| AARDVARK: You work in several different media. Someone once said that
if you’re truly creative, you can work in any medium, writing, art, music
and so on.
SILVERSTEIN: This is almost true, but not really. I think that if you’re truly creative, you can work in certain related fields of creativity, but then there are others that are beyond you. For instance, a man who works well with words might work as a writer and as a poet and as a lyricist. But if he tried to work in sculpture, he might get absolutely nowhere. And a guy who is very visual might easily work in painting and drawing, could also work in costume design, if he leaned that way, could work in stage setting, and in those related fields. I do believe that a person who is truly observant in one of the arts will be truly observant and sensitive in the others as well, but it’s his ability to express these things that would limit him. I believe that a man who is a sensitive painter is sensitive to life, and therefore would be sensitive as a writer or as a storyteller, but having the ability to write is something more than merely seeing. Having the ability to paint is something more than merely seeing the colors, seeking the form. It’s in execution, in skill. AARDVARK: Do you think creativity is something you’re born with, or is it developed? SILVERSTEIN: I think it’s both. I think you’re born with a certain sensitivity and awareness and perception, and I think you have to develop the manual skill. With either one alone, you’ll be absolutely nowhere. I’ve known people with tremendous technical ability that haven’t gone very far. I’ve also known people with tremendous insight that never bothered to learn their craft. Craftsmanship is something that’s really going out now. The young people have no patience with craftsmanship any more. They think, therefore they am. It’s not enough. You don’t think, therefor you are. You do, therefore you are, or else you aren’t. Thinking is not enough. Sensitivity is not enough. People want to be accepted for sensitivity, for tender thoughts, for high ideals. That’s not enough. What can you do with it besides just feel it? You’ve got to do something with it or you’ll have the greatest unpublished novel ever, and the greatest unpainted canvas. What good is that? It’s no damn good, so you’ll talk to friends in coffee shops and bars. You do, therefore you are. AARDVARK: Then you don’t go along with the beat image? SILVERSTEIN: Sure, I do. I go along with that if that’s what you want to do. If you want it like that. There are people I know who claim to be pretty independent people. In other words,, they don’t go to work. They don’t earn any money, they don’t contribute anything, but they don’t really want to. Nobody tells them what to do and they consider themselves free. I don’t consider this freedom if you can’t afford to go to the South Side. I don’t consider this freedom if you’re living in a city surrounded by people who are all living a certain way and all you have is the freedom not to live their way. To me, freedom entitles you to do something, not to not do something. But if a person doesn’t want to do anything, wants to dress and act a certain way, I think they have an absolute right to do it. I believe that if you don’t want to do anything, then sit there and don’t do it, but don’t expect people to hand you a corn beef sandwich and wash your socks for you and unzip your fly for you. You have to do that for yourself. If you want to live on a flagpole, well, okay, but when the wind comes, don’t moan. All I complain about is the crying. AARDVARK: As a performer at the Gate of Horn, how did you find the audience? SILVERSTEIN: They were all right. I’ve been backstage around a lot of comics and acts, and it’s amazing how many of them come offstage screaming about the audience. It’s as though the audience has to fulfill a certain degree of intelligence and sensitivity and perception and enthusiasm. I guess what they’d like is for clubs to test the audience before they come in. If they’re not qualified, disqualify them like a jury. It’s the entertainer’s job to work that audience. If they don’t get a response from that audience, that’s tough shit. Nobody is breaking your neck to come in and work that room. If you think you’re working a square room, don’t work it. If you do work it, don’t cry over it. It’s the crying that I see going on all over, people are moaning audiences should be better, publishers should be better, readers should be. Change them. Make them better. It’s easy to sell a bag of popcorn to somebody who wants popcorn. If they want popcorn and you want to sell them shishkebab, you’ve got a tougher time of it. If you want to educate them, go ahead and educate them. Sell them shishkebab. Or sell them raw fish or whatever you sell them, but don’t complain because they wanted popcorn. You knew that when you went in there. But I don’t know what the best way to sell it is. I guess in small doses, if you’ve got the patience for it. That’s the best way for integration too, if you’ve got the patience for that. AARDVARK: What do you think about the integration problems now? SILVERSTEIN: That’s a pretty big question. Here on the Near North Side (in Chicago), it doesn’t seem to be much of a problem. Except that a Negro guy might marry your brother. I think America’s making great progress in integration. I think that if we move at the rate we’ve been going, it’s going to be wonderful. However, you can’t blame the guy who says, “I don’t want to wait a lifetime. I don’t want to wait another hundred years. I want it now.” A hungry guy, you can’t tell him he’s going to eat tomorrow. It’s not enough for him to suffer his own lifetime so that his children have freedom. I don’t think we basically work for our children. I think we do it for us. He wants it now, and he’s going to get it. AARDVARK: Do you think the pickets and demonstrations help? SILVERSTEIN: The demonstrations are done by people who feel strongly enough to demonstrate. They feel they can get action that way. Certainly they can’t get action by sitting with their thumb up their ass. AARDVARK: What do you think of the current folk music boom? SILVERSTEIN: there are some good folksingers today. You’ve got Bobby Dylan, who’s a fine folksong writer, but he’s off there loving life and against war. Bobby