September 18, 2025 • 36 mins
Gregor's parents are pushing 90. Gregor wants to move them out of their big Victorian home. But they refuse. So, he's come up with a bold plan.
You can find Etta’s work on Instagram @ettabehrlich
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Hello, I'd like to welcome to the show, Jackie Cove. Jackie.
It's a new season. I'm with a new company, Pushkin Industries,
and I thought it might be nice for you to,
you know, tell everyone how much the show is meant
(00:37):
to you.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Do you?
Speaker 1 (00:39):
People look at my face right now we're on the telephone.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Could you imagine what kind of look I have on
my face?
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Right now?
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Ecstasy discussed Heavyweight is back, Mamala. They thought we were
down for the count. But what's this? Oh oh with
a right now left? Heavyweight's back, pushing it with Pushkin, Mamala,
Bushkin Industries. I got okay, you go with that.
Speaker 4 (01:01):
Bye bye.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
From Bushkin Industries. I'm Jonathan Goldstein and this is Heavyweight
today's episode. Eda, right after the.
Speaker 4 (01:23):
Break, all right, you're ready, you're rolling, You got levels, Mimei, mamomu.
Okay go.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
This is Gregor. You might know him from such previous
episodes as Gregor. Gregor is one of my oldest friends,
and today he's coming to me with a problem.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
I'll take it from the top, Okay. So I have
two parents, Milton and Eda.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Edda and Milton are both pushing ninety and Gregor's problem
is that they refuse to move out of their house.
It's the same three story Victorian Gregor grew up. He
was twelve when the family first moved in. He still
remembers the excitement as they unloaded boxes from the moving
truck or moving trucks.
Speaker 4 (02:21):
You know, normal people move with like a big giant
eighteen wheeler moving truck. I believe when we moved we
had six moving.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Trucks, one for the family's belongings, the other five for
the collections. Some people collect coins, some people collect comic books.
Gregor's mother, Etta, collects collections.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
She has like maybe two hundred egg beaters, antique egg beaters.
She has you know what a bisk nodter is.
Speaker 5 (02:50):
No.
Speaker 4 (02:52):
In occupied Japan, people bought these little figurines where the
head would wobble back.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
And forth like a bubble headed doll, something like that.
Speaker 4 (02:59):
Anyway, she probably has two thousand bisc mounters.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Then there are the nineteenth century weaving looms, the handmade baskets,
the medieval scythes. Eta airlic Is artist and her collections
are the source of her inspiration. Edis's beauty in everything
and in her hands, everything becomes art. She'll sculpt lint
from the dryer. She'll put googly eyes on a splatter
of dried bird poop.
Speaker 4 (03:23):
My mother has been unbelievably prolific in making art for
like the last thirty five years, to a degree where
now the living room is like full to the brim
with a million pieces of art, and every week she
probably makes five or ten more pieces of art.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
None of this would be a problem except that a large,
cluttered house is becoming increasingly dangerous for Gregor's elderly parents.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
I fear the more conventional fears. I fear my mother
falling down a flight of stairs, or my father. I mean,
there's all kinds of dark things that can happen in
a house full of staircases.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
And so Gregor wants to move his parents into a
smaller apartment, something more manageable. That's his plan.
Speaker 6 (04:03):
Yeah, that's his plan. But that's not my plan. This
is eda The practical thing is, we can't be in
the house too much longer. I'm eighty eight.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Yeah, but to move out.
Speaker 6 (04:17):
Of the house isn't simply a question of selling the furniture.
It's my god, what do we do with all this?
Speaker 1 (04:26):
All this all the collections is what's keeping Eta in
the house. And of all her many collections, of all
her milking stools and antique rolling pins, it's her collection
of fragile, colorful bottles that is perhaps the biggest impediment
to moving. By Gregor's estimate, Eta has thousands wine bottles,
perfume bottles, all decanters, bottles washed up from the bottom
(04:50):
of the ocean. As well as being an artist, Eta
is a Buddhist and her bottles are not just bottles
but a series of meditations. Because on each of the bottles,
in fancy fonds and careful calligraphy, Eta places a message
in the form of a zen like riddle.
Speaker 6 (05:09):
Noose to titropuce and madly dance upon it.
Speaker 4 (05:15):
Isn't it gorgeous?
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Very nice?
Speaker 6 (05:16):
But how's about this one? It's a black popple with
gold calligraphy, and it has the first letter shows a breath,
somebody blowing a breath. Do you see it?
Speaker 1 (05:27):
It really does look like a breath is blowing. That's
by design.
Speaker 6 (05:30):
There you go, there you go. You want me to
give that away for nothing?
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Other inscriptions are stop schlepping your old being into the future,
or we cling to illusions of control. After hearing a few,
I start to recognize a theme. All the bottles bear
messages imploring one to let go. Yet Eda is incapable
of letting go of the very bottles doing the imploring,
(05:59):
or much of anything else. There is a little bit
of a paradox, or there's something to kind of be
struggling with.
Speaker 6 (06:05):
Then you're very, very sharp. That is exactly see, exactly true.
These works would talk about being stuck with the grasping
level I suffer from that.
Speaker 7 (06:21):
I could leave tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
This is Gregor's dad, Milt. If the taxi pulled up
right now, you would you would jump in.
Speaker 7 (06:30):
I'm ready to go.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Yeah, I'll stop you there.
Speaker 8 (06:32):
He's never taken a tax in his life.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
But if I pulled up that.
Speaker 7 (06:37):
Uber duber so I don't get attached to furniture and
bottles and stuff, I'll.
Speaker 8 (06:44):
Just reinforce that point that while my father made positive
that he's a Taoist and not attached to anything, he
is very much complicit lmentlessly bringing home the raw material
to which my mother, you know, turns the art out.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
When was the last time you brought something home melt yesterday?
Speaker 7 (07:03):
I'm always interested in what she's doing, and I often
find the raw materials walking around in the woods or anywhere,
fine stuff. Her only requirement is if I find something,
it has to have what she calls a charm.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
As for Melt, what he's charmed by, exceedingly charmed by,
is that a Milt is a poet, and after over
sixty years of marriage, he still writes poems about her,
rhapsodizing about the way she creates art or cooks, or
the way she dances. Milt says he can watch Eda
dance all night. He just doesn't understand her being so
(07:38):
chained to her belongings.
Speaker 4 (07:41):
I'm stuck.
