Annotations for Interviewee: Wright

Why organized it? Christianity doesn't need organizing according to the Master of it, the great master poet of all times didn't want it organized, did he?. Didn't Jesus say... that wherever a few are gathered in my name, there is my Church?

Well, that may be why I am building a synagogue in Philadelphia, a Unitarian church in Madison, a Greek Orthodox church in Milwaukee, and (CLEARS THROAT) a Christian Science church in California.

I've always considered myself deeply...

...religious

Yes, I go occasionally to this one, and then sometimes to that one, but my church I put a capital N on Nature and go there.

You spell God with a G, don't you?

I spell Nature with an N, capital.

I never think of it, if I can help it.

They're professional warriors, aren't they?

I'm against war. Always have been, always will be. And everything connected with it, is anathema to me. I have never considered it necessary. And I think that one war only breeds another. And I think I've been borne out by the reading of history, haven't I? One war always has in it, in its intestines, another, and another has another...

Why be for war? And if you are not for war, why are you for warriors?

I think it's... if it's mercy killing I am for it.

Well, I think, if killing is merciful why not kill.

But be sure that it is merciful.

I would never use the means of justification, no.

No. But I think if they were incurably ill, and suffering intolerable agony, and they could... and there was no possible hope for them, I think a mercy killing would be a mercy killing.

As for the right I do not know. Are you speaking legally?

Morally, I think he would have the right.

But morally isn't the question, my dear Mike. Morally isn't enough. There is a great difference between morals and ethics. The question is, ethically does he have the right, so far as I'm concerned. Morals are only those of the moment, the fashion of the day. What is a moral today, won't be moral the day after tomorrow and the day after that.

Ethically I would say he has the right to end intolerable suffering.

If there was no hope.

I'm not aware of it, if so.

Are you speaking of the common man?

He's the basis of it. I think the common man is responsible for the drift toward conformity now. It's going to ruin our democracy, and is not according to our democratic faith. I believe our democracy was Thomas Jefferson's idea. I mean I think Thomas Jefferson's idea was the right idea, but we were headed for a genuine aristocracy. An aristocracy that was innate, on the man, not of him ... not his by privilege but his, by virtue of his own virtue, his own conscience, his own quality, and that by that we were going to have a rule of the bravest and the best. But now that the common man is becoming a little jealous of the uncommon man, as H. I. Phillips wrote the other day, "It's getting to the point where" he said... "Well, what's the punk got we ain't got? He's just got the breaks that's all." Now that's going to ruin the common man, because the uncommon man is his vision. And I believe man who believes in nothing he can't see, and he can't see anything he can't put his hand on.

He's a block to progress.

I don't think they matter as far as I am concerned. I don't think they're for me, so why should I be for them?

Why not say Picasso, he's a good instance.

All those reactions, and don't you think we all see as we are. And our reactions will be that reaction which is most characteristic of us ourselves. And every time we express a reaction of this sort, we give ourselves away. Somebody said that the museum out here on Fifth Avenue looked like a washing machine.

That's one of my buildings. But I've heard a lot of that type of reaction, and I've always discarded it as worthless. And I think it is.

I think Salvador Dali is an immensely clever individual; he's artistic somewhat of an artist, not a great artist.

I think Picasso is a great artist.

Probably.

I don't think so. Because I've never cared very much which way the public was going, and what was the matter with it.

Well, now I think I never said it.

(LAUGHING) I know.

You know, I may not have said it, but I may have felt it.

But it is so unbecoming to say it that I should have been careful about it. I'm not as crude as I am generally reported to be. I believe, like this matter of arrogance. Now what is arrogance?

Arrogance is something a man possesses on the surface to defend the fact that he hasn't got the thing that he pretends to have.

He's a bluff in other words.

Well, it's a pretty brittle shell.

