| I think one of the important points of focus is to be able to have that sense
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| of the personal, and at the same time the larger dimension, the social
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| dimension, the political dimension. |
| And that’s one of the things that we’ve
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| both been trying to work at for the past five or six years. |
| It’s a tough thing
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| to integrate.
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| The balance, yeah.
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| The strain has been enormous for you, and for me at times. |
| But it’s worth it,
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| because the, the survival of civilization, in a sense, is, is the rsult when
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| you do this kind of thing.
|
| The clearst version of somebody saying that in a way that took it out of the
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| theoretical and into the practical, and well also that talks about the rewards,
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| is something Pete Seeger said. |
| And I think Tom was there. |
| We were doing a
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| benefit out in, for the theater out in Long Island that I support,
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| the Performing Arts Foundation, and Pete every year is nice enough to come out
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| and, uh, do a benefit with us.
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| And Pete said, you know I — somebody had asked him and he, asked him a question
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| about how he felt about all these years of being involved in things like this —
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| and he sort of answered me 'cause he knew my commitment to things, he says «You know, Harry, my involvement in a cause, benefit, march, or demonstration,
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| uh, I’m not sure it’s made a difference.» |
| And here’s a guy who’s being very
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| modest 'cause for forty years he’s stood up for every major issue of our times,
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| since fighting fascism in the early forties, late thirties.
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| Uh, but he says, «I can tell you one thing — that involvement with these issues
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| means you’re involved with the good people. |
| The people with the live hearts,
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| the live eyes, the live heads.»
|
| And, and I mean just think about it in terms of your lives, all those people
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| out there listening. |
| You know, the whole stance of the music industry during
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| the late seventies was «Look at your navel and say boogie» and try to get some
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| kind of complexity, passion, excitement out of that.
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| Well, who are the people that are your best friends? |
| Who are the people you
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| keep coming back to? |
| Who are the people that make your life worthwhile?
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| Usually the people who are committed to something. |
| So in the final analysis,
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| commitment in and of itself, irrespective of whether you win or not, is,
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| is something that truly makes your life more worthwhile. |