Speaker 6 (07:42):
But I am not coming up with the solution that's
any better, am I? Yeah, except dying, And that's not
a solution. No, it's not a solution for greg He's
left holding the whole.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Thing of Milton. At his three kids, Gregor is perhaps
the one most ready to serve the child his parents
handed to do list when he comes to visit.
Speaker 6 (08:08):
I mean, he talks me, and that's because he has
meanness in him. I'm not saying he doesn't, but he's
also a very kind, giving, generous, loving person.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Yes he is.
Speaker 6 (08:21):
Yeah, Yeah, don't tell him, I said, so.
Speaker 4 (08:31):
In action is a choice not doing anything. Something's bound
to happen sooner or later, and just sort of watch
the secondhand sweep around the clock face until somebody's dead
is the most passive and weakest possible way to exist.
And it just feels like, you know, the Damoclean Sword
of mortality is coming, and all we're going to do
(08:52):
is sit here and watch Rachel Maddow until it cuts
our head off.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
And so, because Eda can't let go, Gregor wants my
help in pulling off a most extravagant workaround, one that
will allow Eda to both keep her stuff and still
move out. It's a plan of action that Gregor wants
to present to her.
Speaker 4 (09:12):
What if you don't get rid of your possessions and
we make a museum of your stuff?
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Gregor explains to me the details. It seems that in
the nineteen sixties, Etta and Milt about a two hundred
year old farmhouse with no running water or indoor plumbing.
Gregor's plan is to convert the barn into the Eta
b airlike museum, convincing one's mother to downsize by way
of a feral farmhouse museum that by Gregor's own admission
(09:43):
is probably a breeding ground for the haunt of virus.
Has all the makings of a classic Kakammi scheme. But
this is just the beginning for his plan, and to
(10:09):
build a museum to work, Gregor will need his siblings
on board, so, as is emotional envoy, I begin by
phoning his sister Lexi. Lexi is the level headed one
of the three, and I want to get her read
on the plan. I mean, is it realistic that he'll
be able to turn the barn into a museum like that?
(10:35):
Perhaps this plan is a bit half baked, but I
figure I might have more luck getting Gregor's brother Dmitri
on board. Dmitri has never been afraid of a scheme
that runs a little pink on the inside. So I
give him a call. We haven't spoken since I moved
from New York, where Dmitri lives, to Minnesota.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
I hate to see a Minneapolis area code when you call.
It makes me sad.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Your business doesn't bring you to Minnesota.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
I'm guessing it does sometimes. I interviewed Prince for a
cover story. Ever earned one may be very trap both prints.
He's very touching.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Dmitri is a personal trainer who's kickboxed his way across Thailand.
He's also a journalist who interviews celebrities.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
So I went there, waited all day for the interview.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
And a musician who had a song go platinum six
times in Belgium.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
And he was like, hey, you want to jam and
I was like okay.
Speaker 9 (11:26):
So I wound up actually jamming with Larry Grant and
Prince for like twenty minutes.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
What that was one sence.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Before Dmitri you can launch into his next sentence, I
jump in. So your brother Gregor.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
I'm familiar with him.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
He has his plan, which maybe you're also familiar with.
When I'm finished rehashing Gregor's museum plan, Dmitri offers a
laundry list of issues.
Speaker 9 (11:55):
Sons of getting Lemez's walking out of your part of
the barn because it's high grassed, a lot of deer
getting poison ivy.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
So there's also like a horrible black mold. Because as
you know, the farmhouse burned down.
Speaker 9 (12:08):
My I'll buy it baker friend THEO stayed there and
lit a fire in the roof and the whole house
burned down in the.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
Wad and along with his friend Theo's trouble. There was
also his friend Sonem's trouble in that cursed place.
Speaker 9 (12:19):
My friend, who spent twenty five years as a Buddhist
monk under the dolly Lema, had to use a broom
to fight off a very large raccoon that was.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
In the house and was like growling at us and
like his harrifind.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
But for Dimitri, even more daunting than the rabid raccoons
is changing his mother's mind on the matter. Whenever he's
trying to clear space in his parents' home, it refills overnight,
suggesting Eda's problem can't be solved by physical means. Instead,
he thinks the problem has to be attacked at its
psychological root. She needs to learn how to let go,
(12:51):
and for this Dmitri has just the solution.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Well, maybe hypnosis.
Speaker 9 (13:00):
It stopped her from smoking, which is probably a more
powerful psychological and physical addiction than collecting things.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Eda was a packadet smoker, a habit she hung on
for nearly thirty years.
Speaker 9 (13:10):
Our friend, who was a hypnotist, said I can hypnotize you,
and she went into the session thinking this isn't gonna work.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
The whole time the hypnosis was going on. She was like,
this isn't working, This isn't working, and then she walked
out and never smoked again. He was an interesting person too.
His name is Saul Feldstein.
Speaker 9 (13:25):
He actually had one of his eyeballs was like hanging
out of his face, and like it was like a
sort of early commune hippie thing, and like.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Having grown up on TV sitcoms of the nineteen seventies,
I'm well aware of the power of hypnosis.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Hanging out of his face.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Hypnosis gave Fred Flintstone the self control to stop beating
Brontosaurus Berger Communie. It gave the Fonds the confidence that
jumped Snake Canyon on his motorcycle his eyeballs. As a boy,
I always wondered what it would feel like to have
my full potential unlocked through the hypnotic arts.
Speaker 9 (13:58):
Hanging out of his face, And he was very successful
as a hypnotist.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Wow. Unlike building a museum, hypnosis requires neither time effort.
Are those awful stanchions that snap back with that loud
thwacking sound that make everyone turn around and stare at you.
Fully convinced that Saul Feldstein is the solution to all
of our problems and that museums belong in a museum.
(14:24):
Dimitri and I say our goodbyes.
Speaker 4 (14:33):
We're slating in. On part two, Johnny discusses post talking
to Dmitri. Here we go.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
I need to tell Gregor that I like Dmitri's idea
much better than his. But I need to tread lightly
from Cain and Abel to Stephen and Alec Baldwin. I
know how competitive brothers can be, and unlike the Lord
or Alexander Ray Baldwin Senior, I don't want to be
seen playing favorites. Do you think you're like hypnotism has
(15:02):
a role in this, Well, I hear.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
That, like your voice went up in octave when we
started talking about hypnotism and you got excited about hypnotism.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Well, Dimitri seemed to think that it would that it
could help.
