Transcript

#59 Etta · Heavyweight

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hello, I'd like to welcome to the show, Jackie Cove. Jackie.
0:28
Speaker 1: It's a new season. I'm with a new company, Pushkin Industries,
0:33
Speaker 1: and I thought it might be nice for you to,
0:35
Speaker 1: you know, tell everyone how much the show is meant
0:37
Speaker 1: to you.
0:38
Speaker 2: Do you?
0:39
Speaker 1: People look at my face right now we're on the telephone.
0:42
Speaker 3: Could you imagine what kind of look I have on
0:43
Speaker 3: my face?
0:43
Speaker 2: Right now?
0:44
Speaker 1: Ecstasy discussed Heavyweight is back, Mamala. They thought we were
0:48
Speaker 1: down for the count. But what's this? Oh oh with
0:53
Speaker 1: a right now left? Heavyweight's back, pushing it with Pushkin, Mamala,
0:57
Speaker 1: Bushkin Industries. I got okay, you go with that.
1:01
Speaker 4: Bye bye.
1:08
Speaker 1: From Bushkin Industries. I'm Jonathan Goldstein and this is Heavyweight
1:15
Speaker 1: today's episode. Eda, right after the.
1:23
Speaker 4: Break, all right, you're ready, you're rolling, You got levels, Mimei, mamomu.
1:40
Speaker 4: Okay go.
1:42
Speaker 1: This is Gregor. You might know him from such previous
1:45
Speaker 1: episodes as Gregor. Gregor is one of my oldest friends,
1:50
Speaker 1: and today he's coming to me with a problem.
1:53
Speaker 4: I'll take it from the top, Okay. So I have
1:55
Speaker 4: two parents, Milton and Eda.
1:58
Speaker 1: Edda and Milton are both pushing ninety and Gregor's problem
2:02
Speaker 1: is that they refuse to move out of their house.
2:06
Speaker 1: It's the same three story Victorian Gregor grew up. He
2:09
Speaker 1: was twelve when the family first moved in. He still
2:13
Speaker 1: remembers the excitement as they unloaded boxes from the moving
2:16
Speaker 1: truck or moving trucks.
2:21
Speaker 4: You know, normal people move with like a big giant
2:23
Speaker 4: eighteen wheeler moving truck. I believe when we moved we
2:26
Speaker 4: had six moving.
2:27
Speaker 1: Trucks, one for the family's belongings, the other five for
2:32
Speaker 1: the collections. Some people collect coins, some people collect comic books.
2:38
Speaker 1: Gregor's mother, Etta, collects collections.
2:42
Speaker 4: She has like maybe two hundred egg beaters, antique egg beaters.
2:47
Speaker 4: She has you know what a bisk nodter is.
2:50
Speaker 5: No.
2:52
Speaker 4: In occupied Japan, people bought these little figurines where the
2:55
Speaker 4: head would wobble back.
2:56
Speaker 1: And forth like a bubble headed doll, something like that.
2:59
Speaker 4: Anyway, she probably has two thousand bisc mounters.
3:02
Speaker 1: Then there are the nineteenth century weaving looms, the handmade baskets,
3:06
Speaker 1: the medieval scythes. Eta airlic Is artist and her collections
3:10
Speaker 1: are the source of her inspiration. Edis's beauty in everything
3:15
Speaker 1: and in her hands, everything becomes art. She'll sculpt lint
3:18
Speaker 1: from the dryer. She'll put googly eyes on a splatter
3:21
Speaker 1: of dried bird poop.
3:23
Speaker 4: My mother has been unbelievably prolific in making art for
3:27
Speaker 4: like the last thirty five years, to a degree where
3:30
Speaker 4: now the living room is like full to the brim
3:33
Speaker 4: with a million pieces of art, and every week she
3:35
Speaker 4: probably makes five or ten more pieces of art.
3:38
Speaker 1: None of this would be a problem except that a large,
3:41
Speaker 1: cluttered house is becoming increasingly dangerous for Gregor's elderly parents.
3:47
Speaker 4: I fear the more conventional fears. I fear my mother
3:50
Speaker 4: falling down a flight of stairs, or my father. I mean,
3:52
Speaker 4: there's all kinds of dark things that can happen in
3:54
Speaker 4: a house full of staircases.
3:56
Speaker 1: And so Gregor wants to move his parents into a
3:59
Speaker 1: smaller apartment, something more manageable. That's his plan.
4:03
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's his plan. But that's not my plan. This
4:08
Speaker 6: is eda The practical thing is, we can't be in
4:13
Speaker 6: the house too much longer. I'm eighty eight.
4:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, but to move out.
4:17
Speaker 6: Of the house isn't simply a question of selling the furniture.
4:21
Speaker 6: It's my god, what do we do with all this?
4:26
Speaker 1: All this all the collections is what's keeping Eta in
4:30
Speaker 1: the house. And of all her many collections, of all
4:33
Speaker 1: her milking stools and antique rolling pins, it's her collection
4:37
Speaker 1: of fragile, colorful bottles that is perhaps the biggest impediment
4:41
Speaker 1: to moving. By Gregor's estimate, Eta has thousands wine bottles,
4:46
Speaker 1: perfume bottles, all decanters, bottles washed up from the bottom
4:50
Speaker 1: of the ocean. As well as being an artist, Eta
4:54
Speaker 1: is a Buddhist and her bottles are not just bottles
4:57
Speaker 1: but a series of meditations. Because on each of the bottles,
5:01
Speaker 1: in fancy fonds and careful calligraphy, Eta places a message
5:06
Speaker 1: in the form of a zen like riddle.
