WEBVTT

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The first funeral
I ever went to was in 1979.

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I was 25,

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and I was working
as an activities director

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at a nursing home in Boston.

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There was a man at the home
by the name of Arthur Brown.

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One day, he took sick,
was taken to the hospital,

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and he died shortly after that -
all in a short span of time.

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But he was 96, had lived
a long and healthy life up till then.

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I asked around to see if anybody
wanted to go to his funeral,

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and there was another man
at the home who wanted to go;

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he was the one who wanted to go.

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His name was Arthur Wallace.

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So the two of us set off
to go to this graveside service.

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I borrowed a car.

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On the way there, it took
a little longer than I thought -

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I got a little bit lost -

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and the entire way there,

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Arthur was giving
a sort of running commentary

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on skirt lengths and billboards
and bad directions,

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and all the while,

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he was monkeying around
with his hearing aid

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that would fall
out of his ear onto the seat,

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and he would jab it with a pen
in some kind of a repair ritual

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and put it back in.

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It would fall out again.

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And the entire time he had a cigar
that was not lit but was wet on both ends.

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(Laughter)

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So this is who I was
in this small container with

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for the time it took to find the cemetery.

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Finally found it, pulled in.

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There were a couple people
standing by one grave site.

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I parked the car and helped Arthur out.

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There were a lot of leaves
on the ground - it was November -

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and I walked him across the leaves
over to where these people were standing.

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There were a couple of elderly women

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who were distant relatives
of the deceased,

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and then there was a minister.

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And when we were through
with these brief introductions,

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the minister then said
a very short service.

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At the end of that, he asked
if anybody else wanted to say anything.

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And Arthur Wallace, who I brought along,
wanted to say something.

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So he stepped forward
from where he was next to me,

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and he said something like this:

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"Arthur Brown was a good man,

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but funny thing was
he didn't like bananas.

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Now when his lunch
would come up on the tray,

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if there was a banana on it,

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he'd give it to me.

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I like a banana.

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I like a banana okay.

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A banana's my number two fruit.

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My number one fruit's a big, mild pear."

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And then he stepped back next to me.

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That was the first funeral I ever went to.

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(Laughter)

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So I should now tell you

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how I came to be working
in a nursing home in the first place.

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About a year before,
I was on a cross-country trip

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and stopped in Palm Springs

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where my grandmother
was spending the winter.

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I met a couple who were
lifelong friends of hers, the Feitlers.

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And Herb Feitler and I
spent the better part of a day

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sort of palling around.

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We went in his car

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to flea markets in surrounding
desert communities out there.

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And I just had a fantastic time.

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When I got back home to Boston,

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in considering this fantastic time I had,

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I realized that what made it unique

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was that it was the first time
I sort of had made friends with somebody

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who was significantly older than me
but wasn't in my family.

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And I liked that, and I thought
I would like to do that again.

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I had just graduated from art school
with a degree in painting,

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and I thought there was something
I could do that would be better for me

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than scooping ice cream
and delivering flowers.

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So I heard about a job at a nursing home
as an activities director

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that somebody I'd gone
to school with was doing

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and was going to be leaving the job.

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So I went there and applied,
and I got the job -

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for 50 cents an hour less
because I had no prior experience.

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But I started then, right away.

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It was in a residential,
tree-lined neighborhood

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in Jamaica Plain, in Boston,

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and it was an old, converted duplex house,

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hence its name, the Duplex Nursing Home.

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And as soon as I set foot

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into this environment,

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I was just captivated with it.

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It was just filled with riveting bits
of conversation that I had to write down,

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here being some examples:

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"I keep smoking,

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but what I really want to do
is drive around in a stick-shift car."

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"If a crow would see my picture,
the crow would fly away."

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"Mars will probably be a state someday."

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(Laughter)

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"I'm going to get me a fly,
and I'm going to keep it in my room."

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(Laughter)

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"The most important thing
of human behavior

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is don't be terrorizing anybody."

