Bob Kosravi (3:16)

Hi. I've always considered myself lucky. I had dreamed of being an artist from the time I was a little kid. And this was a fabricated dream because I had no idea what that meant. But I sort of put it into action and I went to art school and graduate art school and came out with a degree in painting and rented a place in Hoboken. This is long before Hoboken was fashionable. The way I can tell you this is I rented this place, which was a little building attached to Pablo's towing station, and the rats were bigger than my cat. And this is true, I had never seen the first rat I saw was dead and it still terrified me. But there was good and bad news about Hoboken. One of the bad things was that it was very difficult to get curators and art dealers to come to see your work, of course, but when you got them, they were trapped. And this is what happened. I somehow persuaded a Whitney Museum curator to come to my studio, and she did. And she came after dinner, after work, and she was starving, so I cooked dinner for her and we drank a bottle of wine. And sometime around midnight she said, I'm going to put you in a show. I don't know if it was the dinner or the hour or the wine or what it was. And she. It was an incredibly lucky stroke. So I was in the show and from that, you know, because everything is contextual, especially in New York. I got a gallery and then I was having shows and then I was being reviewed and then I was selling my work. I was more amazed probably than anyone in 1989, tell you how lucky I was. I had a show in la. Doesn't sounds like I'm really bragging, but I had a show in LA and I had a show in New York, and that work was going to come together and go to a show in Chicago. And the gallery dealer in Chicago said to me that he wanted my newest paintings. He didn't Want paintings that had sort of been used and somehow soiled in LA and New York. So I said, okay. I had five or six paintings in my studio that were wet and just finished. And my assistant and I made crates. You've probably seen artists know this. You make crates within airspace so that the paint doesn't smudge. They were wet paintings, and so I sent them off. This was five years of work coming from LA and New York and my studio and I went to Chicago. I flew into Chicago for the opening, and it was snowing when the plane touched down. And by the time my opening happened, by the time it was coming to be, it was a major snowstorm. So there were me, the gallery dealer, his wife, and a couple of other people. And it was, you know, it was a really jolly night. We were sitting around 5,000 square feet, five years of work, you know, nobody there. So it was already not my dream opening. And I couldn't wait to get out of Chicago. I wanted to leave the next morning, but the airport was snowed in, so I didn't get to leave until late in the day. I got home, and I remember almost the precise time I came back to New York. I came into my loft and I did that thing which I always do for company as I turn the television on. It was about 11:15, and the 11:00 news was on, and I was unpacking, and I wasn't. You know, when the television's on for company, it's just sort of there, and I'm sort of listening and not really listening, but I'm hearing this guy say something about a fire raging out of control in Chicago. And just as he saying this, the phone in my studio, which is on the other end of my loft, is ringing. And it took me, you know, like 10 steps as those words were sinking in. I was hearing the guy on television talk about the fire. And the phone's ringing, and it's 11:30 at night. And so by the time I picked up the phone, I knew it. And indeed, it was my dealer in Chicago who was crying, standing in front of the gallery building burning down. And there was this moment where I could hear the sirens on television and the sirens through the phone. It was like stereo. And I actually don't remember anything past the news of the fire on the phone. What I remember was looking up at the walls of my studio. And all painters know this. You know when you make a painting how paint splashes around the edges and you create ghosts. I had not a single painting in my studio. I Had ghosts everywhere, you know, edges of paintings. I did shaped paintings, so they were these baroque shapes and white spaces. So I kind of stood there looking at them, and I somehow. I don't remember the rest of the night. I went to sleep. I know I went to sleep because I was awakened in the morning by another phone call. And it was a reporter from the Chicago newspaper. And he said, so what does it feel like to lose five years of work? That's not the bad part. The bad part is what I said. I don't know where it came from. I said, this is true. I said, I want it to be hot in Chicago, but not the toast of the town. You know, I don't know. And that became a banner in the newspaper. So I should say that two minutes after that, another reporter called and said, I've just been speaking to a woman who lost some work in another gallery in that building. And she said, it's like losing her children. And I said, well, she obviously doesn't have children. She sent me. And this is true, she sent me hate mail for a year. For a year. But I didn't, you know, I didn't mean to be a smart ass. I didn't mean to be callous. These were just things that fell out of my mouth. I was kind of numb. About three or four days later, I got two FedEx packages delivered at the same