No, that's another one of those things. I never said it. And I don't think he'd had it. I think he was just plain... had great faith in himself that would pass for arrogance. And I think that any man who really has faith in himself will be dubbed arrogant by his fellows. I think that's what happened to me.

Yes.

Doesn't affect me particularly.

Not a bit. You always have to consider the source from which these things come. Now if somebody I deeply respected had said such a thing I would be worried. I would hurt... feel hurt. But as a piece in a newspaper, blowing into the gutters of the street the next day, I don't think it counts much.

I respect any man or woman who respects himself sufficiently to tell the truth no matter what or who it might hurt.

There are so many of those people.

Where would I begin?

I admired and respected my old master Louis Sullivan, despite of his faults. I think if you are going to admire and respect anybody you'll have to put up with a few faults, won't you?

I think there is no unremitted... unremitting consecration of opinion to any individual because we all have something to apologize for, don't you think?

For instance, that thing you have in your mouth now.

Is that something that you feel like apology... apologizing for?

That is just the point.

No thank you, I wouldn't know how to smoke it.

Yes, I've smoked about six months. (CLEARS THROAT) Well, I won't go through the story. This isn't cricket.

Let' leave the cigarette smoker his solace.

I did say that. And it's true. Having had now the experience going with the building of seven hundred and sixty-nine buildings, it's quite easy for me to shake them out of my sleeve, and it's amazing what I could do for this country. And some magazine has offered me the whole magazine if I design a new capital for the country. It ought to be done.

No. I don't think the mob knows anything about architecture, cares anything about it. I think it's going to be many, many years before the mob will ever get near architecture. I don't think architecture is for the mob; it certainly isn't for education. Education knows nothing of it. And very few architects in the world know anything about it.I've been accused of saying I was the greatest architect in the world, and if I had said so, I don't think it would be very arrogant because I don't believe there are many, if any. For five hundred years what we call architecture has been phony.

In the sense that it was not innate, it wasn't organic; it didn't have the character of Nature.

Passed the drawing board some time ago. (CLEARS THROAT)

And there it is...

Because they came to me and wanted me to do the highest... the highest television tower in the world supported by wires. And that was a silly thing, I thought. So being able to build a mile-high building, I said, "Why not build it?"

No, the television tower would be at the top, and here would be a great useful structure, which would make all these silly boxes, they're trying to make look, tall, foolish. You know they had to build two of them in Central Park to take the whole of New York in. And you could destroy all the rest of it, and plant green, plant grass there, and think what you could have in the way of a beautiful city. With two mile-high skyscrapers in Central Park, would it end the agony?

Nothing. Because an atomic attack would probably do less damage to the mile-high than to anything around the town now.

No, sir, scientifically. I never talk otherwise.

Not an end to cities, but an end to congestion, yes.

And this would help end congestion tremendously. And that was one of the ideas I had in planting one. And then having a great belt... commodity belt around it, where all the trucks and trucking, and commercialization of mankind would take place, say it a mile away. Where everybody would have room, peace, comfort, and every establishment would be appropriate to every man. It's an ideal that I think that goes with democracy, isn't it?

I do.

Why? Is the nation's youth a mob?

No. I believe that a teenager is a teenager, and I think that with him lies the hope of the future. Now architecture with us is a matter of the future. We don't have it now. We haven't had it yet, in any very great extent. But we've had letters from teenagers all over this nation, for five, six, seven years, from Maine to Seattle, all over. And they want to know, if... they say they've chosen this architecture I represent for their thesis, will we kindly send them some helpful material. So, we are getting out a little pamphlet now, where we can answer all these letters, and sending the pamphlet to them. Of course they want us to help them write their thesis, but why they have chosen this architecture?

Now when they are... a few years from now, fifteen, who are going to build the buildings of the country?

The teenagers. They're not the mob.

The Frank Lloyd Wright fans. Undoubtedly. Why? Because they're on the side of Nature, and the other fans are on the side of an artificiality that is doomed. Do you believe it? I do.