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"I heard a knock at the door,
and I hung up on it."

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(Laughter)

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"When you rake the yard,
you rake the yard with a rake."

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I love that one.

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(Laughter)

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"I can speak five languages,
and I can also blabber."

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(Laughter)

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"The weatherman says
it's going to be cold tonight,

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so around midnight, I'm going to cook up
a pork chop in the moonlight.

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Doesn't cost too much
to cook in the moonlight."

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"My shoveling days are over, Davy baby."

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"I'll smoke another cigar, by and by."

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So these quotes
and conversations that I had

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became the basis
for a publication I started

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called "The Duplex Planet."

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I didn't know exactly where it was going,

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but I felt like it was something
that I needed to communicate as an artist,

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and in fact, I set aside painting.

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I felt like if this was to be something
that I was to find my way in,

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I shouldn't have any other outlet
that would allow that.

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I got the first issue together

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and gathered all the residents
together one afternoon

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and handed out a copy to each one of them.

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Within about two minutes, they figured out

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that I wasn't also passing out cake
or refreshments or something

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and most of them wandered away,
discarding these.

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However, that night,

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copies that made it home with me
roommates and friends saw,

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and I instantly got
that this was for everybody

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but the people in it.

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Had it been more traditional oral history,

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it would have been a keepsake of sorts

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for the residents,

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but this was something else:

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this was characters
springing to life on the page.

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So I got to know
all 45 of these residents;

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it was an all-male
nursing home, this place.

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Some were talkative; some were not.

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Some were agitated; some were calm.

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Some were very articulate
about all manner of things,

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and some didn't really make
a lot of sense in expected ways.

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And it was those latter ones
who I was most interested in.

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I felt fortunate to be in close contact
with people who were going through that,

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and I came to see

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that they ended up not making sense

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having made the same sense
that we all make when we make sense.

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If that makes sense.

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(Laughter)

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There was one man at the home
by the name of William Gunn Ferguson,

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affectionately known as Fergie
to everybody there.

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And he needed a sentence or so

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as a runway,

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and he'd be off, darting around.

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And it might come back
to where it started,

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or maybe it didn't,

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but it was also an incredible trip.

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So this is one thing that he said:

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"The best place to hide
is in the top of a tree.

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I used to tell those children,

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'If you want to hide from your mother,
you climb up in that tree and hide.'

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I'll tell ya, they'd hide
so I couldn't even find them.

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And I don't mean any small trees.

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I mean trees that were 50, 60 feet high.

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And they'd fall out of those trees too.

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(Laughter)

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They'd fall out of those trees
just like you'd smoke a pipe.

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(Laughter)

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And I used to have a lot of pipes.

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Until the children got into them,
and they hid them.

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And you know where they hid them?

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In the trees."

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(Laughter)

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One day at work -

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and I say work, but it really
just seemed like my life at the time.

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It didn't really seem like work.

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Though there came a time
about two years later

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when I felt like I made a better friend
to the residents there

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than I did as an employee for the owners,

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and so I left the job.

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But anyway, this one day,

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a resident by the name of Larry Greene

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came to me,

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and with all the urgency he could muster,

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he said, "Dave, nobody's come
to get my dad's tray."

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Now, the tray part I understood -
their noontime meal came up on a tray -

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but the dad part didn't make any sense,
because his father was long dead.

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But I followed him out
of this activities and dining room

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around another part of the home,

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and he led me to this room
that was shared by two men,

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one of whom was sitting there,

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Walter McGeorge.

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There he sat with his tray
in front of him on a little table,

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and Larry went over and stood next to him

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and said, "Hi, Dad."

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And Walter was smiling.

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He seemed to be smiling for Larry
as if to acknowledge the "Hi, Dad,"

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and he seemed to be smiling at me

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as a way to say, "It's all right.
It's no big deal.

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We'll let him think I'm his father."