time. And the first one I opened up was from my friend in Chicago. And he had sent me a video. I put it in the television, and the video, what he had thought I would want to see. And I've never really figured this out. He had filmed every news station of the fire so that it was 15 minutes of the building. Up, down, up, down, up, down, you know, And I'm watching this, and I open the second FedEx package, and it is from another friend in Chicago who has traipsed through the rubble of the fire, which was a block long, and has found. Managed to find a piece of my constructed painting. A piece of it. I open it up, the thing tumbles onto my lap with ashes all over. I'm watching the building burning down, and I lost it. I mean, that. That's when it was real. And I actually cried. For the next few months, I did a really bad thing. I tried to replicate my own paintings. I don't ever do this. I felt like a fake. I felt like I didn't know how to paint. I kept looking for the blueprints. I'd look at some of the pictures, and then I'd Try and do them. And it was horrible. But I am lucky. And at the same time, I got an invitation to go to the American Academy in Rome and be a visiting artist. And I remember them saying, do you want to go? I said, I'm there, I'm there. And a few months later, me and my wife and my young daughter went to Rome for six months. And I got this amazing studio in the American Academy on the fourth floor overlooking and all this stuff. And I would. I started smoking again. And I didn't want to be a bad influence on my daughter. So I would sit at the window, you know, like blowing the smoke out the window. I drank coffee and Rome is like the best place to be depressed. And every morning I would go to church and look at paintings. And what I started doing was making replications of Renaissance masters. I had never done this in art school. I always thought it was really a ridiculous thing to do. But I started doing these elaborate drawings. And I would work on them for three or four days, sometimes a week. And at the end of that week, or three days or four days, I'd rip them up. And sometimes I'd rip them up and paste them down and start a new drawing. But I had had no fear of destroying my work. And for some reason it felt great to rip up my drawings by myself. And I did this for quite a while. Anyhow. The other thing I did in Rome was I started a novel where I had the hubris to do this. I mean, I was just like this. I don't know what I was. I was num. And I couldn't paint well. And I started this novel and the novel was about a mid career, middle aged, New York depressed artist. Guess who that was. And I wrote on this, I thought it was Proust. I mean, I had visions. This was the great American novel. Anyhow, when I got back to New York, I read these hundred or so pages and I thought, oh my God, God, this guy is so horrible. And I decided to kill him on the page. Which is exactly what I do is wonder. And I think now that it was the most cathartic thing I did. I wrote like a seven page death scene where I killed this guy. Totally painless, you know. The guy had a physical description almost exactly like me. He had, I think, more hair. But other than that, he was just like me. And I started the book again. I threw those pages away, totally threw them away after I killed. And I decided I would create a character totally unlike me. So the character became a woman. I made her tall Made her rich. And I gave her my dream apartment. Even she has the penthouse in the San Remo Towers on Central park west, which I had been in a couple of times. And I wanted that apartment. And the novel became a thriller about a serial killer in the New York art world. And I started killing off dealers and critics and it was just, it was a ball, you know, I realized at a certain point that I had to kill an artist, otherwise I'd get in trouble. So I did. But anyhow, for the next five years, I struggled every day with my painting, trying to figure out my painting. And I wrote this novel. At night I didn't sleep much at all. I'm not a sleeper, but I really didn't sleep. And I finished my novel as well as painting, and I decided to give it another shot. And the amazing, most amazing thing was that I sold the novel and that the novel. After two years, the novel hit the bookstores as my show opened and the critics liked my work. I think it's cause, well, partially because the book was hitting the store, but also I think because they had a new label for me, they could figure me out. You know, I was that artist who'd lost his work, who wrote the novel, who now is doing art about art. And you know, so it kind of, it kind of worked. And now it's a little bit later, like a year later, and I'm still painting and I'm pretty happy with my painting. And I have finished my second novel which is set for publication. And so, you know, I think about it and it's not like I would recommend a fire, but it totally changed my life in the most amazing way. And I'm serious about this. I mean, I think, you know, when you do something and you get approval for it and you're sort of successful, why change it? You know, I would have been making those paintings forever. I would have, I think, just been doing that. And instead I got a second art career. Not as good, but I got a second art career and I got this writing career which is just astonishing to me. So I guess you could say, and I agree totally, that I do feel lucky. So thank you.