5:09
Speaker 6: Noose to titropuce and madly dance upon it.
5:15
Speaker 4: Isn't it gorgeous?
5:15
Speaker 2: Very nice?
5:16
Speaker 6: But how's about this one? It's a black popple with
5:19
Speaker 6: gold calligraphy, and it has the first letter shows a breath,
5:25
Speaker 6: somebody blowing a breath. Do you see it?
5:27
Speaker 1: It really does look like a breath is blowing. That's
5:29
Speaker 1: by design.
5:30
Speaker 6: There you go, there you go. You want me to
5:32
Speaker 6: give that away for nothing?
5:37
Speaker 1: Other inscriptions are stop schlepping your old being into the future,
5:42
Speaker 1: or we cling to illusions of control. After hearing a few,
5:47
Speaker 1: I start to recognize a theme. All the bottles bear
5:51
Speaker 1: messages imploring one to let go. Yet Eda is incapable
5:55
Speaker 1: of letting go of the very bottles doing the imploring,
5:59
Speaker 1: or much of anything else. There is a little bit
6:02
Speaker 1: of a paradox, or there's something to kind of be
6:04
Speaker 1: struggling with.
6:05
Speaker 6: Then you're very, very sharp. That is exactly see, exactly true.
6:11
Speaker 6: These works would talk about being stuck with the grasping
6:16
Speaker 6: level I suffer from that.
6:21
Speaker 7: I could leave tomorrow.
6:24
Speaker 1: This is Gregor's dad, Milt. If the taxi pulled up
6:28
Speaker 1: right now, you would you would jump in.
6:30
Speaker 7: I'm ready to go.
6:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll stop you there.
6:32
Speaker 8: He's never taken a tax in his life.
6:33
Speaker 1: But if I pulled up that.
6:37
Speaker 7: Uber duber so I don't get attached to furniture and
6:42
Speaker 7: bottles and stuff, I'll.
6:44
Speaker 8: Just reinforce that point that while my father made positive
6:47
Speaker 8: that he's a Taoist and not attached to anything, he
6:49
Speaker 8: is very much complicit lmentlessly bringing home the raw material
6:53
Speaker 8: to which my mother, you know, turns the art out.
6:57
Speaker 1: When was the last time you brought something home melt yesterday?
7:03
Speaker 7: I'm always interested in what she's doing, and I often
7:05
Speaker 7: find the raw materials walking around in the woods or anywhere,
7:09
Speaker 7: fine stuff. Her only requirement is if I find something,
7:12
Speaker 7: it has to have what she calls a charm.
7:16
Speaker 1: As for Melt, what he's charmed by, exceedingly charmed by,
7:21
Speaker 1: is that a Milt is a poet, and after over
7:24
Speaker 1: sixty years of marriage, he still writes poems about her,
7:28
Speaker 1: rhapsodizing about the way she creates art or cooks, or
7:31
Speaker 1: the way she dances. Milt says he can watch Eda
7:35
Speaker 1: dance all night. He just doesn't understand her being so
7:38
Speaker 1: chained to her belongings.
7:41
Speaker 4: I'm stuck.
7:42
Speaker 6: But I am not coming up with the solution that's
7:46
Speaker 6: any better, am I? Yeah, except dying, And that's not
7:52
Speaker 6: a solution. No, it's not a solution for greg He's
7:57
Speaker 6: left holding the whole.
7:58
Speaker 1: Thing of Milton. At his three kids, Gregor is perhaps
8:03
Speaker 1: the one most ready to serve the child his parents
8:06
Speaker 1: handed to do list when he comes to visit.
8:08
Speaker 6: I mean, he talks me, and that's because he has
8:12
Speaker 6: meanness in him. I'm not saying he doesn't, but he's
8:16
Speaker 6: also a very kind, giving, generous, loving person.
8:20
Speaker 2: Yes he is.
8:21
Speaker 6: Yeah, Yeah, don't tell him, I said, so.
8:31
Speaker 4: In action is a choice not doing anything. Something's bound
8:34
Speaker 4: to happen sooner or later, and just sort of watch
8:38
Speaker 4: the secondhand sweep around the clock face until somebody's dead
8:41
Speaker 4: is the most passive and weakest possible way to exist.
8:46
Speaker 4: And it just feels like, you know, the Damoclean Sword
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Speaker 4: of mortality is coming, and all we're going to do
8:52
Speaker 4: is sit here and watch Rachel Maddow until it cuts
8:54
Speaker 4: our head off.
8:56
Speaker 1: And so, because Eda can't let go, Gregor wants my
9:00
Speaker 1: help in pulling off a most extravagant workaround, one that
9:04
Speaker 1: will allow Eda to both keep her stuff and still
9:07
Speaker 1: move out. It's a plan of action that Gregor wants
9:10
Speaker 1: to present to her.
9:12
Speaker 4: What if you don't get rid of your possessions and
9:15
Speaker 4: we make a museum of your stuff?
9:20
Speaker 1: Gregor explains to me the details. It seems that in
9:23
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties, Etta and Milt about a two hundred
9:26
Speaker 1: year old farmhouse with no running water or indoor plumbing.