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Larry was in this remarkable state

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where he thought
that anybody who smiled at him

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was an old friend of his,

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and he had sort of remembered his life

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into something much easier
than it had ever been.

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He had had a fairly difficult life.

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He had worked on a coal wharf,

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never had enough money,

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had six children.

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He would now say that he had two children.

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You could name any of the six,
and he would acknowledge them as his,

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but he would always have
the math come out to be two.

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It just seemed like an easier life
that way or something.

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But what I learned from Larry
and from Walter and from Fergie

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and from many other people there

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was that anything was as real
as anybody said it was.

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The days of their big
adventures were over,

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and they were now
sort of recombining things,

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and they were coming out differently,

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and the most direct way
for me to get to know somebody

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was to just accept
whatever they said as real

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because it was real for them

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and that was how
I was going to get to know them.

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(Music with ticking sound)

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(Recording) David Greenberger:
Funny how time marches on.

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But they're all in the same boat a year.

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Happy-go-lucky.

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How time marches on.

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They must realize
they are a kid no longer.

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They're always looking
for that first snowstorm

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that we had the other day.

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I don't suppose
you'd call that a snowstorm.

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Just about everybody likes to see
the old-fashioned Christmas.

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Yeah, but time marches on.

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[Time Marches On]

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(Church bells ringing)

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(Music ends)

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(On stage) DG: "The Duplex Planet"

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continued as a little, self-published,
chapbook-sized periodical

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that I started back then in 1979,

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but in the '90s, it became better known,
the work that I was doing,

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through several books that came out.

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The material was adapted
into a comic book,

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and there were a couple of documentaries.

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And for the past 15 years or so,

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I've been most interested
in creating monologues with music.

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I've done a series of CDs and performances

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for museums and arts presenters
and universities and NPR.

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And these have been done with a variety
of different musical ensembles,

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different styles.

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But in all cases,

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I strive to have the music

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be a fully active element
in the final piece,

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not background music.

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I'd likened it to a band
with a guy talking - me.

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So these audio pieces that I record,

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they're not recreations
of time that I spent with somebody;

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they're abstracted from it.

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The words and the music
come together for me and fall into place

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when it seems like how it feels
to remember that person.

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So that it's a gauge that I use to know,

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and hopefully it resonates
in some way for somebody else.

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These aren't documentary snapshots

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of elderly people that I met.

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But I try to have it be

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something that will resonate
separate from that.

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I'm not using their voices,
the actual voices of them,

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or projecting their pictures behind me.

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Because I want these to resonate
with listeners individually.

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Last year, I was in Milwaukee,
finishing up an artist residency

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that I did there for the Center on Age
and Community at the university there.

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I had spent three months

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talking and conversing, meeting
with elderly who have memory loss,

00:14:22.217 --> 00:14:23.321
varying degrees of it -

00:14:23.321 --> 00:14:27.990
from barely noticeable
to profoundly fragmented.

00:14:30.363 --> 00:14:33.599
The one thing that everybody
had in common that I spoke with, though,

00:14:33.599 --> 00:14:37.413
was that everybody liked
the idea of talking with me.

00:14:37.413 --> 00:14:39.740
They agreed to talk with me.

00:14:40.260 --> 00:14:44.681
Maybe they thought they already knew me,
but it didn't really matter.

00:14:45.651 --> 00:14:49.466
What was amazing for me to see

00:14:49.466 --> 00:14:50.481
was that the people

00:14:50.481 --> 00:14:55.831
who were the least able to have a -
carry on a narrative conversation

00:14:55.831 --> 00:15:00.598
still had the blueprint,
the shape of a conversation

00:15:00.598 --> 00:15:02.565
that they utilized.

00:15:02.565 --> 00:15:05.272
I would say something,
and then they would say something,

00:15:05.272 --> 00:15:07.849
and then I would say something:
we'd go back and forth.

00:15:07.849 --> 00:15:13.754
And they still adhered
to that sort of social convention.

