BEAR: This is my granddaughter, Heather.
HOOKER: Nice to meet you.
HEATHER: I've heard so much about you.
HOOKER:You didn't have to tell me that.
HEATHER: All good!
BEAR: She performed her Woody Guthrie show at the universitry last night. You missed one hell of a performance.
HOOKER: I had a conflict.
BEAR: Timbers tickets! Our esteemed and retired professor of American Studies prefers sports to art.
HOOKER: I'm not a rich man. I bought season tickets I can't afford. I like to use them.
HEATHER: I may be doing the university again this summer.
BEAR: Really?
HEATHER: They said they wanted to bring me back.
BEAR: That's great.
HOOKER: The word is awesome, Bear. Have you done the show other places?
HEATHER: Right now the show is my job.
BEAR: I didn't know that.
HEATHER: I've had very generous grant support. I've performed throughout the Northwest, at universities and colleges, performing arts centers, senior centers, labor picnics, union halls. I even performed at a lumber mill. I met someone who had known Guthrie.
HOOKER: Impressive. I confess, a couple years ago, when Bear told me his grand daughter was putting together a show about Woody Guthrie that she'd perform herself, I thought you were a trans man.
HEATHER: Oh, no!
HOOKER: How else can a woman portray him?
HEATHER: It's not a portrayal. It's an appreciation.
BEAR: I'm glad you're doing it widely. That ending should be heard by everyone on the planet.
HOOKER: I'm sorry I missed it.
HEATHER: I can recite the ending now if you like.
BEAR: Are you serious?
HEATHER: (tapping her forehead) It's right here.
HOOKER: I'd love to hear it.
HEATHER: Give me a sec. This won't be at performance level.
(Pause. Then, reciting Guthrie's words:)
HEATHER: When I think back through my life to everybody that I owe, I mean the ones I can remember. Of course I know that I owe these folks, and that they owe some other folks, these are in debt to others, and all of us owe everybody. The amount that we owe is all that we have.
I've heard a storm of words in me. I guess I got to where the only way that I could cry was on some piece of paper in words like these. But I know that these words that I hear are not my own private property.
I borrowed them from you. I borrowed them, the same as I walked through the high winds and borrowed enough air to keep me moving. You may have been taught to call me by the name of a poet but I am no more of a poet than you are. I am no more of a writer of songs than you are, no better singer. The only story I have tried to write has been you. All I am is just sort of a clerk and climate tester, and my workshop is the sidewalk, your street and your field, your highway and your buildings. I am nothing more nor less than a photographer without a camera.
I knew that my trail would be a story that whirls. I knew the tale would be a freewheeler, a quick starter, a high running circling chorus that keeps on repeating over and over, and would sing every song to be sung under the one tune and the one name.
And that song and that tune ain't got no end. It ain't got no notes wrote down and there ain't no piece of paper big enough to put it down on.
Every day you are down and out, and lonesome and hungry, and tired of working for a hobo's handout, there's a new verse added to this song.
Every time you kick a family out of their home, cause they ain't got the rent, and owe lots of debts, there's another verse added to this song.
When a soldier shoots a soldier, that's a note to this song. When a cannon blows up twenty men, that's part of the rhythm, and when soldiers march off over the hill and don't march back, that's the drumbeat of this song.
This ain't a song you can write down and sell. This song is everywhere at the same time. Have you ever heard it? Woody has.
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