9:30
Speaker 1: Gregor's plan is to convert the barn into the Eta
9:34
Speaker 1: b airlike museum, convincing one's mother to downsize by way
9:39
Speaker 1: of a feral farmhouse museum that by Gregor's own admission
9:43
Speaker 1: is probably a breeding ground for the haunt of virus.
9:46
Speaker 1: Has all the makings of a classic Kakammi scheme. But
9:50
Speaker 1: this is just the beginning for his plan, and to
10:09
Speaker 1: build a museum to work, Gregor will need his siblings
10:12
Speaker 1: on board, so, as is emotional envoy, I begin by
10:16
Speaker 1: phoning his sister Lexi. Lexi is the level headed one
10:21
Speaker 1: of the three, and I want to get her read
10:23
Speaker 1: on the plan. I mean, is it realistic that he'll
10:26
Speaker 1: be able to turn the barn into a museum like that?
10:35
Speaker 1: Perhaps this plan is a bit half baked, but I
10:38
Speaker 1: figure I might have more luck getting Gregor's brother Dmitri
10:42
Speaker 1: on board. Dmitri has never been afraid of a scheme
10:45
Speaker 1: that runs a little pink on the inside. So I
10:49
Speaker 1: give him a call. We haven't spoken since I moved
10:52
Speaker 1: from New York, where Dmitri lives, to Minnesota.
10:56
Speaker 2: I hate to see a Minneapolis area code when you call.
11:00
Speaker 2: It makes me sad.
11:02
Speaker 1: Your business doesn't bring you to Minnesota.
11:03
Speaker 2: I'm guessing it does sometimes. I interviewed Prince for a
11:06
Speaker 2: cover story. Ever earned one may be very trap both prints.
11:09
Speaker 2: He's very touching.
11:10
Speaker 1: Dmitri is a personal trainer who's kickboxed his way across Thailand.
11:14
Speaker 1: He's also a journalist who interviews celebrities.
11:17
Speaker 2: So I went there, waited all day for the interview.
11:19
Speaker 1: And a musician who had a song go platinum six
11:22
Speaker 1: times in Belgium.
11:23
Speaker 2: And he was like, hey, you want to jam and
11:25
Speaker 2: I was like okay.
11:26
Speaker 9: So I wound up actually jamming with Larry Grant and
11:28
Speaker 9: Prince for like twenty minutes.
11:35
Speaker 2: What that was one sence.
11:39
Speaker 1: Before Dmitri you can launch into his next sentence, I
11:41
Speaker 1: jump in. So your brother Gregor.
11:45
Speaker 2: I'm familiar with him.
11:46
Speaker 1: He has his plan, which maybe you're also familiar with.
11:50
Speaker 1: When I'm finished rehashing Gregor's museum plan, Dmitri offers a
11:54
Speaker 1: laundry list of issues.
11:55
Speaker 9: Sons of getting Lemez's walking out of your part of
11:59
Speaker 9: the barn because it's high grassed, a lot of deer
12:03
Speaker 9: getting poison ivy.
12:04
Speaker 2: So there's also like a horrible black mold. Because as
12:06
Speaker 2: you know, the farmhouse burned down.
12:08
Speaker 9: My I'll buy it baker friend THEO stayed there and
12:10
Speaker 9: lit a fire in the roof and the whole house
12:12
Speaker 9: burned down in the.
12:13
Speaker 1: Wad and along with his friend Theo's trouble. There was
12:15
Speaker 1: also his friend Sonem's trouble in that cursed place.
12:19
Speaker 9: My friend, who spent twenty five years as a Buddhist
12:21
Speaker 9: monk under the dolly Lema, had to use a broom
12:23
Speaker 9: to fight off a very large raccoon that was.
12:25
Speaker 2: In the house and was like growling at us and
12:27
Speaker 2: like his harrifind.
12:29
Speaker 1: But for Dimitri, even more daunting than the rabid raccoons
12:32
Speaker 1: is changing his mother's mind on the matter. Whenever he's
12:36
Speaker 1: trying to clear space in his parents' home, it refills overnight,
12:40
Speaker 1: suggesting Eda's problem can't be solved by physical means. Instead,
12:45
Speaker 1: he thinks the problem has to be attacked at its
12:47
Speaker 1: psychological root. She needs to learn how to let go,
12:51
Speaker 1: and for this Dmitri has just the solution.
12:54
Speaker 2: Well, maybe hypnosis.
13:00
Speaker 9: It stopped her from smoking, which is probably a more
13:02
Speaker 9: powerful psychological and physical addiction than collecting things.
13:06
Speaker 1: Eda was a packadet smoker, a habit she hung on
13:09
Speaker 1: for nearly thirty years.
13:10
Speaker 9: Our friend, who was a hypnotist, said I can hypnotize you,
13:13
Speaker 9: and she went into the session thinking this isn't gonna work.
13:16
Speaker 2: The whole time the hypnosis was going on. She was like,
13:18
Speaker 2: this isn't working, This isn't working, and then she walked
13:20
Speaker 2: out and never smoked again. He was an interesting person too.
13:24
Speaker 2: His name is Saul Feldstein.
13:25
Speaker 9: He actually had one of his eyeballs was like hanging
13:28
Speaker 9: out of his face, and like it was like a
13:30
Speaker 9: sort of early commune hippie thing, and like.