Speaker 4 (15:13):
Okay, so the two of you should go see a
movie together.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
Going to movies is Gregor and my thing. Clearly I'm
arousing some jealousy. I need to keep my arguments away
from Dimitri and grounded in the merits of hypnotism. This
whole barn thing as the symptom but through hypnosis.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
Why are you saying it with like the weird accent
on the word hypnosis.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
I mean, do you think that hypnotism has something to
offer here?
Speaker 4 (15:41):
My short answer would be absolutely not. I think it's
a waste of time. Hypnosis, hypnosis, hypnosis.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Hi, Johnny, how are you.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Hey, Dimitri?
Speaker 6 (15:55):
Hi?
Speaker 1 (15:56):
I've got your brother Gregor on the line with me.
Speaker 4 (15:59):
We've met, Hi.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
How are you?
Speaker 1 (16:01):
Can you make the case to your brother?
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Sure?
Speaker 9 (16:04):
I just think that you know there's no harm, there's
certainly no nothing to lose. It takes fifteen or twenty minutes,
and she's proven that she's very susceptible to hypnotic suggestions,
so why not try it?
Speaker 4 (16:14):
I agree with all those points. My main feeling is
that getting someone to stop a behavior like smoking is
much much easier than getting someone to change their personality,
which is harder to hypnotize someone out.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Of That may be true, I wouldn't disgrew there, swept
up in a wave of brotherly bonamy. I decide it's
a safe space to cautiously share my one secret boyhood longing,
and along the way I could get hypnotized that as
something too. Yeah, A lot of stuff, yeah, and immediately
regret it. What do you mean a lot of stuff?
Speaker 2 (16:46):
I mean, that's a smug smile. They could work on.
Speaker 4 (16:48):
We could give you a whole brand new thing where
you're like super charming all the.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Time, being more able to look people in the eye.
Speaker 4 (16:53):
Not always hide behind a microphone.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
Actually, you know there is all joking aside.
Speaker 9 (16:57):
There is a new hypnosis that works on what's called
voluntary baldness syndrome, where they realize that a lot of
men are sort of doing it on purpose.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Why would someone do that on purpose?
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Which is it?
Speaker 9 (17:08):
It turns out that that hair loss is more of
like an act of willful insolence often and a cry
for peace.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
I used to love my hair.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Well, if you loved it so much, why did you
get rid of it?
Speaker 1 (17:18):
First of all, I find the defensive and Gregor chime
in here because I'm sure you're equally offended.
Speaker 4 (17:24):
Now, Dimitri used to be bald as an egg and
then he willed it back.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
I think you you did at the same time with
my mother.
Speaker 9 (17:30):
We can get a two for one deal package deal.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
I'm just saying it's science. If you read the New
England Journal inmentivis.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
With Gregor and Dimitri aligned in friends again. At my expense,
I set out in search of the one eyed hippie hypnotist,
Saul Feldstein. But it turns out Saul died in twenty
nineteen at the age of ninety two. So I reach
out to other hypnotists, all of whom pretty much hang
up on me once I explain the project. So hypnotism
(18:00):
is out, the museum is out. I'm stuck with my
crap personality, and Edta is stuck with her house full
of crab and Gregor is still at an impasse. But
things are about to change coming up after the break
Ata's big night. You know what that guy says to me.
Speaker 6 (18:20):
Just now, This guy told me that I was beautiful.
Speaker 10 (18:24):
You are what's going on yet?
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Gregor tells me that Edda has been offered a show
at the Carter Burden Gallery in Manhattan. Edda is an
outsider artist, so the offer of her own solo exhibition
feels like finally, at the age of eighty eight, she's
being invited inside. The show with its formal invitations and
co check, feels like validation. It's the kind of opportunity
(19:01):
Edda has always hoped for, and for Gregor, it feels
like an opportunity for her pieces to find good homes
outside her home. The show opens on March twenty first,
twenty nineteen. Gregor and I make a plan to speak
the morning after so we can tell me how it went.
When we speak, what Gregor tells me is that things
(19:22):
that night took a wild turn. Do you want to explain?
Speaker 5 (19:27):
Sure.
Speaker 4 (19:28):
I flew into town from my mom's art opening. Okay,
we're here at the art opening. It's a pretty good drought.
Everyone's eating wine and cheese.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
And but it's so loud.
Speaker 4 (19:40):
It was almost like a cartoon version of my mom's
success story. And that like some stranger guy came up,
was like, you're a beautiful woman, utiful. Her ego was
buffed from many sides. Everything going great.
Speaker 10 (19:57):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Gregor's dad, Milt, on the other hand, wasn't having as
good a time. He spent most of the evening in
the corner nibbling on crackers. At the end the night,
Gregor approached him.
Speaker 4 (20:11):
Oh, father, let'd you make it up?
Speaker 7 (20:13):
Oh it's very nice.
Speaker 4 (20:16):
A little bit exhausting, he seemed like, even though he
sometimes talks in a quiet voice, he was especially quiet,
like I could hardly hear him.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
On the drive home, Milt conked out When the family
couldn't rouse him, they realized he wasn't just sleeping, but
completely unconscious. Eda began yelling, wailing Milt's name. He was
driven to the hospital, where the EMTs lifted him onto
a gurney. The doctors thought he might be having a stroke,
but they couldn't say for sure. In the waiting room,
(20:49):
Eda turned to Gregor and said, you might as well
order the dumpsters right now, meaning you win empty out
the house because of Milt isn't coming back to it,
That's it. How do you know when the Democlean sword
of mortality isn't just dangling above you but actually falling?
(21:11):
How do you know when it's time to pick up
the remote, turn off Rachel Maddow and finally act the
night a milestone in Edda's career was meant to symbolize
the turning point, and it was just not the kind
she was hoping for. Milton was eventually sent home from
the hospital, but its clap signaled a change for Gregor too.
(21:33):
For so long he'd been saying, maybe it's time, but
maybe it was time to stop saying maybe Hello, he Hi,
it's Gregor and Jonathan.
Speaker 6 (21:50):
Oh, and I thought this was a scam call.
Speaker 9 (21:53):
How do you like that?
Speaker 10 (21:53):
How are you well?
Speaker 4 (21:55):
I wouldn't be so sure. It's not.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
We haven't finished the call yet, right, So what's the bitch?
Speaker 4 (22:00):
Johnny wanted to dredge up a bunch of painful family issues.
