R.I.P. Steve Silberman - author, deadhead, friend of Cros, all around mensch

Very sad indeed.  R I P

I remember him challenging the David Crosby death rumors and it was only when he confirmed that it finally sunk in that he was dead... rip steve

Very sad and a big loss to his husband, sister and so many communities. He was a strong ally and support to the Autism community, poets, beats, Deadheads...  he was a writer of important works, and a mensch.

Best friends with David Crosby, a good friend of the Naropa poets and writers, but more, a caring person.

Damn.

He just posted on my friends thread on FB last week and I wondered how my friend knew Steve. RIP

Ouch. My very favorite Twitterer before he left that hellhole. RIP

I met him twice.  He signed my copy of Skeleton Key at a Shoreline show once and he gave me the googly eyes as I was dancing alone at the Fillmore during the Dick Picks 4 release party.  He was a great guy. I traded lots of tapes thru the mail with him back in the  day.

RIP. Good guy, avid deadhead, giftes writer to say just a few things.......may the four winds blow you safely home......

This really sucks.  Never met the man but had great respect for him.

Every time I hear his 'mandala' bit from Long Strange Trip I feel like I'm back inside with Jerry again, for just those few moments.

the reminder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNhlN4IwRgA&t=37s

Our cultural forest is thinning.

Another big tree down.

May many seedlings grow in the sunny space he bequeaths. 

t

His work with autism, and his book, NeuroTribes, was mentioned on the segment , Sunday Passage, on CBS Sunday Morning today.

Hi everyone -

The memorial for Steve Silberman will take place on Saturday, November 9, at the First Universalist Unitarian Society of San Francisco, 1187 Franklin Street (at Geary). Everyone is invited to celebrate the incredible life of our wonderfully generous, compassionate, brilliant, talented, and loving friend.

Doors will open at 1:30. The ceremony will start at 2:00. There will be a reception following with light refreshments. Street parking is likely to be limited, so we encourage folks to use carpools, public transit, and taxis.

In honor of Steve's intense commitment to COVID prevention and the safety of everyone in the community, we ask all attendees to test before coming, and to please stay home if you are sick. Masks will be provided for anyone who does not have one. We are kindly asking you please to not put other people's health at risk at the celebration of Steve's life.

A webcast of the ceremony will be offered for those who cannot attend in person. More details will be announced at a later time.

With much love,

Keith and Hillary

...

 Thanks for posting the announcement, DJ Easy Wind.

This Week’s Show: GRATEFUL DEAD HOUR NO. 1879  WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 23, 2024

Steve Silberman 11/7/94 Icon Byte, San Francisco   THE DRUM CIRCLE

Heard the above last night as a promo for the April '78 set.  Can't find the audio online, but Gans has it.

The text for drum circle...

OUT OF THE DAY COME THE DRUMMERS, with congas and maracas and tars, with bongos and little hand-drums painted with sacred symbols and incised with the faces of demons, with drums of skin and wood and river clay and metal, the drums of the four elements. With rain sticks and shekeres, drums that hiss and drums that rumble like two stones rolling against each other on the floor of the ocean, with clay ghatams as round as their bellies and surdos like flame under the feet, with all kinds of drums in their hands streaked and fretted with the day's labor, hands that know how to make matter speak secrets of spirit.

Master drummers with eager apprentices, drummers who leave their men at home to make love to the moon with their drum, drummers who lie to people but never to their drum. Big fat drummers with bellies over spilling their too-tight pants who love nothing more than to eat, make love, and drum, drummers lean as snakes with muscles articulate as the taut skin of a drum, rude drummers with beery kisses, inept drummers fumbling the beat, shy drummers who roar like thunder when they drum, tomboys who bury a tooth under the Milky Way wishing for their first drum, drummers who are glad they are not soldiers, fire-eyed drummers with stretch marks on their breasts and tough nipples, drummers who heard their true name one night from a drum.

INDIGENT DRUMMERS SLACKING ON THE RENT but never on the rhythm, drummers with neighbors pounding on the wall, drummers who sleep in their truck with their drums, drummers who stroke the skin of a drum head patient as a lover who know what Duke meant when he said "A drum is a woman," drummers drumming as the first warhead opens its flower of heavy elements, drummers full of acid playing drums of water, mathematical drummers building golden triangles in the ear, drummers who could have been poets inventing a new language of the heart on a secondhand drum, drummers who think of the most beautiful breasts they never touched when they drum, drummers with pieces of metal in their flesh binding them to this world, drummers who dreamed they could fly when they were young, who learned to fly.