13:33
Speaker 1: Having grown up on TV sitcoms of the nineteen seventies,
13:36
Speaker 1: I'm well aware of the power of hypnosis.
13:39
Speaker 2: Hanging out of his face.
13:40
Speaker 1: Hypnosis gave Fred Flintstone the self control to stop beating
13:44
Speaker 1: Brontosaurus Berger Communie. It gave the Fonds the confidence that
13:48
Speaker 1: jumped Snake Canyon on his motorcycle his eyeballs. As a boy,
13:52
Speaker 1: I always wondered what it would feel like to have
13:55
Speaker 1: my full potential unlocked through the hypnotic arts.
13:58
Speaker 9: Hanging out of his face, And he was very successful
14:00
Speaker 9: as a hypnotist.
14:02
Speaker 1: Wow. Unlike building a museum, hypnosis requires neither time effort.
14:09
Speaker 1: Are those awful stanchions that snap back with that loud
14:12
Speaker 1: thwacking sound that make everyone turn around and stare at you.
14:17
Speaker 1: Fully convinced that Saul Feldstein is the solution to all
14:20
Speaker 1: of our problems and that museums belong in a museum.
14:24
Speaker 1: Dimitri and I say our goodbyes.
14:33
Speaker 4: We're slating in. On part two, Johnny discusses post talking
14:37
Speaker 4: to Dmitri. Here we go.
14:39
Speaker 1: I need to tell Gregor that I like Dmitri's idea
14:42
Speaker 1: much better than his. But I need to tread lightly
14:46
Speaker 1: from Cain and Abel to Stephen and Alec Baldwin. I
14:49
Speaker 1: know how competitive brothers can be, and unlike the Lord
14:53
Speaker 1: or Alexander Ray Baldwin Senior, I don't want to be
14:57
Speaker 1: seen playing favorites. Do you think you're like hypnotism has
15:02
Speaker 1: a role in this, Well, I hear.
15:04
Speaker 4: That, like your voice went up in octave when we
15:06
Speaker 4: started talking about hypnotism and you got excited about hypnotism.
15:09
Speaker 1: Well, Dimitri seemed to think that it would that it
15:11
Speaker 1: could help.
15:13
Speaker 4: Okay, so the two of you should go see a
15:14
Speaker 4: movie together.
15:16
Speaker 1: Going to movies is Gregor and my thing. Clearly I'm
15:20
Speaker 1: arousing some jealousy. I need to keep my arguments away
15:24
Speaker 1: from Dimitri and grounded in the merits of hypnotism. This
15:28
Speaker 1: whole barn thing as the symptom but through hypnosis.
15:32
Speaker 4: Why are you saying it with like the weird accent
15:34
Speaker 4: on the word hypnosis.
15:36
Speaker 1: I mean, do you think that hypnotism has something to
15:40
Speaker 1: offer here?
15:41
Speaker 4: My short answer would be absolutely not. I think it's
15:45
Speaker 4: a waste of time. Hypnosis, hypnosis, hypnosis.
15:52
Speaker 2: Hi, Johnny, how are you.
15:54
Speaker 1: Hey, Dimitri?
15:55
Speaker 6: Hi?
15:56
Speaker 1: I've got your brother Gregor on the line with me.
15:59
Speaker 4: We've met, Hi.
16:00
Speaker 2: How are you?
16:01
Speaker 1: Can you make the case to your brother?
16:04
Speaker 2: Sure?
16:04
Speaker 9: I just think that you know there's no harm, there's
16:06
Speaker 9: certainly no nothing to lose. It takes fifteen or twenty minutes,
16:09
Speaker 9: and she's proven that she's very susceptible to hypnotic suggestions,
16:13
Speaker 9: so why not try it?
16:14
Speaker 4: I agree with all those points. My main feeling is
16:17
Speaker 4: that getting someone to stop a behavior like smoking is
16:20
Speaker 4: much much easier than getting someone to change their personality,
16:23
Speaker 4: which is harder to hypnotize someone out.
16:24
Speaker 1: Of That may be true, I wouldn't disgrew there, swept
16:28
Speaker 1: up in a wave of brotherly bonamy. I decide it's
16:32
Speaker 1: a safe space to cautiously share my one secret boyhood longing,
16:37
Speaker 1: and along the way I could get hypnotized that as
16:39
Speaker 1: something too. Yeah, A lot of stuff, yeah, and immediately
16:43
Speaker 1: regret it. What do you mean a lot of stuff?
16:46
Speaker 2: I mean, that's a smug smile. They could work on.
16:48
Speaker 4: We could give you a whole brand new thing where
16:49
Speaker 4: you're like super charming all the.
16:51
Speaker 2: Time, being more able to look people in the eye.
16:53
Speaker 4: Not always hide behind a microphone.
16:55
Speaker 2: Actually, you know there is all joking aside.
16:57
Speaker 9: There is a new hypnosis that works on what's called
16:59
Speaker 9: voluntary baldness syndrome, where they realize that a lot of
17:01
Speaker 9: men are sort of doing it on purpose.
17:04
Speaker 1: Why would someone do that on purpose?
17:07
Speaker 2: Which is it?
17:08
Speaker 9: It turns out that that hair loss is more of
17:10
Speaker 9: like an act of willful insolence often and a cry
17:13
Speaker 9: for peace.
