RoseLee Goldberg is an art historian, curator, and author of Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present. In 2004, she founded PERFORMA, a non-profit arts organization that hosts a biennial series of performance art pieces in New York City. PERFORMA 09 (running through Nov. 22) marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of F.T. Marinetti’s “Futurist Manifesto,” credited as launching the Futurist movement.

TMN: What’s the relation between Futurism and performance art?

RoseLee Goldberg: The Futurists insisted that artists engage directly with the world around them. Their manifestos examined every aspect of artistic, social, and cultural life—painting, sculpture, film, theater, noise, dance, food, fashion, poetry, graphic design, and architecture—and they believed in confronting audiences directly with their exciting ideas—in the streets, on the airwaves, in theaters, in restaurants.

TMN: How involved are you in the curating of PERFORMA 09?

RG: Totally involved.

TMN: What’s your favorite object in your office?

RG: I have this image of a tea towel design that I love taped on the wall above my desk.

TMN: What has been your favorite part of this year’s biennial so far?

RG: The fun of the chase and the amazing variety of ideas and sensibilities that emerge at the end of each evening. I am also very excited about the PERFORMA Hub! It is my dream come true. It is our headquarters—a flexible space that adapts to very different kinds of needs—performance space, seminars, video screening, gallery, workshop, event place, hangout. I begin every day there and drop in and out all day.

TMN: With 110 events in three weeks, how do you choose which to attend?

RG: I try very hard to get to everything. I have one of my students drive me from place to place, which makes it possible. He also gets an ongoing seminar on the history of performance along the way. —Erik Bryan, Nov. 19, 2009

Freelance Whales cut their teeth playing jaunty pop music on the streets of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Recently, the Metropolitan Transit Authority granted the band a license to play in subway stations as an official member of Music Under New York, complete with banner. We spoke to one of the band’s multi-instrumentalists, Jake Hyman, about the differences between street and tunnel playing.

TMN: Tell us about your subway license. What’s better, playing the subways or busking on the street?

Jake Hyman: The Music Under New York award was quite an honor. We get to be those guys with the big black and yellow banner behind them playing in the most crowded stations, being ignored by millions of commuters, not just the hundreds we get when we play on Bedford Avenue. As a group I think we find playing on the streets and subways to be a very different experience than playing a traditional show.

TMN: How so?

JH: The reactions we get on the street are very real, very ethereal. If people don’t like it or they’re too busy, they move on. If they do like it they smile, they dance, they clap (and give us money). But either way everyone’s on the same page. The feedback is immediate and unavoidable.

TMN: You closed down Bedford Avenue during one street show. Is that your turf now? Do street and subway musicians fight for the best spots?

JH: I wish we could call it our turf! The truth is we just sort of wander until we find a good spot. Lately we’ve taken to playing both on Bedford Ave and down in the L-train station when there isn’t another band around. Other musicians have been really friendly about sharing stations with us. As long as you ask and don’t just start encroaching on someone’s livelihood, nothing gets contentious.

TMN: You’re a subway rider, what makes you irrationally angry?

JH: When people don’t wait for me to exit the train before they push their way on—it takes every ounce of strength not to strangle them. Even just seeing someone do that when I’m not involved gets me, too. I’ve verbally accosted more than one person about it (much to the chagrin of my girlfriend) and never been satisfied with an apology.

TMN: How does the band’s creative preparation begin?

JH: Before shows we get together and do our own form of meditation. We get into a circle and close our eyes and hold hands and do some chanting and harmonizing. To me it feels like we’re just sort of putting ourselves in a bubble together and really connecting. It really helps to focus and relax us; our diverse instrument setup at traditional venues can get pretty stressful and hectic.

TMN: What’s something you’re not good at but wish you were?

JH: Musically? I’m a horrible lyricist. As a lifetime choir singer I can come up with melodies and harmonies like it’s my job…which it sort of is. But I have the lyrical prowess of a monkey. Non-musically? I wish I were good at a sport. Not just casually good, but had some sort of natural aptitude for applying myself to soccer or hockey. My dad and I used to play sports constantly and I used to be in all the youth leagues (though I wasn’t very good), but around the time I got my first drum set I stopped playing sports altogether.

TMN: What is your favorite object in your office?

JH: I’m a writer all day, every day, so I get to sit around and type stuff. In between paragraphs and while I’m doing research, I love to grab my guitar and just noodle around for a while. I’m a drummer through and through, but I can’t help but try to practice something else for a while to remind me why exactly it is that I stick to the drums.

