The Greater Voice

The Trick to a Good Interview

So, what is the trick to a good interview, you may ask. A few things - at least according to me. One is that the questions should be interesting and complex enough to bring well thought-out answers from the guests. Questions that really tap into the substance of the matter-at-hand, that really ignite a willing response that's really fresh.

Next, the host must really listen to what the guest is saying and ask the questions the responses really inspire. Questions that the listener will appreciate, too, and will learn from and care about. I know it sounds easy, but it's not.

Then, there's the matter of guests. I'm tempted to bring on guests who align themselves with my interests...environmental, animal-rights people, for example. But this show is called The Greater Voice - not The Susan F. Benjamin  show and there's a reason. I want to hear the voices that matter most to the people I interview - whether or not I agree or even care about the subject matter. So, for example, I interviewed a guy Clayton Cramer who wrote a book about guns in America. He's in favor - a gun in every pot - although he didn't appear hateful or overly dogmatic. I won't say where I stand, except that I don't identify that closely with the subject matter. But the interview was great. He knew his facts, was articulate and interesting, and gave me (and hopefully my listeners) insights into matters I rarely think about. (He'll be on December 6, I believe.) And THAT is what makes a good interview.

Oh, by the way. I don't want anyone with distinct viewpoints on the show. I was all set to have one guest when I realized he was starkly antisemitic - a true neo-Nazi, as was his publisher. Trust me. So, I'm canceling.

Why I Like Arlo Guthrie

Arlo Guthrie has been a part of my life in some sense for almost 40 years. I listened to his music growing up and have been going to his concerts since college. So, I wanted to interview him for my show on music. Interviewing people is always tough - the more famous, the more often they've been interviewed. The more often they been interviewed, the more packaged their responses.

I don't know if Arlo's responses were packaged. Some were, I'm sure. I asked him about the success of Alice's Restaurant, for example, and he said something like "If I knew that, I would have written more songs like it."  More likely, Alice's Restaurant was a success because it touched on the stresses of the time - the individual (particularly the anti-war contingent) versus the Establishment. The individual is,   in this case, Arlo the litterbug and the Establishment is the police force who imprisoned him for littering. Naturally - the little guy wins and wins big: the episode helped Arlo avoid going to Vietnam or, more likely, in exile to Canada.

That being said, I liked Arlo a lot for a few reasons, all of which, I'm sure, have contributed to his success over the years. First, he was friendly, but sincerely so; he had a kind of accessibility, a lack of self-importance and immediate presence that became a springboard for the interview.

He had a good sense of humor, too, which is important to all the interviews I do. Lots of guests have it, Biotech reporter Moria Gunn, of NPR, for example, and Barrymore Scherer, classical music reporter for the Wall Street Journal. People in places who address serious issues yet have a sense of humor. Humor underscores Guthrie's approach, not ha-ha humor, per se, but a sense of not quite taking the whole thing seriously. In fact, in the interview, he acknowledged the importance of humor to dealing with the Big Issues that are like minefields promising to go off in all of our lives.

More though, I think much of Guthrie's work works on a metaphorical level so everyone can recognize and own it. His lineage, as the son of Woody Guthrie, is also the lineage of working people from the Depression on and the difficulties that confront them. His work is also a metaphor for Americana in a more sweeping sense: American love affairs, American cities, American values at their core. Even his comments speak to the substance of who we are, not the gloss. In the interview he  mentioned that he went to the Grammy awards, with its incredible sound systems and technical brilliance. Yet, the substance, he said, wasn't there. It was empty. And everyone knows that he's right... and that even the Grammy awards are a metaphor for something else- something distantly shallow about our culture and values, something that will pass soon and not be remembered.

As for Guthrie - he speaks to what's funny, sad, rebellious and accepting. That's it. Right there. And it's with us all the time, part of our history, This Land Is Your Land, and all the rest.

Anyway, the show is The Greater Voice...it's at www.thegreatervoice.com, if you want to listen. Arlo will be on Thursday, the 11th of October, but archived and available to download after that.

About Estrangement

I was thinking estrangement after interviewing Elise Blackman who wrote a book called "Grub" - a follow-up to the Victorian novel "The New Grub Street." We were talking about the role of artist as outsider: that to create great art, you need a perspective that only an outsider can have. I lived that outsider life for years - in artist colonies in "bad" neighborhoods in Boston and, for a while, Barcelona.

But when I think of estrangement, I really don't think of artists, anymore. They opt for estrangement, most of them - it's a value and a choice. Nothing wrong with that, but it's true.

What I think of, instead, is when I lived in the artist colony across from a drug infested housing project.  The walls were stained with graffiti, the door was broken,spread wide open exposing the naked, cement halls and in the middle, a little boy sat on an ancient chair. I remember thinking that this little child,  living in poverty, whose role models were big brothers and fathers constantly on the edge, didn't stand a chance in life. Estranged from possibility.

Another time, I was living in Israel on the Israeli/Lebanese border. It was 1976 and Lebanon was embroiled in civil war. We could hear the bombs from their side and the bombs, marking the border, from our side. A shepherd came from over a dirt mountain with his sheep. He called to us in English...I don't remember why...from over the thick barbed wire barrier. "Hello" he shouted. "Hello," we shouted back. "How are things over there?" "Not so good," he said. "Not so good." Then an Israeli tank rolled by and told him he had to go back, over the mountain, and he went, very slowly, with his flock. Estranged as he was from...need I say?

The last time was back in Boston around midnight. A balloon man with colorful balloons attached to his cart made the rounds after dark. Everyone knew he was a drug dealer, but he never got busted. I remember seeing a little boy, maybe three, with a man I assumed was his father, selecting one of the balloons, pointing his little finger. And I remember thinking, the boy should be home or at a festival or circus in the sunlight, and not, his innocence so real and raw and exposed, getting a balloon from the guy who doubtless, was selling his father drugs.

So, it's amazing that with that estrangement, and the sorrow and poverty and despair it represents, that I, and I am convinced, those two little boys and that shepherd, could love life so deeply and so much.

Black holes and mystery

Well, here I am writing my blog. I don't even know if anyone is reading this. I feel lost in this mass of cyberspace. Monday, I interviewed a guy - David Aguilar - who's a scientist and wrote a book about planets, stars and galaxies. So much that's interesting and strange...especially black holes. He described black holes as these places in space that you can enter from any direction - front, back, top, bottom, side...yet can never leave. Something so difficult to comprehend - no, impossible to comprehend - all we know of it is a mathematical equation. Yet, it's there and it's real.

I almost wanted to say the black hole is a metaphor for God. A mystery that we can't even begin to understand...something more than a mathematical equation but no clearer. But I had already (jokingly) described our interest in space as a way of addressing our existential confusion, uncertainty...ok, terror, and besides, the topic was science.

But for some reason, the whole idea made me really sad.