“…like a chicken with it’s head cut off…”
When I first met Hannah, we had so many fun things to share with each other! For instance: She turned me on to the comic book series Duplex Planet Illustrated. It is so, so funny and beautiful. She had a whole autographed stack. Have you heard of these?
The Duplex Planet was created by David Greenberger who worked at The Duplex Nursing Home in Boston in 1979. He started out small-time publishing a simple little magazine to sort of document the people he cared for: collecting conversations and philosophical musings from the residents to share with the wider world (though still a pretty small world).
In the early 90’s, a kind of a heyday for independent, “edgy” comics as an art form, Greenberger began working with a host of celebrated comic book artists to illustrate his collection of quotes and stories from the Duplex Nursing Home residents (for example: Dan Clowes, who wrote “Eightball” and also later wrote the comic that became the indy movie “Ghost World”, and Peter Bagge who made “Neat Stuff” and “Hate”). Basically, the artists could do whatever they wanted, but they had to use the actual words from the residents for their text. The results are delightful! Sometimes the artists used David’s images of the actual people for their inspiration, sometimes they made them whacky sea creatures talking to each other, but they always used the recorded quotes from the people who passed their final days at the Duplex Nursing Home for the text. David Greenberger would often pose a simple question to several of the residents and see what they had to say about a current topic or event. The answers were sometimes profound, usually funny, and could sometimes get a little incoherent (but these often wound up somewhat profound, too).
Greenberger was also a total music collector/nerd and would often play records for the residents (records by bands like The Residents, as evidenced in the email blast this week) and he would have them give him a review of what they thought of the music. As you can imagine, these were often VERY FUNNY. When the comics became a bit of an underground hit, Greenberger recorded some of his stories about the residents and his own spoken recitations of their words and released “The Duplex Planet Radio Hour”, with musical interludes provided by Terry Adams of NRBQ. Really, please take some of your “podcast” time and listen to this. It’s hilarious and sweet. He also released a book, “Everybody’s Asking Who I Was”. If you happen upon it, buy it.
Some cynical folk may accuse Greenberger of exploiting or profiting from the wealth of material that he collected from the people he cared for. I’d have to argue that I doubt he made any money from this, and I think that the people he worked with liked the idea of having their musings and ideas documented and shared for posterity. I really believe that Greenberger acted out of love and care because he thought these people and their thoughts were important, as you can see by his story about missing Ken, a regular in Duplex Planet.
For more info, please check out Duplexplanet.com , though I am not sure the website is regularly maintained. :)