Jonathan Santlofer (15:38)

Jonathan Santliffer is an artist and writer. He's published five crime novels, including the illustrated Nero Award winning Anatomy of Fear. He's also created and edited several anthologies, among them the New York Times best selling serial novel called Inherit the Dead. His memoir, the Widower's Notebook is out now and has just been named one of the best books of Summer 2018 by Publishers Weekly. You can find more information about the memoir along with a link to Jonathan's website on our site themoth.org or you can find that link in the podcast. Episode Description so Bob Kosaravi tells our next story today. And this is a story I just, I can't say enough good things about this story. I'm such a fan of it. He told it at a main stage show that we had in Austin and the theme of the night was Leap of Faith. A quick word of caution before we hand it over to Bob. His story deals with very sensitive information regarding a certain sleigh riding gift giver who lives up north. So if you're listening with the young ones, you might want to save this one for later. Here's a story from Bob Kozravi.

Narrator (16:51)

Hello Austin, thanks for coming out to tonight. My family moved to America when I was four years old, and despite the fact that I didn't speak any English, they assumed that because I was a child I would adjust quickly. And they sent me right to school. And by the first grade I learned enough English to be able to communicate. But there were still all these cultural things that I didn't understand. So when we got back from the Christmas break, all the other kids in the classroom were super excited. And they were so excited that our teacher decided to take two days off and let every kid share a story about a gift that Santa brought him. And that made them even more amped. And I'm sitting in the corner of the classroom looking at all this jubilation and all I can think is, who is Santa? So I lean over and ask the kid next to me and he was surprised. He was like, what? Santa's great, man. All you have to do is be good and he brings you anything you want. And I was like, but I was good. I didn't get anything. And he replied, well, you must not have been good enough. I mean, that's solid child logic. I'm not going to disagree with him. So I went home and interrogated my dad. I wanted to know who the Santa person was and what I had done to not get any gifts from him. And my dad explained to me that this was a cultural thing, that in America, the parents tell the kids this story and then convince them to be good and then buy them a handful of gifts, but that Santa wasn't real. And the only reason I didn't get any gifts was because we don't play that game, right? Like, he was honest with me. And then he sent me back to school and it was my Turn to share. And I'd only gotten one gift for Christmas, so it was the truth. And I got up and told the other kids. I was very excited about it. I was like, guys, there's no Santa Claus. It's just your parents. They're tricking you. And all mayhem broke loose. I'm not gonna lie to you guys. A heated debate broke out when all these first graders were arguing with me. And I kept going, no, my dad told me, I'm certain that this is all a lie. And then phone calls were made after that. And my dad had to sit me down and explain that there are cultural differences and that it's rude to put point them out to other people, so I should just keep my mouth shut. The following year in second grade, the teachers decided that they were going to do this class project across all the school. And all the students, all the different elementary classes were going to pick a state, a different state, and make the flag for that state. And as our classroom was debating with the teacher what flag they wanted to make, I was flipping through the flag book and. And I spotted the flag of Brazil. And I thought, this is a beautiful flag. So I raised my hand and said, excuse me, can I make my own flag? And she looked at me and was like, you want to make your own flag? And I was like, yeah, just for me. Like, we got all this construction paper out. Can I just make a flag for myself? Like, I won't use a lot of it, like a little paper. And she looked for me for a long moment and goes, well, let me see if that would be okay. A couple days later, she comes back to class and announces that she has gotten us special permission to make the flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Yeah. What had happened is she had gone to the principal and explained that there was this little Middle Eastern child in her class who wanted to make his own flag. And then the principal had gone to the superintendent, told him that story, and they'd agreed, like, yeah, let's support this kid. And she's looking me in the face like, aren't you so happy? And I was like, no, I want to make the flag of Brazil. Yeah. She was not happy with that response at all. She explained to me that since all these people had gone into all this trouble, we were making the flag of Iran. And so we did. I was like, okay. And we made the flag of Iran. And I have to put this into context. This was in 1988. Some of you may remember what was going on in that. It was. It was during the. Towards the end of the Iran Iraq war. And what had happened is America supported Iraq in that war, and Iran was furious. And in the news at night, they would show these video clips of Iranians marching through the streets chanting, death to America, and had signs and banners and effigies. And then the second grade class in Topeka, Kansas, was making that country's flag in the middle of the school year, the semester. They had this big conference where they invited all the parents to come and see what the kids had been up to. And they. They put all the flags that the classes have made up in the auditorium. And so the parents walked in and they saw 49 proud state flags. And then, way off by itself, the flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran. And I remember parents flinching because they had context. And they would look at it like it was as if a nightmare had jumped out of their TV and into their children's elementary school school. One parent honestly covered his child's eyes like, why would you do this to children? And then my own dad saw it, and he goes, why is that there? And I had to explain that I'd asked to make a flag and to support me, they made me make that one. And my dad looked around at the other parents and then looks at me and goes, you gotta stop talking about being foreign. So between the ages of 8 and 13, we moved a lot. We bounced around the country. I'm beginning to think this is my fault. But part of this pattern emerged during this period where I would move to a new school. And then because my name was so foreign, kids would immediately start teasing me about it, or they'd make fun of where I was from, or they would get weird because my mom wore at the time a headscarf when she would drop me off at school and I started, I sort of internalized those lessons. And I just would keep quiet and not say anything until the novelty of a new kid wore off. And then I would make some friends and get along, which is how I found myself sitting alone in eighth grade at a lunch table. It's the first day of school when this group of kids walks over and. And they asked if they can sit with me. And I was like, yeah, sure. So they sit down and immediately start asking questions like, you're new. What's your name? Where you from? And I was like, oh, it's Bob Ack. And they're like, bob, Bob. Bob Ak. What is? I was like, it's Ronnie and it's Bob Ack. And I'm like, oh, okay. And one of the kids was wearing a baseball cap, and he pulled it off, and he