00:15:14.563 --> 00:15:16.864
That it didn't always link up -

00:15:16.864 --> 00:15:18.748
I might say something, I often would,

00:15:18.748 --> 00:15:21.793
and then they would say something
completely separate from that,

00:15:21.793 --> 00:15:22.999
and I would go with that,

00:15:22.999 --> 00:15:25.047
and then they would go somewhere else.

00:15:25.047 --> 00:15:29.930
It didn't link up, but I realized
that it didn't matter.

00:15:30.454 --> 00:15:31.774
(Strumming guitar)

00:15:31.774 --> 00:15:33.577
(Recording) DG: I had to behave.

00:15:33.770 --> 00:15:38.132
I had two sisters,
and I had a - let's see -

00:15:38.132 --> 00:15:43.310
I had a - let's see - six brothers,
a lot of brothers.

00:15:43.848 --> 00:15:47.198
My mother, all she had to do was work.

00:15:47.648 --> 00:15:49.964
My father worked every day.

00:15:49.964 --> 00:15:52.930
He worked in a - let's see -

00:15:53.090 --> 00:15:56.079
he worked in a - let's see -

00:15:56.079 --> 00:15:59.413
he worked in a - oh, where did he work?

00:15:59.413 --> 00:16:01.280
He worked every day.

00:16:01.280 --> 00:16:04.106
It took a lot of money
to support his kids.

00:16:05.006 --> 00:16:06.928
I wasn't real happy.

00:16:07.448 --> 00:16:10.106
I did it because I had to.

00:16:10.896 --> 00:16:15.237
When my mother comes after me,
then I didn't feel so good.

00:16:16.847 --> 00:16:18.414
She came after me.

00:16:19.147 --> 00:16:20.729
She came after me.

00:16:21.330 --> 00:16:23.646
She came after me

00:16:23.646 --> 00:16:26.707
to see that I was doing okay.

00:16:26.923 --> 00:16:28.248
[Mother Comes After]

00:16:28.248 --> 00:16:29.662
(Music ends)

00:16:29.912 --> 00:16:34.646
(On stage) DG: Arthur Wallace, the man
who had a mild pear as his favorite fruit,

00:16:34.646 --> 00:16:39.049
ended up dying about a year
about the man whom he eulogized,

00:16:39.049 --> 00:16:42.843
and his demise was not so sudden.

00:16:43.783 --> 00:16:47.093
And it was remarkable to see
what happened with him.

00:16:47.093 --> 00:16:50.557
He'd always been very precise
in all of his recollections,

00:16:50.557 --> 00:16:52.977
was very interested
in world events and politics.

00:16:52.977 --> 00:16:56.804
And what was happening then, at the end,

00:16:56.804 --> 00:17:00.634
was that the facts
were becoming dislodged.

00:17:01.771 --> 00:17:04.126
(Feedback sound)

00:17:05.447 --> 00:17:10.125
(Recording) DG: I remember a sign
on Brimmer Street to go to the South Pole.

00:17:10.125 --> 00:17:11.819
[The Last Words of Arthur Wallace]

00:17:11.819 --> 00:17:15.472
I don't understand,
but I do dream about it at nighttime.

00:17:17.912 --> 00:17:20.626
Brimmer is where the State House is.

00:17:20.626 --> 00:17:23.191
I signed on to go with Byrd.

00:17:23.940 --> 00:17:27.942
I made a mistake, and I asked him

00:17:27.942 --> 00:17:31.273
"Why do I dream at night
that I go to the South Pole?"

00:17:33.942 --> 00:17:38.102
I remember a sign on Brimmer Street,
near the State House.

00:17:39.092 --> 00:17:41.501
His name was Byrd.

00:17:42.641 --> 00:17:47.175
I occasionally dreamed
that I went with Byrd to the South Pole,

00:17:47.575 --> 00:17:51.358
but he quit when we got to Scott's grave,

00:17:51.358 --> 00:17:53.090
where the Englishman Scott was,

00:17:53.090 --> 00:17:55.040
who perished.