Speaker 6 (22:04):
Oh sure, why not? The painfuler the better.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
I want to talk with about the night of the
art opening and the way it affected our thinking about
remaining in the house.
Speaker 6 (22:14):
I won't be able to stay here alone. Either I
will become ill or Milt will become ill, and I
need somebody to help me. There is a new little
piece in my head that says things are going.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
To change in the aftermath of the art show opening.
As that is new reality sunk in, another plan began
to take shape, one that Eda came up with. Her
idea is to pair each of her message on the
bottles with the right person. In this way, each one
will find the right home.
Speaker 6 (22:47):
I now have a whole shelf full of stuff that
I'm now earmarking to give away.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
That's something that you've not normally done.
Speaker 6 (22:55):
No, I only gave very few things away, you know,
to my best friend or to the kids, or something
like that. Very few, very very few.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Do you think it at the beginning of something more
of this to come?
Speaker 6 (23:12):
Yeah, yeah, it has to be. It has to be.
I take it very seriously. When I think of giving
a person a bottle, I have to think would it
be good for that person?
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Okay? Oh really? All right?
Speaker 1 (23:28):
A few weeks later, I called Gregor to see how
Eda's bottle drive is coming along.
Speaker 4 (23:32):
So she called me this morning saying, I thought of
the perfect person to give the perfect bottle to, but
I'm afraid it's going to hurt his feelings. Okay, she
wants to give you a bottle.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
She wants to give Okay, well that wow, that's really nice.
Why would that hurt my feelings?
Speaker 4 (23:52):
You know, if you give someone a bottle that says
like I wish like I was present, then it's sort
of an implication that you're not present, you know what
I mean? It could be interpreted sometimes as like a
sort of a criticism. So I don't know how you'll
take it.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
What did she tell you? What my bottle says?
Speaker 4 (24:10):
That's as much as I can say at this point.
It's as much as I'm authorized to say.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
Even though I should know better know how Gregor will
dangle this knowledge over my head like a cat dancer.
My curiosity gets the better of me, and so I
keep asking Gregor what the bottle says, which he uses
as an opportunity to dissect my personality. All I can say,
he says, is that it addresses some of your deep
(24:40):
seated issues.
Speaker 4 (24:42):
Despite all your insights about other people, you sort of
tend to remove yourself from the collective and put yourself
in the position of like journalistic observer.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
Uh huh.
Speaker 4 (24:51):
When you have these insights, you know, your dime store insights,
you bolt on at the end of things where you're like,
maybe we all need someone to run to that hallmarking
nonsense that you did this about at the end of
the day.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Jerk, you feel comfortable to saying something like that to
someone telling me about my diet.
Speaker 4 (25:07):
I knew you were going to take it the wrong way.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
What's the that's the right way to take that?
Speaker 4 (25:11):
I think sometimes you sort of make yourself resistant, like, oh,
I don't matter, I'm just the fly on the wall
to watching the human condition. As you know, people live
and die and suffer, and babies are born and old
people lower it into the ground. Oh when the dirt
hits the coffin. That reminds me of my sponsor. I
think you just you use the thing to remove yourself
(25:33):
from what's actually going on. Okay, all right, you're like,
you know what really make this thing sing? Now, let
me just get a shot of you throwing your art
off the bridge. That's what we need to finish this.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Maybe Gregor thinks I'm being too prying with his mom
and this is just an expression of his protectiveness, so
I apologize to him and tell him I'll try to
be more respectful. It turns out that Gregor has little
respect for my respect.
Speaker 4 (26:01):
Yeah, hey, lady, I can be more respectful out there.
I won't tell you to throw your stuff in the
gar bitch, I'll tell you to throw it into recycling
bin that way. Don't want why there'll be no landfill,
you understand.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Very respectful?
Speaker 4 (26:14):
Who even separate out the green bottles from the Clini glass?
Speaker 10 (26:25):
Very good?
Speaker 2 (26:26):
John?
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Why would you even let me speak to your mother?
Speaker 2 (26:30):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (26:30):
I mean I thought maybe you could patch things up,
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
Over the next couple years, Eda continues to slowly search
out the right homes for her bottles, whereas in the past,
Edda was only able to give away a few. Gregor
estimates that she hands out about one hundred. During this time,
Milt is in and out of the hospital with cardiac
issues ranging from fainting spells and high blood pressure to
an actual heart attack. But then in the summer of
(27:04):
twenty twenty two, it's Edda who received some bad news.
Years after Gregor and I first spoke, Gregor phones to
tell me his mother has been diagnosed with brain cancer.
The doctor found nine metastases in her brain. They went
to three different hospitals in five days, and the consensus
was that it wasn't a matter of months, but of weeks.
(27:27):
In what felt like only days, Eda went from carrying
laundry up the stairs to needing to be carried up
the stairs herself. With Ata's illness, Gregor decides to move in.
The whole family does into the big packed house they
grew up in. A hospital bed is set up on
(27:48):
the main floor in Ata's old office, and Gregor wakes
up at sunrise and sits at at his bedside in silence.
He speaks with her, makes her comfortable. He tells her
it's okay to go, that everything is okay.
Speaker 4 (28:05):
And I stayed there for six weeks, eight weeks, and
sort of did the bedside vigil as she slowly died.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
In those final weeks, Gregor saw a change come over Edda.
Speaker 4 (28:22):
In the years running up to her death, she would
say things like, listen, there's a rolled up rug in
the attic that's worth a lot of money. Make sure
that they don't, you know, cheat you out.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
Of that one.
Speaker 4 (28:34):
That was always kind of a sort of joke, sort
of real thing. But when the actual room of death
and dying was happening, that stuff didn't really come up.
It felt more like she was at peace with a
lot of stuff, and a lot of the stuff. She
told me she would be laying there with her eyes
(28:54):
shut but smiling, and I'm like, you know, Mom, what
are you thinking about it? And she's just just with
her hand. She would indicate that she's like dancing by
just flowing her hand in the air. It felt like
a great death.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
The words on the bottles had finally sunk in. In the end,
Eda could dance out of the world gracefully, no grasping.
It's the living who are left to grasp.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
Since my mom died, it feels like it's harder to
throw things out than I thought.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
This is Gregor's sister Lexi. Again, like Eda, Lexi is
an artist, and like Gregor, she's surprised by how, after
all the years trying to get her mom to let
go of her stuff, she herself is finding it so
hard to let go of that very same stuff.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
It just feels really hard to like her art. It
feels it's like a part of her. Yeah, but it's
not her.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
I had an interesting conversation with my dad the other day,
who is of course, really you know, grief stricken, and he.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
Was saying why do people art?
