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Willamette
Week - April 22, 1998
The Granddaddy of 'Zines- PICA
organizes a week
to honor
Duplex Planet and its creator.
BY STEFFEN SILVIS
David Greenberger once felt that there was something exotic and mysterious
about old people, in part because he lacked any real contact with
them.
After graduating from the Massachusetts College of Art, he found himself
with the job of activities director at a nursing home called the Duplex,
where he planned to teach painting to the inmates. But Greenberger
became
convinced early in his career at the Duplex that the standard recreational
format offered little stimulus to his elderly charges, so he started
a
newsletter called Duplex Planet, filled with quotations from residents.
Greenberger says he was always interested in the way pieces of
conversation and dialogue can take on literary power once committed
to
paper. Instead of looking at the elderly as so many stores of oral
history, forcing them to "mourn the loss of who they used to
be,"
Greenberger asked the Duplex residents such beguiling questions as,
"Who
invented sitting down?" and "Which do you prefer, coffee
or meat?" The
replies were often more surreal and provocative than the questions,
and
with the wealth of material he was collecting in the newsletter, it
was
only a matter of time before his in-house chat sheet became a work
of art.
It
was from among his artist friends that Greenberger discovered there
was
an active interest in his project. This inspired him to turn Duplex
Planet
into a 'zine. It has survived for 18 years and has produced close
to 150
issues.
The
effect of Duplex Planet has been astounding. The 'zine has spawned
a
comic series published by Fantagraphics, a video and an anthology
published
by Faber and Faber. The eccentric poetry of one of Greenberger's regulars,
Ernest Noyes Brookings, has found its way into the lyrics of XTC,
Young
Fresh Fellows and Thinking Fellers Union Local 282. Michael Stipe
hired
another Duplex resident, Ed Rogers, to produce the lettering for R.E.M.'s
Out of Time. The creativity Greenberger has unleashed in these elderly
people, as well as in himself, shows no sign of abating, as events
this
week prove.
PICA has organized a week of events dedicated to Duplex Planet.
Greenberger will sign books at Reading Frenzy on Thursday, April 23,
and
will host a 'zine workshop at Umbra Penumbra on Saturday morning.
The
primary focus of the week will be on a collaborative multimedia work
developed by Greenberger and Birdsongs of the Mesozoic, entitled 1001
Real
Apes. It combines Duplex Planet monologues with the innovative free-form
soundscapes of the Birdsongs of the Mesozoic quartet, which The New
York
Times describes as sounding "like a party in a Cubist roadhouse."
With a
kit combining synth, sax, drums, washboard and theremin, the Birdsongs
sound is as singular as the Duplex voices it underscores.
A
case in point is the original take on evolution from Duplexian Abe
Surgecoff, which gave the piece its name: "When the world started
getting
into lions and tigers, they didn't like people around and they used
to chew
them up for their fat content. The jungle apes killed some of their
own
crowd when they didn't have no food.... It was God's wish that they'd
turn
over to be new beings.... Giant of the Apes, he ran away so he could
ask
God for power to change over to human beings. And God told him that
if
they didn't behave themselves, these small apes, that they wouldn't
have
any change-over. They made a movie of this. It's called 1001 Real
Apes."
The
humor of Duplex Planet is easily seen; Greenberger's intention,
however, is not for us to laugh at the elderly but to look at them
as vital
individuals. "You get to know a person through his or her sense
of humor,
pathos, outrage and surprise," he says. Greenberger has constructed
a full
emotional range for a large segment of people in our society who are
often
dismissed, ignored or, worse, pitied. He refuses to view the aged
as the end of
life. The result has been to deepen our understanding and appreciation
of
what it means to be old. "I think people should be taught about
aging when
they're in grade school," Greenberger has said. "There should
be a sign
above the door saying, 'When you get older, everything will be different.'"
The difference found in Duplex, the burning and raving, proves that
we do
not have to go gently into that good night.
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