This past Sunday, our high school auditorium was reserved for the day. Operation: Respect (the organization is self-explanatory) was there having an anti-bullying gathering of some sort, and someone managed to bring a special guest: Peter Yarrow, or as most people know, the Peter from Peter, Paul and Mary. Yarrow invited the choraliers (a high school dancing chorus group; I'm in it) to sing with him. All of us were initially thrilled about this opportunity. I thought, we are going to sing with history. It'll be cool to be able to say that I sang with Peter Yarrow! Apparently, the concert portion was only going to be a couple hours or so; that's what our choir director told us. He was incredibly wrong.
When I first saw Peter, of course the first feeling that embodied me was awe. I was only feet away from a musical legend! Then, starting at 2:00, we began practicing our songs with him. It took us forty-five minutes to get through rehearsing Puff the Magic Dragon, no joke. He would stop after every stanza to say something and play each stanza around three times each. He's seventy-three years old, and his voice is giving out. To someone with perfect pitch, listening to an old man try and hit the notes he used to be able to hit for forty-five minutes can be quite painful. The rest of the rehearsing took another forty-five minutes or so, and by then I was slowly losing my sanity. Then, the concert began, and he began to play some solo songs. Again, like in the rehearsals, he stopped mid-way in his songs to say something. I thought to myself, why would you do that? You ruin the persisting feelings of each song by cutting them mid-way through, and it's annoying anyways. Then came the worst part of the concert; he kept us sitting on the risers and began the so-called "conference" portion of the event.
The "conference" portion was more about his political agenda than anti-bullying. He went off on a tangent and boasted about how he sang in front of Occupy Wall Street-ers, and how they are in the pursuit of fairness and equality. The audience began clapping in his mid-sentences, probably trying to stop him from talking about it. By now, I was willing to hop off the risers and walk off the stage. Then he began talking about how people should look out for each other instead of pursuing money. "Money, money, money!" He said with a crazed expression, implying that people should be required to give away their money to the needy. I was tempted to blurt out, "Then give me your money." What a hypocrite, that Peter Yarrow. He's still living in his 60s hippy world where they believe in tree-hugging and holding hands and singing Kumba-ya. Yes, it is a great thing to be altruistic towards others; it is a value that no other organism on Earth has. However, philanthropy should not be forced on the people by the government in the form of taxes. If you work hard and rightfully earn lots of money and have an obligation to give it away to a charity, go ahead, that's great. But if the government forcefully takes money from you to give to charities, that is stealing. Peter Yarrow believes in working for the "common good," a Socialist principle and also a principle adopted by Jim Taggart, the antagonist in Atlas Shrugged. In reality, humans are conditioned to be selfish, and it has always been that way since the dawn of man. That one day where the whole world holds hands will most likely never become reality. So rather than being forced to give and work for others (which gives you no incentive to work), people should be provided with an option to give away their money. Anyways....
The rehearsal/concert lasted five hours; it went from 2-7 P.M. I was furious and disappointed afterwards. I totally misjudged Peter's personality, and it hurts me to say such negative things about him. As funny as he was in some moments, he does have a couple screws loose in that noggin of his. I think he's too old to do this stuff now, unfortunately. He was a legendary musician back in his day, but now it's time for him to move on, go retire and become a top-notch golfer. His psyche is "Blowin' In the Wind."
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