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Every Monday, Joe posts answers to questions he receives over at the Frankophiles Forum. Ask your question now, and come back Monday to see if it was answered.

April 2, 2007

How do you explain the Jew-Bu phenomenon? Thanks.
Rico T. Spoons

A. I remember attending a Bar-Mitzvah celebration years ago and sitting at the same table with a rabbi. In the course of our conversation, he acknowledged to my surprise that he was an atheist. He remained deeply committed to the culture and traditions of the Jewish people, he said, but he could no longer believe in the existence of God. His loss of faith was based on what had happened to the Jews during the Holocaust. No God, he felt, could have permitted this slaughter. Many Jews feel similarly. Either God does not exist or he is indifferent or perhaps he is even evil. Just look at the suffering around the world. Others have turned away from God on rational and intellectual grounds. They find the idea of an anthropomorphic and omniscient deity dated and absurd; it's like still believing the earth is flat.

So what happens when you lose faith in God but still long for solace and spiritual connection? Enter Jack Kornfield and the Buddhists.

Thanks for writing, Rico.

I've always wondered about the methods by which your monologues are made, the types of processes you go through to create them. When you were on the radio (and worked against the clock), was most of the finished on-air product primarily free-form, or loosely improvised off of sets of scattered notes, or perhaps read verbatim from sheets of paper, crisply-typed and double-spaced? Is it different now? And did your process change depending on any differences in the ways you worked with Arthur Miller, David Rapkin, or your other collaborators?

Thank you for your time, Joe. I'm very glad you're well and productive.
Glerb

A. Joe Zawinul used to take his band, Weather Report, into a studio to improvise under his direction for days. Then he'd listen to the many hours of music they'd created and choose sections he particularly liked, and develop them further into the pieces that appeared on his albums. I've worked similarly. I improvise for hours on the phone with friends who are highly intelligent and very funny (none of whom works in show biz). I direct the course of these conversations to address my own interests, obsessions, fantasies and aesthetic impulses. The conversations are then transcribed. From this raw material and a daily journal, I develop my comic narrative/philosophical monologues. The autobiographical monologues are written by me.

I'd love to say that I used to come to the station utterly unprepared and, through sheer audacity and brilliance, improvise one-hour weekly radio shows. But that would be a lie. . . worth telling. In any case, when I was working live under weekly deadlines, I always brought notes from which I both read and improvised. Good examples are "The 80 Yard Run" and "No Show."

Thanks for dropping by and for your kind words.

See you next week,
Joe