TMN: What’s next for Freelance Whales?

JH: Well, recently we put out our first record, Weathervanes. It’s been a long road to get it heard, get it up on iTunes, and make it accessible to everyone that wants it, and we’re going to really be playing hard to support the record at a bunch of CMJ shows this year. Hopefully a tour is not too far off. Of course, we’re going to keep playing on the subways and streets, but I’m excited that we can start to ramp up the number of proper shows we’re playing, as well. —Mike Smith, Oct. 21, 2009

Jonathan Ames is a Brooklyn-based writer, an occasional boxer, and the creator of the new HBO series Bored to Death about a Brooklyn-based writer named Jonathan Ames, played by Jason Schwartzman, who becomes a private detective.

TMN: Why set the show so distinctively in Carroll Gardens and other actual New York locales?

Jonathan Ames: It’s where I live. I live in downtown Brooklyn. I love this area and I know it’s never quite been presented on television, so it was a real opportunity for me to kind of show New York’s new Left Bank.

TMN: How is the character Jonathan Ames like the real Jonathan Ames?

JA: He shares some of my DNA, but really he’s his own individual that Jason Schwartzman is creating. Some of the work that I write turns up, so there are similarities. He dresses somewhat like me. We based his wardrobe off of my wardrobe. He lives in Brooklyn. He has my name. Some of his emotions are similar to mine, but he’s, you know, he’s Jason’s invention.

TMN: How involved are you in the production of the show on a day-to-day basis?

JA: I’m very involved. I’m there at the first shot and the last shot. I sat next to the director for every take. I have the final edit on every episode. I picked every costume for every actor. I’ve been called a “show mother,” so I’m real involved in everything.

TMN: What’s your favorite object in your workspace?

JA: My favorite object would be my landlord’s cat. The cat’s name is Minimus. He belongs to my landlord but always visits me. This is his secret hideout where he likes to get away, like a teenager, and smoke pot.

TMN: Will you be getting back in the boxing ring anytime soon?

JA: I hope so. I want to start training again, and hopefully some—you know, all my matches have been kind of insane bouts, in a way, against other artists. I’ll see if another strange match presents itself. I’m drawn to these things where maybe it’s a fantasy, you know, another fantasy of being the hero.

TMN: What are you working on next?

JA: Well, I just finished really working on the show maybe a month and a half ago, and it was really time-consuming. So I’m thinking about, if we got another season, I’m kind of preparing and taking notes for that [HBO has renewed Bored to Death since this interview was conducted—ed.]. I have to revise my screenplay that I wrote for my novel Wake Up Sir!, and I have an idea for another screenplay. I had a book come out in July, The Double Life Is Twice As Good, and my graphic novel, The Alcoholic, just came out in paperback.

TMN: Who is your archnemesis?

JA: Myself. He’s the only one that gives me a hard time.

TMN: What’s something you’re not good at, but wish you were?

JA: I wish I were better at fixing things, and I wish I were more mechanically inclined. And also I wish I were a better lover. Yeah, better mechanical inclination and a better lover. —Erik Bryan, Oct. 13, 2009

After launching a music career built on positivity and partying, Andrew W.K. keeps busy by going in several directions at once. He is co-owner of lower Manhattan’s Santos Party House, has appeared in and supplied music for episodes of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and recorded an album of J-Pop covers. He currently hosts a game show for teenagers called Destroy Build Destroy on Cartoon Network, and is putting the finishing touches on a solo piano album, ‘55 Cadillac, due in September. (Interview edited from a recent phone conversation.)

TMN: How much were you involved in developing Destroy Build Destroy?

AWK: The show’s creator is Dan Taberski. We met a long time ago, when he was working at the Daily Show; he was producing a segment about college students not partying enough. It was a lot of fun, and it was really special to me that after all these years—that was probably six years ago—he was now running his own production company and had moved to Hollywood and was working with Cartoon Network on a new show.

I had been working with Cartoon Network for several years developing different show ideas. When this show concept came up, I met with some of the people involved and was just blown away by the idea of combining explosions and teenagers. It really hooked me. They were looking for a person to sort of pull it all together and I must say I was extremely honored to be given the role of the host, of the cheerleader, the main guy on the show, running the show, sort of the ringleader.

TMN: What was the most terrifying moment of your childhood?

AWK: That depends on when you define childhood starting and ending. What age is childhood—is it until 21? I mean, the most scary moment of my life was September 11th. I was still pretty young then.

TMN: How did you pick which songs to use for your J-pop album?