noticed the tag said made in Indonesia. And he goes, made in Indonesia. I bet your dad made this hat, dude. And before I could stop myself, I just blurted out, yeah, that makes as much sense as saying that your mom was helping him. And that's the thing. Like, I was tired of this pattern. I was frustrated with having to deal with this. And in that moment, I just figured, you know what? If it's going to lead to a fight, let's fight. And I know that, that your mom is like, that comment right there. Them's fighting words, right? So let's just get to it. But before it escalated into a fight, the other kids at the table started laughing. They turned to him like, oh, he brought your mom into it. He got you, dude. And the kid with the hat looked at me for a second, and then he started laughing, and he was like, you're all right, man. And it was honestly as if I discovered a superpower, because I had no idea that you could get people to leave you alone if you were funnier than them. That was the first time I'd ever experienced that before, and I just started using it all the time. I was like, oh, if this is all it takes to get people not to talk to me, then yeah, sure. And it worked. Anytime a kid would say a comment about me being foreign, I'd come back twice as hard. Or if they did do the Pooh voice, I would be like, you're doing it wrong. And then I would correct them and make fun of them while I was doing the voice. And no one picks on the kid who's funnier than them. It totally worked out. And I fell in with a group of kids who also used humor the same way. It was sort of like a self defense mechanism. After a couple years, roughly my sophomore year, one of our friends in the group had moved, and the rest of us decided to take a road trip and go visit him. And when we got to his house, comedy in our group was a big deal. At that point, we really loved it. We were all in Eddie Murphy. We listened to Martin Lawrence and he looks to us and goes, hey, you guys got to listen to this new album I found. And he pops in a tape for a comic called George Carlin. Yeah, and this is the thing. None of us knew George Carlin before this, and George Carlin was way different. He talked about things that adults told us we weren't supposed to say, but then those same adults would laugh at It. And also he loved to tease people about these polite rules that we just impose on each other that he thought was silly. And I knew for a fact that this is a guy that would allow laughed about the story of me telling a bunch of sixth graders that Santa Claus wasn't real. Right? Like, he would have loved that. I got up and was like, oh, yeah, it's a construct that your parents created to trick you into behaving. And I loved him for it. I was like, this is. This is what I want to do. It was Carlin that made me go, maybe instead of using this as a self defense, I'm going to use it as a way to self express. And then I started writing jokes for myself. I started hard from. From junior year on, I just said anything that I thought would get me a laugh, which teachers didn't appreciate, but it worked for me. I felt alive for the first time ever. Like, anything that popped in my head, I would just blurt it out. And after high school, I started writing jokes just for me. I was like, I enjoy this. I'm going to keep some of these. And then I heard one day a comic on the radio in Dallas who was based in Dallas, but he come off the road and he was teaching classes. And so I showed up and he's a good teacher. He explained immediately the comedy is very personal and there's a lot of different styles. So he wouldn't tell us what not to do. He would just take what we were doing and try to make it funny. And after that, I started going to open mics and I met other comics who were roughly my age but have been doing it a couple years longer. And in Dallas, a very diverse scene. There's all these kids with ethnic backgrounds that are mixed like two cultures. They had to deal with both American and then their own, the parents at home. And these guys kind of adopted me as a little brother. And they watched my set and at the time, I had written jokes in this class about moving to America, Learning English from Dr. Seuss, dealing with airport security, very generic stuff about being Middle Eastern. And they watched my set and went, dude, you got some good stuff. But don't talk about being foreign because you'll get pigeonholed. People will just treat you like that's the only thing you can talk about. And this was also. This is roughly 2005, and at that point the Iraq war had kind of turned bloody and the Afghan war had been going on for way too long. And people were still kind of anxious around Middle Eastern people Because they were worried there's going to be another terrorist attack. Heck. So that was another reason for me. I just started writing generic jokes about dating or working with computers or getting laid off. Yeah, sorry, ring it back. But it didn't feel right giving those jokes. Like, no, I was afraid that I would get pigeonholed. And I was also afraid that I would turn an audience off. Like, they might see me as a threat if I announced that I was Middle Eastern. One day, I was coming back from work with a buddy of mine, he's a co worker and my boss, and we were coming back to lunch, and his name's Harlan and he's Filipino, and he happened to look out of the car and see a Filipino kid climbing into this Civic that he had souped up with, like, lights along the bottom, the neon lights, and, like, put a racing skirt on it. And this drove Harlan crazy. He's like, why would any. Why do Asian kids do that? I hate that Asian kids do that. There's a stereotype about neon lights on a Honda, and yet Asian kids keep doing it. I don't understand. And as he's getting worked up, I just blurted the first thing that came to my head. I was like, you know what, dude? You're actually lucky. Because the only time anyone assumes a car belongs to my people is when they explode. And Harlan busted out laughing. He was like, I can't. Did you do that on stage? And I was like, no, you're not supposed to talk about being foreign on stage. And he's like, really? I think you should. It's funny. So I debated it. I honestly, because I liked Harlan a lot. I thought about it, kept thinking about it, and I kept debating, should I do this joke? Like, would it turn the audience off? Would they get anxious? Or would they see me as a threat? Would they get offended? I mean, it's. It's my people I'm joking about. They have a right to be offended. I kept debating it up until I found myself on stage the next night. And I was staring at this audience, and I just thought, Carlin would do this. And I did it, and the audience loved it. And afterwards, they came and talked to me and asked questions. And it was like I'd given them permission to approach me. And the more questions they asked, the more I was like, oh, you didn't know? I thought, you. Okay, I can do jokes about this, too. And then they would show up to see me do those jokes as well as this car click joke. And then I suddenly started getting booked for more shows. And I got invited to perform regularly on the weekends. And I realized that this thing that my entire life had been told not to talk about, this is what people wanted to hear about on stage. And from there, honestly, it's only gotten better. I've toured the country and worked clubs everywhere, you guys, I've done festivals. I actually recently recorded an album. And I've done all those things speaking my truth. And it's been rewarding in other ways because the person who's become the biggest fan of me getting up and blurting out the things that I think are honest has been my father. Thank you guys very much.