Its what?

Silence.

Who's writing?

I don't think it's true.

That's my new book? I haven't seen it.

How did you get it?

Oh well, well, let me see.

Not knowing Charlie Chaplin the man, and only knowing the comedian, I would say that he has given me more pleasant laughs in hours than any other individual living. It's as far as I've gone with him.

Er... briefly perhaps and vaguely. I don't... What do you mean by anti-Americanism? (CLEARS THROAT)

Anti-Americanism

Is there anything more anti-American than McCarthyism?

Anti-American than McCarthyism.

Why did he go away?

Was he abused or something?

I don't know the details. I wouldn't be able to say.

I always wondered why he left the country.

I think he is a heroic soldier.

Heroic soldier, not a hero ex-soldier.

Although hero ex-soldier might do.

I don't know him. I don't know the General.

That is not an allegation, and I refuse to marry that girl.

I don't like intellectuals.

Because they are superficial, they are up top. They're from the top down, not from the ground up. And I've always flattered myself that what I represented was from the ground up.

Does that mean anything?

(LAUGHS)

Well now, don't ask me as an intellect, because how would I know, but he's a hell of a nice fellow. And one of the nice things I know about him is that my wife voted for him and I voted for Adlai Stevenson.

It was against my conscience but I thought he was too good for the job. And I was glad he wasn't elected.

I voted for him because I thought he would make a good President, but against my conscience because I thought that he was too good for the job.

Why dream home?

Dream home?

Well, Mr. Arthur Miller has asked me if I'd be interested in designing a house for him, which would mean Mr. and Mrs. Miller, I imagine.

And for Mrs. Miller and Mr. Arthur Miller I'd be very happy to design a house, but they haven't asked me in so many words yet.

I think Ms. Monroe's architecture is extremely good architecture. And she is a very natural actress, and a very good one.

I don't... I don't think she was spoiled by too much training as an actress. Are you going to give me this book?

I never saw this before! How is it that my publisher gave it to you and didn't show me?

Mike, am I listening to my own epitaph?

Well, have I said change the way of life?

I think the way of life in which the country... to which the country is committed needs that change.

And I think it's taking place, and I see no reason why with intelligence we shouldn't plan it.

Not at all, not saying anything of the kind. It isn't their job to build, it's mine. And I think they should have a right to look to their architects to... for what they should build...

...and how they should build it.

I wouldn't like to change so much the way we live, as what we live in, and how we live in it.

We are shifting in what we live now; we don't really live in it. We don't really understand what it is to live in an organic building with organic character.

Well, let's say natural, would that suit you better?

I would like to make it appropriate to the Declaration of Independence, to the center line of our freedom; I'd like to have a free architecture, I'd like to have architecture that belonged where you see it standing, and as a grace to the landscape instead of a disgrace. And the letters we receive from our clients tell us how those buildings we built for them, have changed the character of their whole lives and their whole existence. And it's different now than it was before. Well, I'd like to do that for the country.

Yes. I came by air.

Quite so.

It does not. Because it never was planned, it is all a race for rent, and it is a great monument, I think, to the power of money and greed trying to substitute money for ideas. I don't see an idea in the whole thing anywhere. Do you? Where is the idea in it? What's the idea?

But my dear Mike, there was a justification for that. When there was no other means of communication than by personal contact. That's when the plans for this city you are living in now originated, it originated back there in the middle ages when the only way you could have a culture, the only way you could get social distinction or any education from it was by ganging up, but if our...

...if our modern improvements, or what shall we call them, advantages are advantageous we can't get it here in the city anymore.

Well, I wouldn't be the judge, you are. What do you say?

That's what I thought.

How would I know? I can't be my own judge, can I?

I think everybody must speak sometimes for calculated effect, and I wouldn't deny so speaking. But, I have never misrepresented myself, anything in connection with me, consciously or deliberately.

Yes.

Nothing.

