how to pipe output from commandline to conky

Question

I am trying to get conky to accept a variable from the screen for use in setting up network statistics. Specifically, here is what I want:

The output to

$ awk 'NR>1{print $6}' < /proc/net/arp
wlp1s0

gives

w1p1s0

I want this w1p1s0 to be fed into conky. So I tried doing the following:

${offset 0}${color}U:${color }${upspeed ${exec awk 'NR>1{print $6}' < /proc/net/arp}}/s D:${color }${downspeed ${exec  awk 'NR>1{print $6}' < /proc/net/arp}}/s
${offset 0}

But nothing happens that I can tell.

Note that I am looking for a solution which will not depend on manually editing the .conkyrc file as the file is moved from one machine to the other or from one interface to the other. That is why I am looking at something interactive.

Thanks for all suggestions!