Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
You're gonna give this big lecture it's our, that's our
big moment every year when we honor someone of your
stature and hope to hear them say
something important about what they're doing.
You're terrifying me.
So, what are you thinking about it? And how are you thinking about it?
You know I thought that, you know, I like to start wherever I speak
anywhere by
talking about my grandfather-- "If you say a word often enough it becomes you"
And I like to invoke, you know, Walt Whitman who
wanted to be absorbed by America and have it absorb him. I like to invoke Shakespeare
about how I learned through Shakespeare the power of
what happens when you just say the words. How it actually evokes
the character, it evokes a human being.
That people really live in their words and if you take almost any
conversation and if we had something comparable to a microscope which took
a little sliver of it,
put it on a slide, put it under the microscope, you would see that
every walking person has absorbed not just their
narrative, their biography, but the world around them. You'd have evidence of
when they lived and how they lived. So I would like to talk about that, and talk about
you know, really some of the wonderful Americans I've met, and probably perform a couple of them.
And, you know, take out little pieces of
what they've said and sort of inspect them like we might look at other kinds of texts.
Those are all good humanities things.
Good. I'm glad it passes so far. I'm looking forward to hearing it and
to seeing you again there.