17:14
Speaker 1: I used to love my hair.
17:16
Speaker 2: Well, if you loved it so much, why did you
17:17
Speaker 2: get rid of it?
17:18
Speaker 1: First of all, I find the defensive and Gregor chime
17:21
Speaker 1: in here because I'm sure you're equally offended.
17:24
Speaker 4: Now, Dimitri used to be bald as an egg and
17:26
Speaker 4: then he willed it back.
17:29
Speaker 2: I think you you did at the same time with
17:30
Speaker 2: my mother.
17:30
Speaker 9: We can get a two for one deal package deal.
17:33
Speaker 2: I'm just saying it's science. If you read the New
17:34
Speaker 2: England Journal inmentivis.
17:38
Speaker 1: With Gregor and Dimitri aligned in friends again. At my expense,
17:43
Speaker 1: I set out in search of the one eyed hippie hypnotist,
17:46
Speaker 1: Saul Feldstein. But it turns out Saul died in twenty
17:50
Speaker 1: nineteen at the age of ninety two. So I reach
17:53
Speaker 1: out to other hypnotists, all of whom pretty much hang
17:56
Speaker 1: up on me once I explain the project. So hypnotism
18:00
Speaker 1: is out, the museum is out. I'm stuck with my
18:04
Speaker 1: crap personality, and Edta is stuck with her house full
18:07
Speaker 1: of crab and Gregor is still at an impasse. But
18:11
Speaker 1: things are about to change coming up after the break
18:16
Speaker 1: Ata's big night. You know what that guy says to me.
18:20
Speaker 6: Just now, This guy told me that I was beautiful.
18:24
Speaker 10: You are what's going on yet?
18:39
Speaker 1: Gregor tells me that Edda has been offered a show
18:42
Speaker 1: at the Carter Burden Gallery in Manhattan. Edda is an
18:45
Speaker 1: outsider artist, so the offer of her own solo exhibition
18:49
Speaker 1: feels like finally, at the age of eighty eight, she's
18:52
Speaker 1: being invited inside. The show with its formal invitations and
18:57
Speaker 1: co check, feels like validation. It's the kind of opportunity
19:01
Speaker 1: Edda has always hoped for, and for Gregor, it feels
19:04
Speaker 1: like an opportunity for her pieces to find good homes
19:07
Speaker 1: outside her home. The show opens on March twenty first,
19:12
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen. Gregor and I make a plan to speak
19:15
Speaker 1: the morning after so we can tell me how it went.
19:19
Speaker 1: When we speak, what Gregor tells me is that things
19:22
Speaker 1: that night took a wild turn. Do you want to explain?
19:27
Speaker 5: Sure.
19:28
Speaker 4: I flew into town from my mom's art opening. Okay,
19:31
Speaker 4: we're here at the art opening. It's a pretty good drought.
19:34
Speaker 4: Everyone's eating wine and cheese.
19:36
Speaker 1: And but it's so loud.
19:40
Speaker 4: It was almost like a cartoon version of my mom's
19:43
Speaker 4: success story. And that like some stranger guy came up,
19:47
Speaker 4: was like, you're a beautiful woman, utiful. Her ego was
19:55
Speaker 4: buffed from many sides. Everything going great.
19:57
Speaker 10: Oh.
20:00
Speaker 1: Gregor's dad, Milt, on the other hand, wasn't having as
20:03
Speaker 1: good a time. He spent most of the evening in
20:05
Speaker 1: the corner nibbling on crackers. At the end the night,
20:09
Speaker 1: Gregor approached him.
20:11
Speaker 4: Oh, father, let'd you make it up?
20:13
Speaker 7: Oh it's very nice.
20:16
Speaker 4: A little bit exhausting, he seemed like, even though he
20:20
Speaker 4: sometimes talks in a quiet voice, he was especially quiet,
20:23
Speaker 4: like I could hardly hear him.
20:27
Speaker 1: On the drive home, Milt conked out When the family
20:30
Speaker 1: couldn't rouse him, they realized he wasn't just sleeping, but
20:34
Speaker 1: completely unconscious. Eda began yelling, wailing Milt's name. He was
20:39
Speaker 1: driven to the hospital, where the EMTs lifted him onto
20:42
Speaker 1: a gurney. The doctors thought he might be having a stroke,
20:46
Speaker 1: but they couldn't say for sure. In the waiting room,
20:49
Speaker 1: Eda turned to Gregor and said, you might as well
20:52
Speaker 1: order the dumpsters right now, meaning you win empty out
20:56
Speaker 1: the house because of Milt isn't coming back to it,
21:00
Speaker 1: That's it. How do you know when the Democlean sword
21:06
Speaker 1: of mortality isn't just dangling above you but actually falling?
21:11
Speaker 1: How do you know when it's time to pick up
21:12
Speaker 1: the remote, turn off Rachel Maddow and finally act the
21:17
Speaker 1: night a milestone in Edda's career was meant to symbolize
21:21
Speaker 1: the turning point, and it was just not the kind
21:24
Speaker 1: she was hoping for. Milton was eventually sent home from
21:28
Speaker 1: the hospital, but its clap signaled a change for Gregor too.
21:33
Speaker 1: For so long he'd been saying, maybe it's time, but
21:36
Speaker 1: maybe it was time to stop saying maybe Hello, he Hi,
21:48
Speaker 1: it's Gregor and Jonathan.