Gibson does some pretty good stuff, and Travis Edmonson, but most of the performers are still boilin’ cabbage down. I don’t think you can really relate to it too much. Eventually, you’ve got to deal with the people in the language they speak, and we are not moonshiners. You’ve got to face it–we are not moonshiners. We were not born in East Virginny. We can’t keep singing about it. In New York, you find good folk musicians. The best banjo player around, Eric Weissberg, plays that Scruggs banjo, but Eric Weissberg is Eric Weissberg. He was not born in East Virginny. And Marshall Brickman–most of the guys are Jewish–I don’t know what there is about the folk area that hangs up city-born Jewish cats. But city-born people are really taking to that folk-moonshiner idea. I don’t know what there is about it. Certainly as a group, folksongs are the dumbest things in the world. People say they’re simple. They’re dumb. They don’t say much. They don’t go any deeper into any subject than “Love is like an oak tree” or “love is like a flower.” Bullshit. Love is not like a flower. I don’t know what it’s like. It’s like a whole lot of things, but it’s not like a flower and it’s not like an oak tree. You’ve got to get away from this. You’ve got to talk about let’s stop the war and love each other. That’s bullshit. Everybody’s for love. Everybody’s against war. You’ve got to say something that goes deep enough into man’s nature to make him feel the brotherhood of man. Don’t just say the word “brotherhood.” That’s easy to do. You’ve got to establish between people a oneness, a brotherhood. Establish it. Don’t use the word a lot. This idea of the uninformed young person of today who is saying, “Ban the bomb and let’s have peace and clasp hands. Are you for peace? Yes, I am. Let’s talk about flowers.” They talk about doves and nobody knows a damn thing that’s going on. You ask somebody who’s the ambassador to Russia, they don’t know. You ask them what’s going on in Congress, they don’t know. All they know is peace. Scream the word out. You can’t jell the word and cut it up into fudge or something. You can’t make a concrete block out of it and climb up on it and be out of range of the bomb with it. They’re more interested in banning the bomb. I think they’re more interested in marching all together and singing folksongs and drinking hot chocolate. I think that’s what they’re really interested in. People that are really interested in something, they find out about it and they go about it. Act, don’t just march and sing the folksongs. AARDVARK: You’ve got a new book coming out. Is it like the ABZ Book? SILVERSTEIN: No. It’s another Uncle Shelby book, but it’s a real children’s book. It’s called “Lafcadio, the Lion Who Shot Back.” AARDVARK: Does it have social significance? SILVERSTEIN: I hope that everything I do has social significance, but it didn’t start out to prove a messages. It started out to be a good book for a kid. I imagine it reflects my ideas, but it is for children. I would like adults to buy it and read it, and I hope they can find enough in it. The book is dedicated to Bob Cosbey, who is the most important influence on my writing of anybody, and on many other people’s writing. He was the only good thing I got out of Roosevelt University. He taught me how to do something. The only time I ever really learned how to do something. AARDVARK: Why did you leave Roosevelt? SILVERSTEIN: A number of things. First of all, I got drafted. Secondly, I’d probably have left anyway because my grades weren’t any good. And I’d probably have left anyway, anyway, because I’d had enough college. I’d had too much college. AARDVARK: Are you sentimental about your days there? SILVERSTEIN: No. I’m sorry I went there. I’m sorry I went to college in the first place. I should have been out working at what I was doing. I should have been out living life. Imagine–four years you could have spent travelling around Europe meeting people, or going to the Far East of Africa or India, meeting people, exchanging ideas, reading all you wanted to anyway, and instead I wasted it at Roosevelt. I didn’t get laid much. I didn’t learn much. Those are the two worst things that can happen to a guy. I wasn’t stimulated by many people. I was there for about three years. I was going to night school too, and I found that very exciting. And I was on the Roosevelt Torch, and that was exciting too. We were getting paid at the time too, but when I was there we had no money. There was a nice typewriter, though. It was a very old typewriter, so I accepted the typewriter in lieu of twenty-five dollars. The editor was doing the best he could with the staff he had, so what if he was paying off in typewriters? He had more typewriters than he had money. They weren’t very good. It was an exciting time. AARDVARK: What will you be doing next? Will you do any more records? SILVERSTEIN: I’d like to, if they want me to. I’d like to make another record of my own songs. Just one more record. I’d like to do more of my serious songs. A lot of the groups do my songs now. The more serious songs, anyway. AARDVARK: Have you ever thought about serious writing or serious acting? SILVERSTEIN: Sure, I’ve thought about it, but I don’t do it. I guess if you don’t do it, you don’t want to do it. I’ll have five more books coming out this year, and I’ll be doing more and more writing. I’ll still be drawing for Playboy, making more trips for them. And I’m working on a book of nonsense verse, my own verse. AARDVARK: Like Lear’s? SILVERSTEIN: A little better than Lear’s, I hope. He was full of shit. Even his limericks. I think much better limericks are being written today than were being written by Lear, because Lear’s last line was always the same as his second line. “There once was a man from Aseard, And birds built a nest in his beard. . . The birds built a nest in my beard.” A big revelation there. Big discovery. The dirty limericks, of course, are the greatest of all, but we don’t see much of them. I have a thing coming up where I’ve written a lot of dirty limericks where I haven’t used any dirty words. I’ve invented my own dirty words. They’re not a substitute for the other words, but can be used any way you want them. It turns out twice as filthy. . . Back to the
Interview
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