Speaker 3 (30:10):
And he thinks the reason people make art is so
that they're not forgotten when they die, like you do
something that remains in the world.
Speaker 4 (30:21):
I think of her a lot.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Do you still carry with you your mother's love? Do
you feel it?
Speaker 4 (30:28):
I carry her with me. I mean in the way
that you know, when I experience something I can't help
but hear my mother's voice making fun of me for
my description of what I'm experiencing. I might be describing something,
(30:49):
telling her about just some Quotadian thing in the day.
You know, this is a nice sunset, but I've a
nicer if that truck weren't backing up, and I can
hear her being like, why are you so rotten? You
know what is wrong with you? I mean, that's that
type of thing.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
You can try to move your aging parents out of
their house. You can treat death like a to do
list with items to check off, but ultimately you can't
control how people live or die. Even after Eda's death,
Milt remained in that very same house. It's Dmitri and
his own family that move in so that Milt doesn't
have to be alone. And over the next few years, Gregor,
(31:40):
in fits and starts and with disregard for what anyone thinks,
continues to work on the museum. Only it's become less
about a full fledged museum open to the public and
more of just a place to honor his mom. And
then one day Gregor texts saying he found a sealed
box and the Victorian with my name on it written
(32:00):
in Eda's hand. When the box arrives, I unravel what
seems like yards and yards a bubble wrap. Edta had
taken great care. The bottle is a beautiful blue, the
blue of a childhood toy. It's crevaceous and feels good
in my hand upon it, Eta laid out her words
(32:20):
to me, I would.
Speaker 6 (32:22):
Love to live like a river flows carried by the
surprise of its own unfolding.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
See what I mean, I do? But how dare she?
I'm kidding? Cue the outro music, Cue the dime story
in sight. Whether it's to a museum in the wilds
of upstate New York or to a landfill, none of
us knows where we're flowing. In the face of that,
(32:49):
we need to learn how to let go. My feeling
about what comes after death is constantly changing. I don't
have a spiritual practice, so all I have is a feeling.
And my feeling today is that bodies are vessels, just
like colorful bottles are vessels, just like podcasts and houses
packed with stuff and all of art is. It's all
(33:12):
just stuff, and stuff can be beautiful, but it's there
to help us get closer to the non stuff, because,
like the words Da inscribed on one of her final bottles,
all important matters are invisible.
Speaker 11 (34:12):
Now that the furnitures returning to its goodwill home, now
that the last.
Speaker 6 (34:23):
Month's rent is scheming with.
Speaker 5 (34:25):
The damage to posle, take this moment to dissolve. If
we meant it if we see we felt around for
from things that accidentally.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
This episode of Heavyweight was produced by Phoebe Flanagan and
me Jonathan Goldstein. Our senior producer is Khalila Holt and
our supervising producer is Stevie Lane. Editorial guidance from Emily Condon.
Special thanks to Steve marsh Amy, Gaines McQuaid and Sarah Nix.
Our production council is Jake Flanagan. Emmamonger mixed the episode
with a music by Christine Fellows, John K. Sampson and
(35:12):
Bobby Lord. Additional scoring by Boxwood Orchestra and Blue Dot Sessions.
Our theme song is by The Weaker Thands courtesy of
Epitaph Records. Follow us on Instagram at Heavyweight Podcast or
email us at Heavyweight at Pushkin dot fm, and if
you'd like your very own Eta Berlick original her bottles
(35:32):
can be found on her Instagram at Eta Berlick. We'll
be back next week with a new episode. Can you
believe it? Back in the saddle hiding behind that mic
oh yeah, oh yeah. So I wanted to go through
(36:00):
the entire thing just to make sure the fact and
also make sure that your mother made. She put bird
poop with googly eyes.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
Is that correct. She's called you geez okay.
Speaker 4 (36:10):
How many times would you say you were rejected by
girls in the dozens?
Speaker 2 (36:14):
Is that correct?
Speaker 10 (36:17):
H
Pushkin. Hello, I'd like to welcome to the show, Jackie Cove. Jackie.
It's a new season. I'm with a new company, Pushkin Industries,
and I thought it might be nice for you to,
you know, tell everyone how much the show is meant
(00:37):
to you.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Do you?
Speaker 1 (00:39):
People look at my face right now we're on the telephone.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Could you imagine what kind of look I have on
my face?
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Right now?
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Ecstasy discussed Heavyweight is back, Mamala. They thought we were
down for the count. But what's this? Oh oh with
a right now left? Heavyweight's back, pushing it with Pushkin, Mamala,
Bushkin Industries. I got okay, you go with that.
Speaker 4 (01:01):
Bye bye.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
From Bushkin Industries. I'm Jonathan Goldstein and this is Heavyweight
today's episode. Eda, right after the.
Speaker 4 (01:23):
Break, all right, you're ready, you're rolling, You got levels, Mimei, mamomu.
Okay go.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
This is Gregor. You might know him from such previous
episodes as Gregor. Gregor is one of my oldest friends,
and today he's coming to me with a problem.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
I'll take it from the top, Okay. So I have
two parents, Milton and Eda.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Edda and Milton are both pushing ninety and Gregor's problem
is that they refuse to move out of their house.
It's the same three story Victorian Gregor grew up. He
was twelve when the family first moved in. He still
remembers the excitement as they unloaded boxes from the moving
truck or moving trucks.
Speaker 4 (02:21):
You know, normal people move with like a big giant
eighteen wheeler moving truck. I believe when we moved we
had six moving.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Trucks, one for the family's belongings, the other five for
the collections. Some people collect coins, some people collect comic books.
Gregor's mother, Etta, collects collections.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
She has like maybe two hundred egg beaters, antique egg beaters.
She has you know what a bisk nodter is.
Speaker 5 (02:50):
No.
Speaker 4 (02:52):
In occupied Japan, people bought these little figurines where the
head would wobble back.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
And forth like a bubble headed doll, something like that.
Speaker 4 (02:59):
Anyway, she probably has two thousand bisc mounters.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Then there are the nineteenth century weaving looms, the handmade baskets,
the medieval scythes. Eta airlic Is artist and her collections
are the source of her inspiration. Edis's beauty in everything
and in her hands, everything becomes art. She'll sculpt lint
from the dryer. She'll put googly eyes on a splatter
of dried bird poop.