21:50
Speaker 6: Oh, and I thought this was a scam call.
21:53
Speaker 9: How do you like that?
21:53
Speaker 10: How are you well?
21:55
Speaker 4: I wouldn't be so sure. It's not.
21:56
Speaker 1: We haven't finished the call yet, right, So what's the bitch?
22:00
Speaker 4: Johnny wanted to dredge up a bunch of painful family issues.
22:04
Speaker 6: Oh sure, why not? The painfuler the better.
22:08
Speaker 1: I want to talk with about the night of the
22:10
Speaker 1: art opening and the way it affected our thinking about
22:12
Speaker 1: remaining in the house.
22:14
Speaker 6: I won't be able to stay here alone. Either I
22:18
Speaker 6: will become ill or Milt will become ill, and I
22:21
Speaker 6: need somebody to help me. There is a new little
22:26
Speaker 6: piece in my head that says things are going.
22:28
Speaker 1: To change in the aftermath of the art show opening.
22:32
Speaker 1: As that is new reality sunk in, another plan began
22:36
Speaker 1: to take shape, one that Eda came up with. Her
22:39
Speaker 1: idea is to pair each of her message on the
22:41
Speaker 1: bottles with the right person. In this way, each one
22:45
Speaker 1: will find the right home.
22:47
Speaker 6: I now have a whole shelf full of stuff that
22:51
Speaker 6: I'm now earmarking to give away.
22:53
Speaker 1: That's something that you've not normally done.
22:55
Speaker 6: No, I only gave very few things away, you know,
23:00
Speaker 6: to my best friend or to the kids, or something
23:03
Speaker 6: like that. Very few, very very few.
23:08
Speaker 1: Do you think it at the beginning of something more
23:11
Speaker 1: of this to come?
23:12
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, it has to be. It has to be.
23:16
Speaker 6: I take it very seriously. When I think of giving
23:19
Speaker 6: a person a bottle, I have to think would it
23:21
Speaker 6: be good for that person?
23:24
Speaker 2: Okay? Oh really? All right?
23:28
Speaker 1: A few weeks later, I called Gregor to see how
23:30
Speaker 1: Eda's bottle drive is coming along.
23:32
Speaker 4: So she called me this morning saying, I thought of
23:35
Speaker 4: the perfect person to give the perfect bottle to, but
23:37
Speaker 4: I'm afraid it's going to hurt his feelings. Okay, she
23:43
Speaker 4: wants to give you a bottle.
23:44
Speaker 1: She wants to give Okay, well that wow, that's really nice.
23:50
Speaker 1: Why would that hurt my feelings?
23:52
Speaker 4: You know, if you give someone a bottle that says
23:54
Speaker 4: like I wish like I was present, then it's sort
23:58
Speaker 4: of an implication that you're not present, you know what
23:59
Speaker 4: I mean? It could be interpreted sometimes as like a
24:02
Speaker 4: sort of a criticism. So I don't know how you'll
24:06
Speaker 4: take it.
24:07
Speaker 1: What did she tell you? What my bottle says?
24:10
Speaker 4: That's as much as I can say at this point.
24:12
Speaker 4: It's as much as I'm authorized to say.
24:19
Speaker 1: Even though I should know better know how Gregor will
24:22
Speaker 1: dangle this knowledge over my head like a cat dancer.
24:26
Speaker 1: My curiosity gets the better of me, and so I
24:29
Speaker 1: keep asking Gregor what the bottle says, which he uses
24:32
Speaker 1: as an opportunity to dissect my personality. All I can say,
24:37
Speaker 1: he says, is that it addresses some of your deep
24:40
Speaker 1: seated issues.
24:42
Speaker 4: Despite all your insights about other people, you sort of
24:45
Speaker 4: tend to remove yourself from the collective and put yourself
24:48
Speaker 4: in the position of like journalistic observer.
24:50
Speaker 1: Uh huh.
24:51
Speaker 4: When you have these insights, you know, your dime store insights,
24:54
Speaker 4: you bolt on at the end of things where you're like,
24:56
Speaker 4: maybe we all need someone to run to that hallmarking
24:59
Speaker 4: nonsense that you did this about at the end of
25:01
Speaker 4: the day.
25:01
Speaker 1: Jerk, you feel comfortable to saying something like that to
25:05
Speaker 1: someone telling me about my diet.
25:07
Speaker 4: I knew you were going to take it the wrong way.
25:08
Speaker 1: What's the that's the right way to take that?
25:11
Speaker 4: I think sometimes you sort of make yourself resistant, like, oh,
25:16
Speaker 4: I don't matter, I'm just the fly on the wall
25:18
Speaker 4: to watching the human condition. As you know, people live
25:22
Speaker 4: and die and suffer, and babies are born and old
25:24
Speaker 4: people lower it into the ground. Oh when the dirt
25:26
Speaker 4: hits the coffin. That reminds me of my sponsor. I
25:29
Speaker 4: think you just you use the thing to remove yourself
25:33
Speaker 4: from what's actually going on. Okay, all right, you're like,
25:36
Speaker 4: you know what really make this thing sing? Now, let
25:40
Speaker 4: me just get a shot of you throwing your art
25:41
Speaker 4: off the bridge. That's what we need to finish this.
