I sat down recently with the actor/playwright/musician Ernie Silva, whose award-winning solo show Heavy Like The Weight Of A Flame is currently gearing up and fundraising for an Off-Broadway run. A link to his campaign appears at the bottom of this post. 

Ernie Silva grew up in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, where he tells me “there were hippies,” even in the projects where he grew up. Of course, “project hippies are a little different,” as Silva explained. “They had rough edges and a street sensibility, but they still had a broad perspective on the world.”

Even in Bushwick, Silva found people “like me,” who liked certain kinds of music, for example, though they kept it on the down-low. Project-dwelling lovers of The Pixies, Def Leppard, Guns & Roses — or the one guy, Jeff, who was a fanatic for Front 242. Still, Silva was the only one of his friends whom everyone knew would leave home. 

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Tags: Bushwick, Ernie Silva, Heavy Like The Weight Of A Flame, The Culture, Theatre