Back
New York
Times
Friday March 5, 1993
By
Ann Powers
When
he was a boy, the Conceptual artist David Greenberger started filling
a notebook with rescued comments, small things people said that nobody
else
would have remembered. "I was interested in the way overheard
things took
on a particular poignancy and power, " he said.
Back
then, word-scavenging was just one aspect of Mr. Greenberger's
creative vision. Little did he know that after art school the preservation
of the quotidian would become a central activity in his life. But
then, he
hadn't expected to meet the folks at the Duplex.
The
Duplex was a nursing home in suburban Boston where Mr. Greenberger
worked as activities director from the late 1970s until the mid-80s.
Not
convinced that their typical recreational routine offered by many
nursing
homes provided any real stimulation, he began a newsletter;, called
The
Duplex Planet, filled with residents' responses to his own sometimes
outrageous, sometimes mundane, questions.
Their
answers eventually became the basis for a series of artistic
endeavors beyond the Duplex Planet: several records, monologues and
even a
comic book, all of which Mr. Greenberger oversees. He and the pianist
and
composer Terry Adams will bring one such offshoot, "The Duplex
Planet
Hour," to the Church of St. Ann and the Holy Trinity in Brooklyn
Heights in
a performance on Sunday afternoon.
Although
residents occasionally responded to Mr. Greenberger's questions
with reminiscences, he was determined not to gather oral history.
He
preferred to stimulate his subjects' imaginations, not leave them
in the
past.
"Old
age is too often viewed as the time when you sit back and relive your
glory years,: said Mr. Greenberger, who is 39. "Old people get
viewed as
repositories of oral history. But if that's the only way in which
you view
them, you're cutting short your own ability to age in a healthy way."
Looking
for the Whimsical
Instead
of talking to his subjects about what they once were and did, Mr.
Greenberger concentrated on uncovering who they were in the moment,
to show
these older people still possessed inquisitive and sometimes whimsical
personalities.
I'm
sketching in these characters for an audience who normally is no tin
touch with them," he said. "You get to know a person through
his or her
sense of humor, pathos, outrage and surprise: those qualities, not
historical facts, establish an emotional range."
Mr.
Greenberger soon discovered that his artist friends were much more
interested in the Duplex Planet than were the Duplex residents themselves,
who usually threw it away after a brief glance. He began to take
subscriptions, and after 13 years and 125 issues, Duplex Planet still
arrives at the homes of about 500 readers. The skewed poetry of one
Duplex
resident, Ernest Noyes Brookings, who began writing at Mr. Greenberger's
instigation, has received musical settings by XTC, Fred Frith, Yo
La Tengo,
Hal Willner, and the Young Fresh Fellows, on what will eventually
be a
five-CD series.
Duplex
Planet Illustrated, a comic book series recently begun by
Fantagraphics Press, in Seattle, features illustrations by noted artists
like Dan Clowes, Terry LaBan and Roberta Gregory. And Mr. Greenberger
himself has collaborated on an album, soon n to be released on the
ESD
label, featuring music by Mr. Adams, who plays keyboard, the former
Lovin'
Spoonful leader, John Sebastian (who plays banjo) and the Sun Ra Arkestra
horn players David Gordon and Tyrone Hill. Mr. Greenberger and Mr.
Adams
(whose main affiliation is with the much-loved rock band N.R.B.Q.)
will
bring music from this album to St. Ann's on Sunday.
The
music sustains the mood; it lets the stories sink in," Mr. Greenberger
said. "The structure doesn't resemble anything else I know. Sometimes
there'll just be a chord or a glissando, and then a story; sometimes
there'll be a whole little piece of music in between monologues."
Great
Thematic Freedom
Mr.
Adams said the unusual construction of "The Duplex Planet Hour"
allowed
its creators to transcend the narrow thematic range that often plagues
pairings of pop music and spoken word. "We wanted to avoid the
poetry and
jazz things we've heard in the past, in which the musicians are often
insensitive to what the speakers are saying," he said. "There's
so many
moods within David's material, and those jazz projects just seem to
capture
one mood. This is more severe . It doesn't just chug along."
Mr.
Greenberger and Mr. Adams are longtime friends, and the Duplex scribe
has illustrated several of NRBQ's album covers. After seeing the theatrical
version of Mr. Greenberger's material in Chicago, Mr. Adams was eager
to
write music to match the verbal and imaginative acrobatics of the
nursing
home residents. "It was quadraphonic technicolor, just wonderful,"
Mr.
Adams said. "It's like writing music for life. It just covers
everything."
The
tales of the Duplex, and those Mr. Greenberger has continued to gather
at what he calls "elderly meal sites" since the home's closure
in 1987, are
modern-day versions of Chaucer's reports from the road to Canterbury;
they
can seem nonsensical, but sometimes resonate with wry humor and startling
insight. "If you are an old man and you go into a bar in pajamas,
people
will buy you drinks," a Duplex resident, Francis McElroy, once
told Mr.
Greenberger, and his simple sentiment, pulled out of context, offers
a
glimpse inside the world of a clever man whose age makes everyone
suspect
him of infirmity.
Mental
Vitality,Physical Decline
The
Duplex stories often possess this unsettling combination of wisdom
and
disconnectedness, representing the mix of vitality and decline that
is the
daily experience of their tellers. Mr. Greenberger hopes that the
stories
he has gathered will remind people that growing older isn't the same
as
dying. "There's such a premium on youth; it's come to mean that
aging is a
negative thing," he said. "It seems like an incredible waste
of energy for
people to go, 'Oh God, I'm turning 30.' There's so much else to consider,
stuff you might be able to do something about."
Besides,
he points out, age may change the body, but the essential person
remains. "I'm fascinated by the fact that you can grow older
and feel like
the same person you were when you were younger," he said. "There's
something that carries forward, no matter what. That's an amazing
thing."
"The
Duplex Planet Hour" featuring David Greenberger and Terry Adams,
takes
place at the Church of St. Ann and the Holy Trinity, 157 Montague
Street,
Brooklyn Heights. Tickets are $15 for reserved seating; $13 for unreserved.
Also on the bill, Bob Neuwirth will improvise a "diary of the
future," and
Jeff Buckley will present a "passion story in song." The
program begins at
4 P.M. Information: (718)858-2424
|