Speaker 4 (03:23):
My mother has been unbelievably prolific in making art for
like the last thirty five years, to a degree where
now the living room is like full to the brim
with a million pieces of art, and every week she
probably makes five or ten more pieces of art.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
None of this would be a problem except that a large,
cluttered house is becoming increasingly dangerous for Gregor's elderly parents.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
I fear the more conventional fears. I fear my mother
falling down a flight of stairs, or my father. I mean,
there's all kinds of dark things that can happen in
a house full of staircases.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
And so Gregor wants to move his parents into a
smaller apartment, something more manageable. That's his plan.
Speaker 6 (04:03):
Yeah, that's his plan. But that's not my plan. This
is eda The practical thing is, we can't be in
the house too much longer. I'm eighty eight.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Yeah, but to move out.
Speaker 6 (04:17):
Of the house isn't simply a question of selling the furniture.
It's my god, what do we do with all this?
Speaker 1 (04:26):
All this all the collections is what's keeping Eta in
the house. And of all her many collections, of all
her milking stools and antique rolling pins, it's her collection
of fragile, colorful bottles that is perhaps the biggest impediment
to moving. By Gregor's estimate, Eta has thousands wine bottles,
perfume bottles, all decanters, bottles washed up from the bottom
(04:50):
of the ocean. As well as being an artist, Eta
is a Buddhist and her bottles are not just bottles
but a series of meditations. Because on each of the bottles,
in fancy fonds and careful calligraphy, Eta places a message
in the form of a zen like riddle.
Speaker 6 (05:09):
Noose to titropuce and madly dance upon it.
Speaker 4 (05:15):
Isn't it gorgeous?
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Very nice?
Speaker 6 (05:16):
But how's about this one? It's a black popple with
gold calligraphy, and it has the first letter shows a breath,
somebody blowing a breath. Do you see it?
Speaker 1 (05:27):
It really does look like a breath is blowing. That's
by design.
Speaker 6 (05:30):
There you go, there you go. You want me to
give that away for nothing?
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Other inscriptions are stop schlepping your old being into the future,
or we cling to illusions of control. After hearing a few,
I start to recognize a theme. All the bottles bear
messages imploring one to let go. Yet Eda is incapable
of letting go of the very bottles doing the imploring,
(05:59):
or much of anything else. There is a little bit
of a paradox, or there's something to kind of be
struggling with.
Speaker 6 (06:05):
Then you're very, very sharp. That is exactly see, exactly true.
These works would talk about being stuck with the grasping
level I suffer from that.
Speaker 7 (06:21):
I could leave tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
This is Gregor's dad, Milt. If the taxi pulled up
right now, you would you would jump in.
Speaker 7 (06:30):
I'm ready to go.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Yeah, I'll stop you there.
Speaker 8 (06:32):
He's never taken a tax in his life.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
But if I pulled up that.
Speaker 7 (06:37):
Uber duber so I don't get attached to furniture and
bottles and stuff, I'll.
Speaker 8 (06:44):
Just reinforce that point that while my father made positive
that he's a Taoist and not attached to anything, he
is very much complicit lmentlessly bringing home the raw material
to which my mother, you know, turns the art out.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
When was the last time you brought something home melt yesterday?
Speaker 7 (07:03):
I'm always interested in what she's doing, and I often
find the raw materials walking around in the woods or anywhere,
fine stuff. Her only requirement is if I find something,
it has to have what she calls a charm.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
As for Melt, what he's charmed by, exceedingly charmed by,
is that a Milt is a poet, and after over
sixty years of marriage, he still writes poems about her,
rhapsodizing about the way she creates art or cooks, or
the way she dances. Milt says he can watch Eda
dance all night. He just doesn't understand her being so
(07:38):
chained to her belongings.
Speaker 4 (07:41):
I'm stuck.
Speaker 6 (07:42):
But I am not coming up with the solution that's
any better, am I? Yeah, except dying, And that's not
a solution. No, it's not a solution for greg He's
left holding the whole.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Thing of Milton. At his three kids, Gregor is perhaps
the one most ready to serve the child his parents
handed to do list when he comes to visit.
Speaker 6 (08:08):
I mean, he talks me, and that's because he has
meanness in him. I'm not saying he doesn't, but he's
also a very kind, giving, generous, loving person.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Yes he is.
Speaker 6 (08:21):
Yeah, Yeah, don't tell him, I said, so.
Speaker 4 (08:31):
In action is a choice not doing anything. Something's bound
to happen sooner or later, and just sort of watch
the secondhand sweep around the clock face until somebody's dead
is the most passive and weakest possible way to exist.
And it just feels like, you know, the Damoclean Sword
of mortality is coming, and all we're going to do
(08:52):
is sit here and watch Rachel Maddow until it cuts
our head off.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
And so, because Eda can't let go, Gregor wants my
help in pulling off a most extravagant workaround, one that
will allow Eda to both keep her stuff and still
move out. It's a plan of action that Gregor wants
to present to her.
Speaker 4 (09:12):
What if you don't get rid of your possessions and
we make a museum of your stuff?
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Gregor explains to me the details. It seems that in
the nineteen sixties, Etta and Milt about a two hundred
year old farmhouse with no running water or indoor plumbing.
Gregor's plan is to convert the barn into the Eta
b airlike museum, convincing one's mother to downsize by way
of a feral farmhouse museum that by Gregor's own admission
(09:43):
is probably a breeding ground for the haunt of virus.
Has all the makings of a classic Kakammi scheme. But
this is just the beginning for his plan, and to
(10:09):
build a museum to work, Gregor will need his siblings
on board, so, as is emotional envoy, I begin by
phoning his sister Lexi. Lexi is the level headed one
of the three, and I want to get her read
on the plan. I mean, is it realistic that he'll
be able to turn the barn into a museum like that?
(10:35):
Perhaps this plan is a bit half baked, but I
figure I might have more luck getting Gregor's brother Dmitri
on board. Dmitri has never been afraid of a scheme
that runs a little pink on the inside. So I
give him a call. We haven't spoken since I moved
from New York, where Dmitri lives, to Minnesota.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
I hate to see a Minneapolis area code when you call.
It makes me sad.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Your business doesn't bring you to Minnesota.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
I'm guessing it does sometimes. I interviewed Prince for a
cover story. Ever earned one may be very trap both prints.
