E-Mail This Article to a Friend Dinosaurs and lady friends (continued)

The Duplex offers very little in the way of background on its characters, and almost nothing in the way of commentary. What Greenberger does with his interviews is step back and let people speak for themselves, thereby offering us a glimpse into the way the elderly mind works, with all its glitches and obsessions and strange insights. It is from this standpoint, Greenberger believes, that "accidental moments of remarkable poetry" are achieved. As his friend Paul Athanas puts it, "There are quotes in there that are amazing, things you repeat. He’s finding those."

David Greenberger: Can you tell me what a compact disc is?

Frank Kanslasky: Who the hell knows! Write this down: Where do you get all these stupid questions? What’s a compact disc?! Where do you think we went to school anyway? That’s like asking why doesn’t snow fall up instead of down. If you look at it long enough it does fall up.

Hey Mary! Hurry up with the whiskey? My blood’s getting cold!

Arthur Wallace

There are some who are made uneasy by the Duplex Planet, who equate it with so-called outsider art — work created by people with no artistic training, or maybe even talent, who often blunder across aesthetic value in spite of themselves. Often, those who enjoy a work of outsider art do so in ways that are vastly different from the spirit in which it was created, and there is something a little too knowing about this, something that smacks of elitism. While the Duplex Planet — which, as Greenberger points out, is created by an insider — has little in common with outsider art, there is at least a question about the propriety of laughing at people who may not realize they’re being humorous.

"That is an uncomfortable aspect to what David does," says Ken Field, a member of the Boston-based ensemble Birdsongs of the Mesozoic, who collaborated with Greenberger on the yet-to-be-released CD 1001 Real Apes. "There is a risk involved in laughing at what these people say. They’re revealing this inner reality that’s kinda funny but that may not be funny to them. I think David handles it very well, but it’s still there, riding on the edge of that." Even so, Field counts himself among the Duplex Planet’s admirers. "It’s important to talk about aging, to talk about emotions, to talk about the nature of reality," he says. "What David’s doing is archiving people’s lives. He’s found regular people who haven’t done anything of note and gathered their thoughts and made them immortal in a way."

Greenberger, for his part, stresses over and over that the people in his magazine aren’t only subjects, they’re friends. "I really care for these guys," he says. "And the kinds of things I’m doing is fitting with what a friend should do. They’re living in this really static environment. The world stops at their front door. By asking these ridiculous questions — ‘Hey, Larry, will you grow a mustache?’ — that’s good for Larry, because it’s a chance for him to say, ‘Why is he asking everybody that? What’s he doing?’ In this environment, where they are defined by their losses, for them to wonder about something outside of themselves — ‘What’s with him?’ — that’s a healthy thing." He shakes his head and chuckles, in character again. "‘I don’t know, David, I don’t know.’ That’s a good thing."

Ed Alessi, who did some work at the Duplex home back in the late ’70s, would certainly not call Greenberger’s work exploitive. "David had a unique ability to see things — the only way I can put it is that he saw into the very soul of people," Alessi says. "Here’s me, a social worker, and I’m looking at schizophrenics and alcoholics and people with dementia, and he’s looking at this and seeing a creative spirit. I guess sometimes one’s professionalism gets in the way. He just had a remarkable vision. Nobody saw what David saw. He really is a one-person show."

David Greenberger: What do you know about dinosaurs?

Fergie: If they want to be mean, they can be; if they want to be sweet, they can be. It all depends on how you treat them. If you treat them kindly, they’ll treat you kindly. But if you give them any trouble, they sure as Christ will give you trouble. You treat a dinosaur with courtesy and they’ll treat you with courtesy. We got along with the dinosaurs very well and we treat them very well and they treat us very well. Their lady friends will tell you we treat them very well.

I can speak five languages and I can also blabber.

Viljo Lehto

Recently, David Greenberger walked into a yarn store near his home and asked the woman behind the counter a question. "I asked her if all the yarn in the store was tied together, how far would it go?" he says. "Would it go to Albany? Beyond Albany? So we started to talk about it, how much is in a skein and how many skeins there are here, how many miles of yarn there were." Greenberger wasn’t working that day; he just wanted to know. "I’m interested in this stuff." For this reason alone, it seems unlikely that he’ll ever willingly stop producing the Duplex Planet. "It’s part of who I am," he says. "It’s what anchors me to the earth."

As far as the possibility that others may carry on the work that Greenberger has started, well, he doesn’t like that idea at all. "This is very much my creation," he says. "It’s not like it’s a franchise. People say, ‘Oh, we’ve got to do something like this in a nursing home!’ I sort of feel like, well, you go ahead and do that, but this whole thing is about me. Really. This is a portrait of my relationship with these people. I don’t come out and say it, but it’s the journal I’ve never kept. It chronicles my life, too."

Chris Wright: What’s the most important word in the world?

David Greenberger: God, there are so many. I don’t think I could ... I mean, it would be a sad place with only one word in it.

The Duplex Planet can be found online at www.duplexplanet.com. Chris Wright can be reached at cwright[a]phx.com