bill Banks, Mary Carswell, Anne Cox Chambers, Edmée Firth, Vartan Gregorian, and Leslie Robertson.

And I say the names of these great friends, to thank them once more.

And to thank all of you for coming to medal day and making it real.

Thank you very much.

[applause]