He's very touching.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Dmitri is a personal trainer who's kickboxed his way across Thailand.
He's also a journalist who interviews celebrities.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
So I went there, waited all day for the interview.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
And a musician who had a song go platinum six
times in Belgium.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
And he was like, hey, you want to jam and
I was like okay.
Speaker 9 (11:26):
So I wound up actually jamming with Larry Grant and
Prince for like twenty minutes.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
What that was one sence.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Before Dmitri you can launch into his next sentence, I
jump in. So your brother Gregor.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
I'm familiar with him.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
He has his plan, which maybe you're also familiar with.
When I'm finished rehashing Gregor's museum plan, Dmitri offers a
laundry list of issues.
Speaker 9 (11:55):
Sons of getting Lemez's walking out of your part of
the barn because it's high grassed, a lot of deer
getting poison ivy.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
So there's also like a horrible black mold. Because as
you know, the farmhouse burned down.
Speaker 9 (12:08):
My I'll buy it baker friend THEO stayed there and
lit a fire in the roof and the whole house
burned down in the.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
Wad and along with his friend Theo's trouble. There was
also his friend Sonem's trouble in that cursed place.
Speaker 9 (12:19):
My friend, who spent twenty five years as a Buddhist
monk under the dolly Lema, had to use a broom
to fight off a very large raccoon that was.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
In the house and was like growling at us and
like his harrifind.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
But for Dimitri, even more daunting than the rabid raccoons
is changing his mother's mind on the matter. Whenever he's
trying to clear space in his parents' home, it refills overnight,
suggesting Eda's problem can't be solved by physical means. Instead,
he thinks the problem has to be attacked at its
psychological root. She needs to learn how to let go,
(12:51):
and for this Dmitri has just the solution.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Well, maybe hypnosis.
Speaker 9 (13:00):
It stopped her from smoking, which is probably a more
powerful psychological and physical addiction than collecting things.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Eda was a packadet smoker, a habit she hung on
for nearly thirty years.
Speaker 9 (13:10):
Our friend, who was a hypnotist, said I can hypnotize you,
and she went into the session thinking this isn't gonna work.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
The whole time the hypnosis was going on. She was like,
this isn't working, This isn't working, and then she walked
out and never smoked again. He was an interesting person too.
His name is Saul Feldstein.
Speaker 9 (13:25):
He actually had one of his eyeballs was like hanging
out of his face, and like it was like a
sort of early commune hippie thing, and like.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Having grown up on TV sitcoms of the nineteen seventies,
I'm well aware of the power of hypnosis.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Hanging out of his face.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Hypnosis gave Fred Flintstone the self control to stop beating
Brontosaurus Berger Communie. It gave the Fonds the confidence that
jumped Snake Canyon on his motorcycle his eyeballs. As a boy,
I always wondered what it would feel like to have
my full potential unlocked through the hypnotic arts.
Speaker 9 (13:58):
Hanging out of his face, And he was very successful
as a hypnotist.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Wow. Unlike building a museum, hypnosis requires neither time effort.
Are those awful stanchions that snap back with that loud
thwacking sound that make everyone turn around and stare at you.
Fully convinced that Saul Feldstein is the solution to all
of our problems and that museums belong in a museum.
(14:24):
Dimitri and I say our goodbyes.
Speaker 4 (14:33):
We're slating in. On part two, Johnny discusses post talking
to Dmitri. Here we go.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
I need to tell Gregor that I like Dmitri's idea
much better than his. But I need to tread lightly
from Cain and Abel to Stephen and Alec Baldwin. I
know how competitive brothers can be, and unlike the Lord
or Alexander Ray Baldwin Senior, I don't want to be
seen playing favorites. Do you think you're like hypnotism has
(15:02):
a role in this, Well, I hear.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
That, like your voice went up in octave when we
started talking about hypnotism and you got excited about hypnotism.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Well, Dimitri seemed to think that it would that it
could help.
Speaker 4 (15:13):
Okay, so the two of you should go see a
movie together.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
Going to movies is Gregor and my thing. Clearly I'm
arousing some jealousy. I need to keep my arguments away
from Dimitri and grounded in the merits of hypnotism. This
whole barn thing as the symptom but through hypnosis.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
Why are you saying it with like the weird accent
on the word hypnosis.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
I mean, do you think that hypnotism has something to
offer here?
Speaker 4 (15:41):
My short answer would be absolutely not. I think it's
a waste of time. Hypnosis, hypnosis, hypnosis.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Hi, Johnny, how are you.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Hey, Dimitri?
Speaker 6 (15:55):
Hi?
Speaker 1 (15:56):
I've got your brother Gregor on the line with me.
Speaker 4 (15:59):
We've met, Hi.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
How are you?
Speaker 1 (16:01):
Can you make the case to your brother?
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Sure?
Speaker 9 (16:04):
I just think that you know there's no harm, there's
certainly no nothing to lose. It takes fifteen or twenty minutes,
and she's proven that she's very susceptible to hypnotic suggestions,
so why not try it?
Speaker 4 (16:14):
I agree with all those points. My main feeling is
that getting someone to stop a behavior like smoking is
much much easier than getting someone to change their personality,
which is harder to hypnotize someone out.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Of That may be true, I wouldn't disgrew there, swept
up in a wave of brotherly bonamy. I decide it's
a safe space to cautiously share my one secret boyhood longing,
and along the way I could get hypnotized that as
something too. Yeah, A lot of stuff, yeah, and immediately
regret it. What do you mean a lot of stuff?
Speaker 2 (16:46):
I mean, that's a smug smile. They could work on.
Speaker 4 (16:48):
We could give you a whole brand new thing where
you're like super charming all the.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Time, being more able to look people in the eye.
Speaker 4 (16:53):
Not always hide behind a microphone.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
Actually, you know there is all joking aside.
Speaker 9 (16:57):
There is a new hypnosis that works on what's called
voluntary baldness syndrome, where they realize that a lot of
men are sort of doing it on purpose.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Why would someone do that on purpose?
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Which is it?
Speaker 9 (17:08):
It turns out that that hair loss is more of
like an act of willful insolence often and a cry
for peace.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
I used to love my hair.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Well, if you loved it so much, why did you
get rid of it?
Speaker 1 (17:18):
First of all, I find the defensive and Gregor chime
in here because I'm sure you're equally offended.
