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Keynoter Demonstrated the Art in Elders' Musings

2011; Elsevier BV; Volume: 12; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/s1526-4114(11)60126-1

2377-066X

Keith Haglund,

Migration, Aging, and Tourism Studies

Standing before an audience of long-term care professionals, keynote speaker David Greenberger set a very different scene: a graveside service on a cold, wet, November day in Boston. Five mourners are there to say goodbye to Arthur Brown, dead at 96. A minister, two elderly women, Mr. Greenberger – a nursing home employee in his 20s at the first funeral he has ever attended – and the elderly man whom Mr. Greenberger has brought from the nursing home, Arthur Wallace. The formal words are spoken, and the minister asks if anyone would like to say something further. Only Mr. Wallace steps forward: “Arthur Brown was a good man. He had the room next to mine. Funny thing, though, he didn't like bananas. If lunch would come up and there was a banana on the tray, he'd give the banana to me. I like a banana OK. A banana is my number two fruit. My number one fruit is a big, mild pear.” Mr. Wallace steps back, finished with his eulogy. Quirky? Funny? Yes, but Mr. Greenberger asked his audience to see more in the eulogy and the other elders' musings he recited and played in the session, some set to music. It is not only his art, he said, but also an affirmation of the people whose stories he has told for 32 years in his magazine Duplex Planet and in poems, jazz compositions, comic books, and audio works. He started in 1979 when he went to work as the activities director at the Duplex Nursing Home intheston. “I was surrounded by these riveting bits of dialogue and conversation, and I began writing them down.” When he translated them into a newsletter for the residents, they weren't nearly as interested in each other's stories as were Mr. Greenberger's friends. The newsletter grew into the magazine and, by 1982, he left the Duplex home but kept visiting and gathering the residents' words and pictures. “I decided I'd make a better friend than an employee.” He has continued visiting long-term care facilities across the country to find “characters springing to life,.” he said. Mr. Greenberger said he sees overlap between his art and long-term care, as both are at “the heart of getting to know other people.” With that, Mr. Greenberger read and played pieces of several of the “fractured narratives” he has collected and recreated in his art. A few samples: “I keep smokin', but what I really want to do is drive around in a stick shift car.” “I'm going to get me a fly, and I'm going to keep it in my room.” “The most important thing about human behavior is don't be terrorizing anybody.” “I heard a knock at the door and I hung up on it.” “I can speak five languages, and I can also blabber.” “The weatherman says it's going to be cold tonight, so at midnight, I'm going to cook up a pork chop by moonlight. It doesn't cost too much to cook in the moonlight.” The words reveal “a noble bearing in ordinary lives and ordinary circumstances,” said Mr. Greenberger. To be uncomfortable with such words of people coping with confusion and the end of life “is like turning away, and that's not acceptable to me. KEITH HAGLUND is the managing editor of Caring for the Ages.