DRUMMERS WHO PLAY WHAT THEY HEAR INSIDE, drummers who play what's never been heard, drummers who keep the secret of the silent beat. Drummers who make earthquakes when they drum, rhythm masters of the cutting rhyme and the tricky sample, compassionate drummers drumming the drum of swift death, old drummers who set searing coals of envy in the chests of young drummers, drummers born in the wrong century, exiles of time. Medicine drummers with caxixi and berimbau stinging trances into the air, heavy metal drummers to whom visions of Norse thunder gods come in garages stinking of dinosaur perfume, kind rainbow drummers with bellies full of lust for perfect young bodies, drummers who weep thinking of a cow in the slaughterhouse, assassin drummer aiming his arrow well, blind drummer sounding the colors of the setting sun, lonely drummers, drummers drumming first blood between their legs, drummers who smile when they play knowing they were born to drum, drummers who say dancing with the hands, drummers who should have stuck with the violin lessons, drummers who learn they are drummers ringing the temple bell, drummers unraveling the net of the law, drummers making one from one and one, drummers who keep drumming when the drum head cuts the fingers of their hands, drummers who feel nothing but pain, drummers drumming to steal knowledge of the dead, drummers waiting absolutely still for the animal whose skin will be the skin of a drum.

(posted 9/23/24)

Hi everyone -

The memorial for Steve Silberman will take place on Saturday, November 9, at the First Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco, 1187 Franklin Street (at Geary). Everyone is invited to celebrate the incredible life of our wonderfully generous, compassionate, brilliant, talented, and loving friend.

Doors will open at 1:30. The ceremony will start at 2:00. There will be a reception following with light refreshments. Street parking is likely to be limited, so we encourage folks to use carpools, public transit, and taxis.

In honor of Steve's intense commitment to COVID prevention and the safety of everyone in the community, we ask all attendees to test before coming, and to please stay home if you are sick. Masks will be provided for anyone who does not have one. We are kindly asking you please to not put other people's health at risk at the celebration of Steve's life.

A webcast of the ceremony will be offered for those who cannot attend in person. More details will be announced at a later time.

With much love,

Keith and Hillary

From Steve Silberman's Facebook Page:

A quick reminder that the memorial for our beloved and deeply missed husband, brother, and friend, Steve Silberman, is today at the Unitarian Universalist Society in SF. Doors open at 1:30 (PCT) . Ceremony begins at 2:00 (PCT/ 5:00 EDT) . Reception to follow. Everyone is welcome to celebrate the life of a true mensch who did everything he could to make the world better.

For those who can't make it, here's a link to the webcast: https://youtu.be/2fegZ0mIGPA

We'll leave the video up for a couple weeks after the ceremony, at which point we will take it down. Like life itself, this memorial is impermanent.

Much love to everyone,

Keith & Hillary

     

Still feeling sad about the loss of Journalist, Author, Deadhead, and All Around Mensch, Steve Silberman. I knew Steve as a cool neighborhood guy when I lived in Cole Valley, San Francisco in the 1990s. Steve had written a book that became popular with Deadheads, 'Skeleton Key', a Glossary of Deadhead slang. Steve went on to an illustrious Career as a writer for WIRED and many other publications, and he even wrote prolifically with Liner Notes and Forewards to lots of Grateful Dead-related Books and Albumreleases. His Grandest Coup had to be his NYT Best Selling Book 'Neurotribes', a study of Autistic people, and the history of their place and treatmentin and by Society. It would be translated into 13 languages! Wow!
So, with such a heady set of accomplishments in his Life, you know that I had to be delighted when Steve, unbeknownst to me, wrote a Blurb in David Gans' Book, 'Not Fade Away', about something I did that he called the coolest thing he saw at any of the several shrines to Jerry Garcia that had popped up around San Francisco at the time of Jerry's passing in 1995. This photo that I took of Page 55 of the book 'Not Fade Away...The Online World Remembers Jerry Garcia' by David Gans....It was published shortly after Jerry's passing...

This comment sent in by Steve Silberman is the reason I will always consider them both friends...Cuz I'm the one who put that sticker there...

  (~); }   NFA...

Thanks, Steve Silberman ! You didn't miss a Trick! You confirmed for me the Hippie Credo "Never Trust A Prankster!"...

As Jill would say, I love us.

I did listen to most of the gathering on Saturday carrying my phone in my pocket as I did things I had to do. It was sweet and strong and lovely. Steve was loved and admired.

Sounded like a beautiful tribute to a special soul.

I'll just say that this world needs MORE Steve Silbermans and less everyone else.