I was nervous a few days ago before performing to a room full of university students,

a different group than I'm used to: neither children nor adults my own age, but a unique collection of my old fans from the Elephant Show days.

I'd wondered if they'd want to revisit their childhood, imagining themselves sitting in front of the TV singing along with children's ditties. Or were they more concerned with themes relevant to their present lives and studies? It turned out to be both.

When in the middle of the show I broke out the banjo and played the introductory chords to "Skinnamarink", they joined in with laughter, words and silly actions.

But at other times, when I talked and sang about Africa, HIV, and global warming, it was clear I was hitting issues that plumbed the depths of their concerns.

Everything is interconnected on this delicate planet, and I mean that in not only a spiritual, but a very practical sense. If we don't fix the devastation in Africa now, we will pay the price.

A plague of violent terrorists who as children have been robbed of parents, community, education, common humanity, will descend on us like locusts.

The next 911 will be committed by a disaffected African who never had anything to live for, and in his anger will try to take the rest of us with him.

This was the song that impressed my audience most:

Went down to the ocean, walked along the sand, where the water meets the sky

Where the land ends, if I fell off then, would I learn to fly?

I saw a little girl drawing circles in the sand

She smiled at me, held out her hand, and we danced on the circle in the sand

Everybody dances on a circle in the sand, looking for the answers on a circle in the sand

Everybody's singing on a circle in the sand.

Everybody's clinging to a circle

in the sand

And the waves washed up, the waves washed down. No sign that we'd been there

But the world still went round and the sun still shone down for a hundred million years

And everybody's talking 'bout a circle in the sand, doing a tightrope walking on a circle in the sand.

Everybody's living on a circle in the sand. It's all we're given is a circle in the sand.