Foreword
The Duplex Planet is an ongoing work designed to portray
a wide variety of real characters who are old or in
decline. In our culture, exposure to people at this
point in their lives is generallylimited to seeing family members
age and, since that points directly to one's own mortality,
it's hard to glean much in the way of an objective
example.
I started The Duplex Planet as a small, homemade
magazine in 1979, which I still publish. It has
subsequently found larger audiences in other forms which
are all derived from the original template. There have been
book collections, spoken-word recordings and a series
of concerts presented by Art's at St. Anns with music
composed by NRBQ's Terry Adams were recorded for New
York Public Radio and presented as
"The Duplex Planet Radio Hour." A series of CDs titled Lyrics
by Ernest Noyes Brookings continue to be issued, featuring a wide
variety of notable musical acts (XTC, Brave Combo, Morphine, Ben Vaughn, Peter
Holsapple, Young Fresh Fellows, Robyn Hitchcock, Dave Alvin, and over
a hundred others) performing songs they wrote and performed utilizing
the words of Duplex Planet regular Ernie Brookings. Duplex Planet Illustrated is
a comic book adaptation of the material drawn by a variety of alternative
artists and illustrators, including Peter Bagge, Drew Friedman, Dan Clowes,
Jim Woodring, Chris Ware and James Kochalka, published by Fantagraphics.
An exhibit of drawings and sculptures by a few of the subjects in the
magazine titled "An Exact Spectacular" has traveled to museums
and colleges. 1001 Real Apes, a theatrical presentation, features
monologues drawn from the pages of The Duplex Planet, with music
composed and performed by the critically acclaimed instrumental ensemble Birdsongs
of the Mesozoic. A series of personal commentaries drawn from my experiences
with this body of work have been airing regularly on National Public Radio's "All
Things Considered."
In 1979 I took a job as activities director at a nursing
home in Boston. I had just completed a degree in fine arts
as a painter. On the day that I first met the residents of
the nursing home, I abandoned painting. That is to say, I
discarded the brushes and canvas, not the underlying desire
to see something in the world around me and then communicate
it to others. In this unexpected setting I found my medium.
I wanted others to know these people as I did.
From the start I felt that oral history was unsuitable to
my needs. When newcomers hear that I have regular conversations
and interviews with elderly people, they assume I collect
oral history. What that assumption implies is that when one
grows old we become solely a repository of our past. This
notion is so entrenched that we seem to willingly grow old,
talking only of our past. From the start, my mission has
been to offer a range of characters who are already old,
so that we can get to know them as they are in the present,
without celebrating or mourning who they were before. Since
the elderly are already thought of by what they have in common
- that they're all old - I try to recast them as individuals.
I quote and write about them in order to address the larger
world. The audience/reader meets them and comes to feel the
characters are familiar, people they might want to spend
time with. The men and women whose individualities expose
the myths of aging are not extraordinary. They are typical
in their unique humanness.
Another way we, as a society, avoid looking too closely
at people living near the ends of their lives, is to put
them on a pedestal, which cuts off avenues of real one-on-one
communication and friendship. Wisdom comes with knowing a
person well enough to recognize their particular take on
the world. It comes in the rich language of personal poetics,
accidental utterances, and exuberant expressions that are
the result of the brain working faster than the mouth.
Humor has always played a key role in my work, and this
is for a most simple reason: humor is a step by which we
get to know another person. Humor is the first socially acceptable
level of emotional exchange. Assessing someone else's sense
of humor is a determining factor in whether or not a friendship
is built. A great deal of information is being evaluated
in those early stages of relating to another. Since my quest
is to show the vast variety of people in decline, I also
need to include those who have lost the ability to maintain
linear thought and orderly discourse. They're not going to
return to reality, so I need to follow wherever they may
go. We're most afraid of losing the use and clarity of our
minds. Confronting that which you fear allows insight.
With most every important transition in our lives we draw
on our observations of others who have made similar changes.
In the universal experience of aging we are desperately short
of meaningful guidance. The Duplex Planet offers some lessons
and examples.
Foreword