25:46
Speaker 1: Maybe Gregor thinks I'm being too prying with his mom
25:49
Speaker 1: and this is just an expression of his protectiveness, so
25:52
Speaker 1: I apologize to him and tell him I'll try to
25:55
Speaker 1: be more respectful. It turns out that Gregor has little
25:59
Speaker 1: respect for my respect.
26:01
Speaker 4: Yeah, hey, lady, I can be more respectful out there.
26:03
Speaker 4: I won't tell you to throw your stuff in the
26:05
Speaker 4: gar bitch, I'll tell you to throw it into recycling
26:07
Speaker 4: bin that way. Don't want why there'll be no landfill,
26:10
Speaker 4: you understand.
26:11
Speaker 1: Very respectful?
26:14
Speaker 4: Who even separate out the green bottles from the Clini glass?
26:25
Speaker 10: Very good?
26:26
Speaker 2: John?
26:26
Speaker 1: Why would you even let me speak to your mother?
26:30
Speaker 2: I don't know.
26:30
Speaker 4: I mean I thought maybe you could patch things up,
26:33
Speaker 4: I don't know.
26:41
Speaker 1: Over the next couple years, Eda continues to slowly search
26:44
Speaker 1: out the right homes for her bottles, whereas in the past,
26:48
Speaker 1: Edda was only able to give away a few. Gregor
26:51
Speaker 1: estimates that she hands out about one hundred. During this time,
26:55
Speaker 1: Milt is in and out of the hospital with cardiac
26:57
Speaker 1: issues ranging from fainting spells and high blood pressure to
27:01
Speaker 1: an actual heart attack. But then in the summer of
27:04
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, it's Edda who received some bad news.
27:09
Speaker 1: Years after Gregor and I first spoke, Gregor phones to
27:12
Speaker 1: tell me his mother has been diagnosed with brain cancer.
27:16
Speaker 1: The doctor found nine metastases in her brain. They went
27:20
Speaker 1: to three different hospitals in five days, and the consensus
27:23
Speaker 1: was that it wasn't a matter of months, but of weeks.
27:27
Speaker 1: In what felt like only days, Eda went from carrying
27:30
Speaker 1: laundry up the stairs to needing to be carried up
27:33
Speaker 1: the stairs herself. With Ata's illness, Gregor decides to move in.
27:42
Speaker 1: The whole family does into the big packed house they
27:45
Speaker 1: grew up in. A hospital bed is set up on
27:48
Speaker 1: the main floor in Ata's old office, and Gregor wakes
27:52
Speaker 1: up at sunrise and sits at at his bedside in silence.
27:55
Speaker 1: He speaks with her, makes her comfortable. He tells her
27:59
Speaker 1: it's okay to go, that everything is okay.
28:05
Speaker 4: And I stayed there for six weeks, eight weeks, and
28:08
Speaker 4: sort of did the bedside vigil as she slowly died.
28:17
Speaker 1: In those final weeks, Gregor saw a change come over Edda.
28:22
Speaker 4: In the years running up to her death, she would
28:24
Speaker 4: say things like, listen, there's a rolled up rug in
28:28
Speaker 4: the attic that's worth a lot of money. Make sure
28:31
Speaker 4: that they don't, you know, cheat you out.
28:33
Speaker 2: Of that one.
28:34
Speaker 4: That was always kind of a sort of joke, sort
28:36
Speaker 4: of real thing. But when the actual room of death
28:42
Speaker 4: and dying was happening, that stuff didn't really come up.
28:47
Speaker 4: It felt more like she was at peace with a
28:50
Speaker 4: lot of stuff, and a lot of the stuff. She
28:51
Speaker 4: told me she would be laying there with her eyes
28:54
Speaker 4: shut but smiling, and I'm like, you know, Mom, what
28:57
Speaker 4: are you thinking about it? And she's just just with
29:00
Speaker 4: her hand. She would indicate that she's like dancing by
29:03
Speaker 4: just flowing her hand in the air. It felt like
29:05
Speaker 4: a great death.
29:12
Speaker 1: The words on the bottles had finally sunk in. In the end,
29:16
Speaker 1: Eda could dance out of the world gracefully, no grasping.
29:21
Speaker 1: It's the living who are left to grasp.
29:25
Speaker 3: Since my mom died, it feels like it's harder to
29:28
Speaker 3: throw things out than I thought.
29:31
Speaker 1: This is Gregor's sister Lexi. Again, like Eda, Lexi is
29:35
Speaker 1: an artist, and like Gregor, she's surprised by how, after
29:40
Speaker 1: all the years trying to get her mom to let
29:42
Speaker 1: go of her stuff, she herself is finding it so
29:45
Speaker 1: hard to let go of that very same stuff.
29:48
Speaker 3: It just feels really hard to like her art. It
29:51
Speaker 3: feels it's like a part of her. Yeah, but it's
29:55
Speaker 3: not her.
29:57
Speaker 2: Yeah.
29:58
Speaker 3: I had an interesting conversation with my dad the other day,
30:02
Speaker 3: who is of course, really you know, grief stricken, and he.
30:07
Speaker 1: Was saying why do people art?
30:10
Speaker 3: And he thinks the reason people make art is so
30:13
Speaker 3: that they're not forgotten when they die, like you do
30:16
Speaker 3: something that remains in the world.
30:21
Speaker 4: I think of her a lot.
30:24
Speaker 1: Do you still carry with you your mother's love? Do
30:26
Speaker 1: you feel it?