00:17:56.440 --> 00:17:59.224
I dreamt that Byrd
got in a violent argument with us,

00:17:59.224 --> 00:18:01.231
and he quit.

00:18:02.141 --> 00:18:05.596
But the Americans went on
until they discovered it.

00:18:05.806 --> 00:18:09.080
That's my dream. I dream it.

00:18:09.540 --> 00:18:12.083
Why is my side all numb?

00:18:13.023 --> 00:18:15.422
I must have gotten frozen.

00:18:16.122 --> 00:18:21.156
I must have gone there,
and that's why my side is all numb now.

00:18:24.855 --> 00:18:26.490
(Feedback sound ends)

00:18:26.490 --> 00:18:28.741
(On stage) DG: I did
some rough math and figured

00:18:28.741 --> 00:18:31.606
I've had about a quarter-million
conversations in my life,

00:18:31.606 --> 00:18:35.019
and I've forgotten almost all of them.

00:18:35.889 --> 00:18:37.721
Conversations are a way for two people

00:18:37.721 --> 00:18:42.122
to be in the same time
and place as one another.

00:18:42.412 --> 00:18:43.972
And we extract the data from it,

00:18:43.972 --> 00:18:48.114
and we're left, then,
with an emotional memory of somebody.

00:18:48.604 --> 00:18:49.838
I'm an artist,

00:18:49.838 --> 00:18:53.237
and I'm also somebody
in the second half of my life,

00:18:53.237 --> 00:18:54.439
well into it,

00:18:54.439 --> 00:18:58.506
and I think I've learned as a human being
and grown as an artist

00:18:58.506 --> 00:19:00.587
from continuing to meet people

00:19:00.587 --> 00:19:05.637
who are living
the last years of their lives.

00:19:06.337 --> 00:19:08.587
The differences between us are obvious,

00:19:08.587 --> 00:19:14.554
but it's the things that we have in common
that are the most fulfilling to me.

00:19:14.554 --> 00:19:22.020
That's where you find the surprise
and the mystery and the truth.

00:19:23.237 --> 00:19:25.560
(Music starts)

00:19:26.752 --> 00:19:30.719
(Recording) DG: I felt like I was really
getting towards Alzheimer's.

00:19:30.719 --> 00:19:33.392
I was hoping it wasn't Alzheimer's,

00:19:33.392 --> 00:19:37.319
but I was finding myself
repeating myself very often,

00:19:37.319 --> 00:19:39.869
just in a normal conversation.

00:19:40.469 --> 00:19:44.302
And I felt that I better do something
to help with my memory.

00:19:45.402 --> 00:19:48.936
My daughter's the one
that came up with this program here.

00:19:49.536 --> 00:19:52.385
One of my sons drove me over
for the first time

00:19:52.385 --> 00:19:54.352
to find out what it was about

00:19:54.352 --> 00:19:58.622
because he wanted to see it too,
what all was involved in it.

00:19:59.202 --> 00:20:01.903
This was actually not too long ago,

00:20:01.903 --> 00:20:03.782
and I thought it was quite interesting

00:20:03.782 --> 00:20:05.501
and decided to register

00:20:05.501 --> 00:20:09.536
and keep on coming back
on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

00:20:10.036 --> 00:20:11.651
And you know what?

00:20:11.651 --> 00:20:13.341
It has helped me.

00:20:13.791 --> 00:20:15.686
Since I've been coming here,

00:20:15.686 --> 00:20:19.534
I've not noticed any further
deterioration of my memory.

00:20:19.985 --> 00:20:22.460
Nothing I can detect anyway.

00:20:23.301 --> 00:20:24.697
I'm satisfied.

00:20:24.977 --> 00:20:25.977
[Satisfied]

00:20:25.977 --> 00:20:27.245
(Music continues)

00:20:27.245 --> 00:20:28.528
(On stage) DG: Thank you.

00:20:28.808 --> 00:20:30.341
(Applause)