It would be wrong with you, rather than sex.

I believe in it. I think that's true. And I think that it is because we don't have a religion, we don't have an architecture, we don't have an art of our own, we have no culture of our own, that society is drenched as it is from the bottom up. Instead of getting something from the belt up.

We are not a culture, we are only a civilization.

I don't think we are too young because civilization was going a long time with everybody that ever got here. (CLEARS THROAT)

Why what?

I can't tell you that.

No.

I'm not particularly interested in that feature of human character or nature. I think I'll have to leave the upper region of the pantaloons to the people themselves. I've never been particularly interested in it.

I don't think I ever had an attitude towards it. (CLEARS THROAT) I don't think I've manifested an attitude toward it. I've taken it in my stride for what it was worth and it seems to me that's the way to take it.

Yes.

Good.

I think so.

Alexander was a good friend of... of our friend, the... the President.

Roosevelt. And Alec told me that the President had read what I wrote, and said my, "My sentiments exactly."

Yes.

Do you ever disassociate government and people?

I don't find it difficult. I find that government can be a kind of gangsterism and is in Russia. And is likely to be here if we don't take care of ourselves pretty carefully. A kind of gangsterism, and instead of being something from the bottom up, it's something from the top down again.

No. I don't think they do. I think the people are unaware of all these things that are happening to them. I don't think that they appraise them at their true value.

It should, but it doesn't. It hasn't in Russia, and it hasn't here, particularly lately. It doesn't grow out of the people's knowledge of what's good for them, and what is the nature of the thing they are in. They are without the intelligence Thomas Jefferson thought would be ours, and a democracy, we haven't manifested it. We can see now mediocrity rising into high places, we can see how Jefferson's unwillingness to... to qualify the vote has resulted in this mediocrity rising into high places.

We are responsible ourselves, but we don't wake up to the responsibility. We don't take it. Where in this... where do you know, and it goes for men or women, who are consciously aware politically, we'll say, are the principles which were declared by the Declaration of Independence, the responsibility for the development of a conscience that it places upon them. You don't find it anywhere, it doesn't manifest in the street, it doesn't manifest in the movies, it doesn't manifest... sometimes in the theater we see a little of it.

That is perfectly true that there will be no turn for the better until the people awaken to the nature of the thing that has them in thrall, but this matter is not a matter for a tinker, it's a matter of something that must be grown. And I don't see it growing as Thomas Jefferson thought it would grow by education. I think education has been lax in all this thing, I believe we haven't gone to school to learn about ourselves, we haven't gone to school to learn the nature of things; and until nature study is the basis of our education we'll continue to be in danger communism, of all the -isms and the -istics, and the -ites that you can name.

Communism is utterly, from my stand point, wrong, I am an individualist.

The whole world knows that.

That is right. I despise their government, and said so. I haven't had or heard a word from Russia all these years. And it would make them laugh, in Russia, if they ever heard of it, I don't suppose they have, that I've been accused of communistic sympathies in my own country.

Yeah.

That's what they're all asking me. And that's what I'm telling them, every Sunday morning, and all the time they are working with me. I don't put a line on a drawing board if the answer isn't there. And they are there, for the way of life we live which is the answer too to this very question you are asking. That's why these youngsters come to me from all over the world.

The answer is, within yourself. Within the nature of the thing that you yourself represent, as yourself. And Jesus said it, I think, when he said, "The Kingdom of God is within you." That's where architecture lies, that's where humanity lies, thats where the future were going to have lies.

If we are ever going to amount to anything it's there now, and all we have to do is to develop it.

Now I don't call that the mob. I call that human nature, and I call that humanity. Now humanity to me is not a mob. The mob is a degeneration of humanity, the mob is humanity going the wrong way.

Yes, it may. But that's our misfortune, and that's because they're not properly educated and don't have an opportunity to go right instead of left.

I attend the greatest of all Churches.

