I’m Always Alone but I’m Never Lonely : ADAM W. STARVINSKY

I got 800 songs memorized. I’ve been playing the same songs for seven years and I’m not tired of them yet. Nobody’s being bothered by them. They all enjoy it. They can hear it on the fifth floor; see the man who gave me a dollar? He listens to me every day and he enjoys it. Yeah, they enjoy it, otherwise they wouldn’t give me money.

But the police harass me. They try to get me to stop, (claiming) that it’s against the law. It’s not against the law for me to play. It’s against the law for them to try and stop me.

I look for a place where there’s a lot of people. Where there’s a lot of people, I make money. That’s the main thing. I enjoy playing, but I just play here. Sometimes you can’t play in a club because people don’t know you, and they’re looking for guitars all the time.

People don’t bother me because I don’t do much talking. Once somebody took dollars out of my (box) but I just let them go. I kept playing.

I got no background. I started playing in the Army. I was in the Army from 1940 to 1945, in Asia. I was in the artillery. Later, I was a door-to-door salesman.

It makes me feel good to play. Even if I don’t feel good, I play. I play when I’m sick, I play when I’m well. I play all the time.

I’m never lonely. I’m always by myself, but I’m never lonely. But I play for people. I don’t read because reading’s a waste of time.

People are lazy. They just look at television all the time. They don’t stay home and write, or do things. They don’t do anything except what they have to do. They work, then they come home and that’s it.

There’s nobody on the streets and it’s mainly because of television. Television is the worst thing that ever happened. People have the television baby-sitting the little kids, and they grow up and they still watch it, all the time wasting hours. Kids do what they want to do because there’s not many people on the streets. If there were more people on the streets, (kids) would think twice before they do something (illegal or join gangs).

I go around, I visit my daughters. I make records at home. I practice. See the taps on my shoes (used for tapping out a beat to accompany the clarinet)? I thought of that. I wasn’t watching television when I thought of that. I put them on myself. I just thought of it four months ago. I was getting $50, $40 a day before--now I’m getting $60.