Leonard Cohen // "One day in the early 60s, I was visiting my mother’s house in Montreal. Her house was beside a park… I wandered back to this park…and there was a young man playing a guitar… 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… 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… 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, and he said, 'You don’t know how to play, do you?' He took the guitar, and he produced a sound from that guitar I had never heard. He played a sequence of chords with a tremolo… He put my fingers on the frets. And he said, 'Now, you play.' It was a mess. He said, 'I’ll come back tomorrow.' He came back…he put my hands on the guitar 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…I knew them very, very well. 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 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 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 that has been the basis of all my songs… So, now you will begin to understand the dimensions of the gratitude I have… 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."