AWK: Well, we actually asked my fan base in Japan to vote for their favorite songs, the songs they would like me to cover. What really appealed to me was that I had never done an album of cover songs. I’d only released a few cover songs before that and they were primarily released in Japan. I did a cover of the Mickey Mouse club theme song march—[singing] M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E—I did a version of that and I liked that, but I had sort of stayed away from doing covers because when it came to songs I really loved, I was happy with the original recording or the recordings that I’d already heard. It didn’t occur to me until later that even if you love a song and love a recording, that you can add something to it, or just enjoy the process of recording it.

And I liked the idea that I was hearing these songs for the first time. I didn’t have a relationship with them yet. I could approach them from a fresh point of view, which has been very rare for me. So, just being able to discover all this new music and dive right into it was really exciting.

TMN: What’s your favorite object in your studio?

AWK: I don’t have favorites. It’s just a really stressful feeling to me to try to pick one thing in life, whether it’s a favorite song, favorite object, favorite person, favorite place, favorite experience, favorite restaurant. Why cut things down like that?

Here, I found a thing: it’s a life-cast—a real life-cast—of Jimmy Durante’s nose. It was given to me by a Hollywood make-up and special-effects artist. It’s definitely an intense object.

TMN: You recently gave your first spoken-word performance—

AWK: I never liked the term “spoken word.” I like to call it a vocal performance or a non-musical performance. “Spoken word” to me sounds so dry. Like you’re just going to see somebody speaking, but it’s so much more than that. I mean, it’s performance. Is a comedian doing spoken word? It’s just a different mode of performance where I’m maybe going up on stage without instruments or going up on stage without any sort of particular plan. I mean, I really try to go in spontaneous—that’s what makes it so much different than singing a song.

TMN: What can we expect from ‘55 Cadillac?

AWK: I can say right now that I’ve spent more time on the artwork than I did on recording the album. That was the whole point—to take a very scary step to see what it would be like to record something where you just sit down and play and you put that out.

I recorded for about two hours, then I picked the best of those two hours and edited it together. Normally I’ve recorded albums where I wrote songs and worked on writing the songs for a long time before even beginning to record them, and then the recording process would be very long and involved with lots of overdubs and fine-tuning and fixing and redoing. I mean, just a very painstaking process. That’s how I enjoyed it. But I wanted to see what it was like to do a totally different album. I’ve played piano—that was the first instrument I ever learned—I guess for 26 years now.

When there’s that feeling of someone just playing for their own pleasure, that’s what I wanted to get in touch with. This one is just Andrew W.K. playing piano and seeing what happens.

TMN: What’s something you’re not good at, but wish you were?

AWK: I would like to be able to ski or snowboard better. My wife is a very, very advanced snowboarder. She used to be professional, she was very good, and I would like to be able to do more of that with her.

TMN: What makes you irrationally angry?

AWK: Feeling short on time. It’s been, like, the worst feeling in my life, and I’ve noticed that almost every bad day or moment of stress I’ve ever had, it’s all come from a feeling of not having enough time. Any other big issue or situation or ordeal I had to go through, any sort of bad news—it’s never caused me the anguish that that feeling of not having enough time has had. Like that feeling of not even having the ability to start thinking about what you want to be thinking about. It’s been really torturous.

There’s a point where you’re either going to feel awful or sick from stress or you just let things go as they go. I try to have more faith now that I’ll finish whatever I’m meant to finish and that I’ll do whatever I’m meant to do and whatever falls by the wayside obviously wasn’t meant to be.

TMN: You recently turned 30. Did it signify a turning point for you?

AWK: Oh, it was massive. Everything changed. I didn’t really notice it happening until it happened, but there was just a lot of baggage, a lot of fears, a lot of hesitations, nervousness, mindsets that were not helping me in the world; they just sort of stopped right after my 30th birthday, and I mean right after, like that day even.

It seemed like everything that I used to think was really hard just wasn’t hard anymore, and it wasn’t like it was easy but—it’s just, like, you just do it. I’ve also reinterpreted the feeling of what it is to be nervous or scared as not being a bad thing or not being a scary thing or not being something to avoid, it’s more like just getting yourself prepared.

