Arlo Guthrie on making the world better
It's surprisingly easy
The son of iconic American folksinger Woody Guthrie, known for “The Land is Your Land,” Arlo Guthrie became famous with his satirical song “Alice’s Restaurant” in 1967, made the top ten only one more time, with his cover of Steve Goodman’s “City of New Orleans,” but became iconic in his own way for his performances and the cheer and hopefulness with which he spoke. This is taken from his monologue in the middle of the closing song of his concert at Wolftrap in August 1993, where he performed with his band, Pete Seeger, and his children.
He refers to his father’s idea that everyone in the world is part of a family, and thanks everyone for coming and for
remembering who we are, cuz if you can look at the TV, listen, you know, to the radio, or read the newspapers you could get awful depressed about the state this family is in right now around the world. But if you here tonight you can sort of feel the heart of what it means to be just hanging out together.
And sometimes we got to remember who we we live in a country where people speak thousands and thousands of languages and come from all kinds of places all around the globe and for the most part, not all of the time, but for the most part, we figured out how to do that pretty well.
But around the world tonight in all kinds of places like Bosnia or something people speaking two or three languages can’t find a way to get along together. So we got to remember who we are so when other people stop for a moment and wonder if it’s possible to get along in this world and we could be doing that for them. . . .
Peter reminded me of something. If the world were perfect, everybody had money, everybody drove a BMW or something, nobody was homeless, nobody ever got sick, everything was wonderful, everybody was smart, and everything, happy all the time, you’d have to go an awful long way out of your way to make a difference in this world. You’d have to do a whole hell of a long to try to improve the way it was.
But in a world that sucks! like this one! you don’t have to do very much at all. There was never a time in the history of the world when you could do so little and get so much done.
He then leads everyone in singing “Amazing Grace.”
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