30:28
Speaker 4: I carry her with me. I mean in the way
30:34
Speaker 4: that you know, when I experience something I can't help
30:39
Speaker 4: but hear my mother's voice making fun of me for
30:44
Speaker 4: my description of what I'm experiencing. I might be describing something,
30:49
Speaker 4: telling her about just some Quotadian thing in the day.
30:54
Speaker 4: You know, this is a nice sunset, but I've a
30:57
Speaker 4: nicer if that truck weren't backing up, and I can
31:01
Speaker 4: hear her being like, why are you so rotten? You
31:04
Speaker 4: know what is wrong with you? I mean, that's that
31:07
Speaker 4: type of thing.
31:16
Speaker 1: You can try to move your aging parents out of
31:18
Speaker 1: their house. You can treat death like a to do
31:21
Speaker 1: list with items to check off, but ultimately you can't
31:25
Speaker 1: control how people live or die. Even after Eda's death,
31:29
Speaker 1: Milt remained in that very same house. It's Dmitri and
31:33
Speaker 1: his own family that move in so that Milt doesn't
31:35
Speaker 1: have to be alone. And over the next few years, Gregor,
31:40
Speaker 1: in fits and starts and with disregard for what anyone thinks,
31:44
Speaker 1: continues to work on the museum. Only it's become less
31:47
Speaker 1: about a full fledged museum open to the public and
31:50
Speaker 1: more of just a place to honor his mom. And
31:53
Speaker 1: then one day Gregor texts saying he found a sealed
31:57
Speaker 1: box and the Victorian with my name on it written
32:00
Speaker 1: in Eda's hand. When the box arrives, I unravel what
32:04
Speaker 1: seems like yards and yards a bubble wrap. Edta had
32:08
Speaker 1: taken great care. The bottle is a beautiful blue, the
32:12
Speaker 1: blue of a childhood toy. It's crevaceous and feels good
32:16
Speaker 1: in my hand upon it, Eta laid out her words
32:20
Speaker 1: to me, I would.
32:22
Speaker 6: Love to live like a river flows carried by the
32:25
Speaker 6: surprise of its own unfolding.
32:29
Speaker 1: See what I mean, I do? But how dare she?
32:34
Speaker 1: I'm kidding? Cue the outro music, Cue the dime story
32:38
Speaker 1: in sight. Whether it's to a museum in the wilds
32:42
Speaker 1: of upstate New York or to a landfill, none of
32:45
Speaker 1: us knows where we're flowing. In the face of that,
32:49
Speaker 1: we need to learn how to let go. My feeling
32:53
Speaker 1: about what comes after death is constantly changing. I don't
32:57
Speaker 1: have a spiritual practice, so all I have is a feeling.
33:00
Speaker 1: And my feeling today is that bodies are vessels, just
33:04
Speaker 1: like colorful bottles are vessels, just like podcasts and houses
33:08
Speaker 1: packed with stuff and all of art is. It's all
33:12
Speaker 1: just stuff, and stuff can be beautiful, but it's there
33:17
Speaker 1: to help us get closer to the non stuff, because,
33:21
Speaker 1: like the words Da inscribed on one of her final bottles,
33:25
Speaker 1: all important matters are invisible.
34:12
Speaker 11: Now that the furnitures returning to its goodwill home, now
34:21
Speaker 11: that the last.
34:23
Speaker 6: Month's rent is scheming with.
34:25
Speaker 5: The damage to posle, take this moment to dissolve. If
34:32
Speaker 5: we meant it if we see we felt around for
34:38
Speaker 5: from things that accidentally.
34:48
Speaker 1: This episode of Heavyweight was produced by Phoebe Flanagan and
34:51
Speaker 1: me Jonathan Goldstein. Our senior producer is Khalila Holt and
34:55
Speaker 1: our supervising producer is Stevie Lane. Editorial guidance from Emily Condon.
35:00
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Steve marsh Amy, Gaines McQuaid and Sarah Nix.
35:04
Speaker 1: Our production council is Jake Flanagan. Emmamonger mixed the episode
35:08
Speaker 1: with a music by Christine Fellows, John K. Sampson and
35:12
Speaker 1: Bobby Lord. Additional scoring by Boxwood Orchestra and Blue Dot Sessions.
35:17
Speaker 1: Our theme song is by The Weaker Thands courtesy of
35:19
Speaker 1: Epitaph Records. Follow us on Instagram at Heavyweight Podcast or
35:24
Speaker 1: email us at Heavyweight at Pushkin dot fm, and if
35:28
Speaker 1: you'd like your very own Eta Berlick original her bottles
35:32
Speaker 1: can be found on her Instagram at Eta Berlick. We'll
35:36
Speaker 1: be back next week with a new episode. Can you
35:40
Speaker 1: believe it? Back in the saddle hiding behind that mic
35:45
Speaker 1: oh yeah, oh yeah. So I wanted to go through
36:00
Speaker 1: the entire thing just to make sure the fact and
36:02
Speaker 1: also make sure that your mother made. She put bird
36:05
Speaker 1: poop with googly eyes.
36:07
Speaker 2: Is that correct. She's called you geez okay.
36:10
Speaker 4: How many times would you say you were rejected by
36:12
Speaker 4: girls in the dozens?
36:14
Speaker 2: Is that correct?
36:17
Speaker 10: H