The way I guess a lot of people put it, and I totally agree, is that now I officially feel like an adult—in the best way. There are these phases that don’t really mean much, but we can put labels on them. You’re a child, then you’re a teenager, then you become a young adult, and then there’s this period between 19 to 29, those 10 years when you figure out how to become an adult. And it doesn’t have to do with being responsible or being boring or being resigned from having fun or giving up on things. It’s just—you realize you can go fully into the world with a clean slate as yourself, and you don’t need to have anything to do with those earlier versions of yourself that would’ve held you back. My fears and my reservations about life—those don’t exist anymore. I’m not that same person. And none of us are the same, even day-to-day. Something about turning 30 really made that clear to me. —Erik Bryan, Jul. 22, 2009

A native of New York City, John Schaefer has been a WNYC radio host and music curator for more than 25 years. His long-running show “New Sounds” explores a diverse galaxy of genres old and new, and his program “Soundcheck” interviews artists and covers industry news. “Soundcheck” also recently began live broadcasts from the Jerome L. Greene Performance Space in Manhattan.

TMN: You recently broadcasted live with Lou Reed and Santigold. How’d it go?

JS: The first broadcast from the Greene Space was, like most live “remote” shows, a case of barely controlled pandemonium. We might’ve been a little too ambitious, but we wanted to try everything at once: live acoustic music, live electric music, live phone calls, live comments from the audience in the space, a slide show (also available on the web site to radio listeners), and several audio clips that would be audio-only on the radio but which we thought needed to be video clips as well for the live audience. Also, we had commissioned a work whose premiere came down pretty close to the wire, which was nerve-wracking. And we had Lou Reed, who needed to be treated like, well, Lou Reed. You can’t just say, “Sit over there for a while and we’ll call you when we need you.”

Anyway, almost everything worked. Santigold’s clip from the music video “L.E.S. Artistes” ended up being audio-only; we don’t know what happened to the video. Lou did a version of “Romeo Had Juliet” which included a little surprise: two f-bombs that are not in the original. But the engineer was alert and able to catch them before they hit the air. Thankfully, our on-air delay system was working too.

TMN: What’s something you’re not good at, but wish you were?

JS: Soccer. I try to play every Sunday. Playing soccer in New York is like a magnet for immigrants who miss the game. Mexican, French, Italian, English—the game has become a Benetton ad, and the level of play has risen way above my very mediocre skills.

TMN: “New Sounds” has an eclectic approach, but tends toward the obscure. How did the format start?

JS: “New Sounds” was never intended to be willfully obscure, and in fact some of the composers who were still pretty obscure when I started the show are now well known. Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, recent Pulitzer Prize-winner Steve Reich are just a few examples. Ravi Shankar, Keith Jarrett, Yo Yo Ma—these are top-drawer musical talents. But the show was specifically started to play types of music that were falling between the cracks—the cracks between rock, classical, jazz, folk, and world music, and the cracks between the ever-narrowing radio formats out there. So almost by definition you hear a lot of music you won’t hear in many other places.

But “obscure” is a funny word, because if you’re not in a certain musical circle, even the best-known names are obscure. If I described someone as having the street smarts of Jamie T and the no-holds-barred stage presence of Girl Talk, well, those are absolutely obscure names to the millions of people not into the UK indie rock scene or the mashup/sampling scene.

TMN: What is your favorite object in your office?

JS: My favorite thing in the office is the acoustic guitar that Moby left in the studio one day a few years back. I don’t think he was intentionally donating a guitar to us, but when we told him it was still in the studio he didn’t want it back, so I now keep it in the office, where it’s available for emergency use if a musician needs it. I use it myself because it’s a hell of a better guitar than the beat up old Epiphone I have at home.

TMN: Has the digital revolution had a significant effect on your program?

JS: The digital thing has been great from a purely practical point of view. Composers can send links instead of CDs, and if I am putting together a program of pieces that are thematically related, and suddenly think of something that would fit but that may not be in our library, I can usually find it and grab it somewhere, either through eMusic, or by contacting the musicians and having them post something online, or in the worst case scenario buying it from iTunes. Actually, with the DRM-free iTunes, that’s no longer a bad option.

TMN: What was the most terrifying moment of your childhood?