Jonathan Santlofer (30:47)

That's Bob Kosravi. God, I love that. That story is just like. That is the way he literally dealt with bullies by using wit and intelligence instead of sinking to the lowest common denominator. Which I love the fact that he really rose to the challenge. Bob is a comedian and he lives in Texas now, but he's performed around the country and he's still trying to figure out what he wants to be when and if he grows up. He's currently working on a one man silent opera called Dallas in Space. One man silent opera. It's groundbreaking. Thanks to Jonathan and Bob for sharing their stories with us. If any of the Moth stories you hear on the podcast or on the Moth Radio Hour make you think of your own, you can always pitch us those stories by calling 1-877-799-MOTH. Or you can go to our site, themoth.org, record a short message there right on the site. Some of our favorite stories have come from the pitch line, so give it a shot and we look forward to hearing from you. That's it for this week on the Moth Podcast and from all of us here at the Moth, we hope that you have a story worthy week.

Dan Kennedy (32:01)

Dan Kennedy is the author of Loser Goes First, Rock on and American Spirit.

Narrator (32:05)

Spirit.

Dan Kennedy (32:06)

He's also a regular host and storyteller.

Jonathan Santlofer (32:08)

With the Moth Podcast production by Timothy Lou Lee. The Moth Podcast is presented by prx, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public at prx. Org.