And I put a capital N on Nature, and call it my Church. And that's my Church.

That's what enables me to build churches for other people.

If I belong to any one Church, they couldn't ask me to build a church for them. And because my Church is elemental, fundamental I can build for anybody a church.

I think it's the cause of great shame.

Because it is a paragon monkey reflection and no reflection of religion.

Is that a little bit too fantastic?

You can take that to the Universities and take it to the kind of atmosphere in which they administer education for the young, and get exactly the same failure.

Sure it isn't an inferiority complex?

Yes.

I hope not.

Regret.

Because it isn't the thing that really represents the spirit of independence and the sovereignty of the individual which I feel should be represented in our edifices devoted to culture.

On the contrary, I feel large, I feel enlarged and encouraged, intensified, more powerful, that's...

And that's because, why? Because in the one instance you are inspired by nature, and the other instance you are inspired by an artificiality contrary to nature. Am I clear?

No, no, now you are on dangerous ground.

Maybe very bad, very bad. We are... Our natures are now so warped in many directions, we are so conditioned by education, we have no longer any straight, true, clean reactions that we can trust, and we have to be pretty wise and careful what it is we give up to, what it is we admire, what it is we are inspired by? I dare say that the stevedore's inspired by the prostitute whom he seeks, I dare say that all these things may be good so far as they go because they are necessary. But I wouldn't say that they are what should be, I wouldn't say that they are ideal.

I think the American Press, once upon a time, was characterized by individuals, great ones, strong men, men with great purpose, strong prejudices of course, but also strong loyalties and convictions. Today I can't see it. There is much trend in what we call the newspaper world. No, that isn't the word, what is the word for this, er... letter press life...

Which is... the whole country lives now in the newspaper. Everywhere you go, their nose is in something to read.

Well, how is it that we became so literate all at once? How is it now, that we are fed, spoon-fed, everything from A to Z, by reading this, and reading that, by this newspaper, that newspaper, this magazine, that one, we don't seem to have any life at all except by reading something. We learn nothing except by reading. What brought it about? I don't know.

To a certain extent I am, yes. I think you should not read spasmodically, I don't think you should read just for the sake of reading either. I think that if you are going to read, you should read something that'll feed you, build you up, strengthen you, and be what you need to know.

Almost none.

Truly.

Time was the one I got the most out of, for a long time.

I used to get the news from Time. But I don't think lately that it's... I've needed it. And I don't think I've read it much lately.

I don't feel that I need to get anything of that sort.

Only the general drift, the main substance of it, but particularities no.

That I'm more so. Only more quiet about it. (CHUCKLES)

Lauren McArthur, a very good friend of mine, once said to me, "Frank, here, you don't have to paint your shirt-front red and stand out on the street and holler about this," he said. And I began to think it over, and I think he is right. It is. You don't have to push hard, or talk loud, or in any way get up to defend what you believe in. If it is right, and if it is good, and it is sound it will defend you if you give it a chance. You don't have to push it. I've never pushed myself, I've never turned over my hand to get a client during my life; I have never sought publicity of any kind, I've yielded to it, because Duart Lewis came to me once when I was rolling a reporter down-hill in a kerosene barrel and doing all those things to get rid of him. "Frank" he said, "These boys have to live. Don't you understand? That you're bringing all this down on yourself just because you haven't got the as well as you do; and they are sent out here to get something, and if they don't get it, then they get fired." He said, "It takes all kinds, Frank, to make the world" And so I began to give. Here I am giving again.

Not at all. Walt Whitman is the guide on that; if you want to talk, to consult him -- read him.

Walt is a great friend.

Yes. You get so far, as I am immortal. I will be immortal. To me, young has no meaning, it's something you can do nothing about. Nothing at all. But youth is a quality, and if you have it, you never lose it. And when they put you into the box that's your immortality.

Well, you're welcome, I hope it's been of some interest...

...to whoever has been listening. But I don't know.