JS: This is sort of like the old “wow, you’re from New York—were you ever mugged?” question. I never know how to answer it because there are so many episodes. Growing up in New York in the ‘70s was proof that what didn’t kill you made you stronger. But once, when I was in second grade, I got out of school, went to the bus stop, and waited for my younger brother to come out from his first grade class. He never did. He was, for some reason, off early that day, but I either didn’t know or had forgotten. All I knew was that my job was to get my brother home on the bus—a city bus, not a school bus. After awhile, it started getting dark, and the school was dark and deserted. I was really scared and didn’t know what to do, and finally realized my brother wasn’t coming out of the school. I got on a bus, went home, and found police at the house and my mom a wreck and my father out scouring the neighborhood. I think I might’ve been more terrified at that moment than I was standing alone watching the buses go by. —Erik Bryan, Jun. 3, 2009

Cadillac Man, as he was known on the streets, spent the better part of the past 15 years homeless in New York City. After losing a managerial position at a Pepsi plant, and then at a Hell’s Kitchen meat market, his second marriage dissolved. With nowhere else to go, he began living on the streets, making a living by collecting cans and bottles for recycling. He started a diary around this time, and his collected works, covering the highs and lows of his life in the mid-1990s, was published on March 17. Land of the Lost Souls (excerpt here) focuses on the relationships he developed while on the street in an effort to memorialize the lives of those often overlooked by general society.

TMN: Your first reading of the stories from this memoir took place in a homeless shelter. What was that like?

CM: Ah, it felt so good being amongst my brethen talking “street.” Reading my stories, looking into their eyes, connecting our souls into one being. My voice is theirs, to be spread to all those who will listen and not judge for we are people too. Only our circumstances are different; we bleed and cry just like you. Empathy!

TMN: Most of the stories in your book take place in the mid-1990s. Why do you tend to focus more on that time in your life?

CM: Yes, like a newborn child, this was my new beginning, a new identity. The old me was gone, the past meaningless, and the future ahead so filled with uncertainites, I wondered: Will I survive this ordeal? Become just another faceless unknown? Those early years taught me that even though life tossed a curve ball I was still able to connect with and not strikeout, meaning death. Also, it gave me purpose. The more I helped others, the more reason to live.

TMN: Throughout the book, the phrase “word is bond” keeps showing up. Did you adopt it before or after you became homeless, or is it just a ’90s thing?

CM: “Word?” “Word is bond!” Through traveling to many encampments, listening in on conversations, when someone finished what they had to say or was interrupted by another with “WORD?” meant, “Is that what you say is the truth, straight up?” “Word is bond!” meaning yes, no bullshit, the absolute truth said the replier. Some street people, depending where you are may use “word up?” but the reply is still the same. “Word is bond.” I used it at the Mens’ Shelter reading and they all knew I was speaking from the heart, no bullshit. Like everybody else, we don’t like being lied to.

TMN: What are you working on next?

CM: Still working on the latter years, 2000 to the present. So many stories yet to be told. A novel someday, and a “how to survive on the streets” guide book. Though I don’t wish it to occur on anybody, the book will contain useful hints, the dos and don’ts on the streets.

TMN: What’s something you’re not good at but wish you were?

CM: Wish I was better able to put my thoughts faster on paper and the computer. Adjusting to living inside again, fortunately I have a loving woman by my side who has the patience and understands where I came from. As I mentioned before, this is a new beginning and I want it to last.

TMN: How do you think being a police officer before becoming homeless made your experience different from others’?

CM: Several things they teach you in law enforcemet are observation and how to handle situations that most people don’t come across in their everyday lives. Because of this training, I was able to defuse and save my butt as well as others’. Some call it heroics. I say to that, it’s the right thing to do.

• use of a hand weapon (nightstick, gun)
• observation (intent, body language)
• the ability to take action with little or no hesitation rather than the normal shock/uninvolvement that occurs in society

TMN: Early in your book, you describe setting up a “peanut perimeter” alarm system. Did you come up with this trick or were you shown it by someone else?

CM: I saw someone—this one guy sleeping behind his wagon—use it. When I stepped there it was amazing how that sound carried through the night. I thought, “what a great idea.” I used it most of the time after that.

TMN: What’s one thing the average person could do to help the situation of homeless people?

CM: By donations to soup kitchens, clothing donations, anywhere where the finances go more directly to the clients. Too much goes toward administrative costs and other hidden agendas. Also, the public could be better educated about who we are and why we are here. They often believe they live far removed from our way of life, but in fact they do not. Losing everything could happen to anyone at any time.

TMN: What is your favorite object? (a particular book, a fire hydrant on your street, a keepsake from an old friend, etc.)

CM: The main answer would be my wagon. It lives under the 33rd street viaduct in Astoria. Photos are on Google. Other answers considered are:

• my teeth
• my hat
• my writer’s chair, an office chair kept next to my wagon.

TMN: What keeps you sane?

CM: My writing, the loving company of my companion, the upcoming baseball season, coffee and smokes, and the wonderful people of Astoria. Bless them. —Erik Bryan, May. 25, 2009