Warp and Woof

My mother was a very great artist in embroidery
 Did absolutely fabulous work
 And she could do everything with thread:
 Sewing, knitting, embroidery, make tapestries,
 Repair tapestries—oh, just fabulous work
 So I've grown up in a background where
 Thread is of enormous importance
 She made a living this way, for a while
 So I was always amazed at the way you take a ball of wool,
 And with knitting needles, and suddenly it turns into a sweater
 Fantastic!
 But I found out, you see, the secret of this,
 Which is that it will do this – it will hold together –
 By this combination of
 Warp and woof
 Warp and woof
 This process where one thread goes under the other,
 Omits the next, goes under the other
 Warp and woof
 Warp and woof
 And then the next thing does the same thing,
 But in the opposite way
 Connect that
 And they hold each other up
 For example, you can put two sticks of wood,
 And lean them against each other, and they'll stand up
 We know the Chinese character for man (人) looks
 More or less like that
 And although this is simply the brush form,
 The brush abbreviation, of what were originally
 The legs of a little human stick figure
 There's a story that Japanese children sometimes
 Learn from their mothers: that the reason this is
 The character for man is that two sticks,
 Leaned together as I described, will keep each other up
 And the one depends on the other; it's mutual
 And so in the same way, the existence of human beings
 Depends on our supporting each other
 Without that, no one of us can exist
 Warp and woof
 Warp and woof
 This process where one thread goes under the other,
 Omits the next, goes under the other
 Warp and woof
 Warp and woof
 And then the next thing does the same thing,
 But in the opposite way
 Connect that
 But that, which may seem a little trite – a little, sort of,
 Moralistic and so on
 But it is absolutely fundamental
 That anything that there is,
 Whenever we can say that something exists
 Existence is a function of relationship