Speaker 4 (17:24):
Now, Dimitri used to be bald as an egg and
then he willed it back.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
I think you you did at the same time with
my mother.
Speaker 9 (17:30):
We can get a two for one deal package deal.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
I'm just saying it's science. If you read the New
England Journal inmentivis.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
With Gregor and Dimitri aligned in friends again. At my expense,
I set out in search of the one eyed hippie hypnotist,
Saul Feldstein. But it turns out Saul died in twenty
nineteen at the age of ninety two. So I reach
out to other hypnotists, all of whom pretty much hang
up on me once I explain the project. So hypnotism
(18:00):
is out, the museum is out. I'm stuck with my
crap personality, and Edta is stuck with her house full
of crab and Gregor is still at an impasse. But
things are about to change coming up after the break
Ata's big night. You know what that guy says to me.
Speaker 6 (18:20):
Just now, This guy told me that I was beautiful.
Speaker 10 (18:24):
You are what's going on yet?
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Gregor tells me that Edda has been offered a show
at the Carter Burden Gallery in Manhattan. Edda is an
outsider artist, so the offer of her own solo exhibition
feels like finally, at the age of eighty eight, she's
being invited inside. The show with its formal invitations and
co check, feels like validation. It's the kind of opportunity
(19:01):
Edda has always hoped for, and for Gregor, it feels
like an opportunity for her pieces to find good homes
outside her home. The show opens on March twenty first,
twenty nineteen. Gregor and I make a plan to speak
the morning after so we can tell me how it went.
When we speak, what Gregor tells me is that things
(19:22):
that night took a wild turn. Do you want to explain?
Speaker 5 (19:27):
Sure.
Speaker 4 (19:28):
I flew into town from my mom's art opening. Okay,
we're here at the art opening. It's a pretty good drought.
Everyone's eating wine and cheese.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
And but it's so loud.
Speaker 4 (19:40):
It was almost like a cartoon version of my mom's
success story. And that like some stranger guy came up,
was like, you're a beautiful woman, utiful. Her ego was
buffed from many sides. Everything going great.
Speaker 10 (19:57):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Gregor's dad, Milt, on the other hand, wasn't having as
good a time. He spent most of the evening in
the corner nibbling on crackers. At the end the night,
Gregor approached him.
Speaker 4 (20:11):
Oh, father, let'd you make it up?
Speaker 7 (20:13):
Oh it's very nice.
Speaker 4 (20:16):
A little bit exhausting, he seemed like, even though he
sometimes talks in a quiet voice, he was especially quiet,
like I could hardly hear him.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
On the drive home, Milt conked out When the family
couldn't rouse him, they realized he wasn't just sleeping, but
completely unconscious. Eda began yelling, wailing Milt's name. He was
driven to the hospital, where the EMTs lifted him onto
a gurney. The doctors thought he might be having a stroke,
but they couldn't say for sure. In the waiting room,
(20:49):
Eda turned to Gregor and said, you might as well
order the dumpsters right now, meaning you win empty out
the house because of Milt isn't coming back to it,
That's it. How do you know when the Democlean sword
of mortality isn't just dangling above you but actually falling?
(21:11):
How do you know when it's time to pick up
the remote, turn off Rachel Maddow and finally act the
night a milestone in Edda's career was meant to symbolize
the turning point, and it was just not the kind
she was hoping for. Milton was eventually sent home from
the hospital, but its clap signaled a change for Gregor too.
(21:33):
For so long he'd been saying, maybe it's time, but
maybe it was time to stop saying maybe Hello, he Hi,
it's Gregor and Jonathan.
Speaker 6 (21:50):
Oh, and I thought this was a scam call.
Speaker 9 (21:53):
How do you like that?
Speaker 10 (21:53):
How are you well?
Speaker 4 (21:55):
I wouldn't be so sure. It's not.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
We haven't finished the call yet, right, So what's the bitch?
Speaker 4 (22:00):
Johnny wanted to dredge up a bunch of painful family issues.
Speaker 6 (22:04):
Oh sure, why not? The painfuler the better.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
I want to talk with about the night of the
art opening and the way it affected our thinking about
remaining in the house.
Speaker 6 (22:14):
I won't be able to stay here alone. Either I
will become ill or Milt will become ill, and I
need somebody to help me. There is a new little
piece in my head that says things are going.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
To change in the aftermath of the art show opening.
As that is new reality sunk in, another plan began
to take shape, one that Eda came up with. Her
idea is to pair each of her message on the
bottles with the right person. In this way, each one
will find the right home.
Speaker 6 (22:47):
I now have a whole shelf full of stuff that
I'm now earmarking to give away.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
That's something that you've not normally done.
Speaker 6 (22:55):
No, I only gave very few things away, you know,
to my best friend or to the kids, or something
like that. Very few, very very few.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Do you think it at the beginning of something more
of this to come?
Speaker 6 (23:12):
Yeah, yeah, it has to be. It has to be.
I take it very seriously. When I think of giving
a person a bottle, I have to think would it
be good for that person?
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Okay? Oh really? All right?
Speaker 1 (23:28):
A few weeks later, I called Gregor to see how
Eda's bottle drive is coming along.
Speaker 4 (23:32):
So she called me this morning saying, I thought of
the perfect person to give the perfect bottle to, but
I'm afraid it's going to hurt his feelings. Okay, she
wants to give you a bottle.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
She wants to give Okay, well that wow, that's really nice.
Why would that hurt my feelings?
Speaker 4 (23:52):
You know, if you give someone a bottle that says
like I wish like I was present, then it's sort
of an implication that you're not present, you know what
I mean? It could be interpreted sometimes as like a
sort of a criticism. So I don't know how you'll
take it.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
What did she tell you? What my bottle says?
Speaker 4 (24:10):
That's as much as I can say at this point.
It's as much as I'm authorized to say.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
Even though I should know better know how Gregor will
dangle this knowledge over my head like a cat dancer.
My curiosity gets the better of me, and so I
keep asking Gregor what the bottle says, which he uses
as an opportunity to dissect my personality. All I can say,
he says, is that it addresses some of your deep
(24:40):
seated issues.
Speaker 4 (24:42):
Despite all your insights about other people, you sort of
tend to remove yourself from the collective and put yourself
in the position of like journalistic observer.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
Uh huh.
Speaker 4 (24:51):
When you have these insights, you know, your dime store insights,
you bolt on at the end of things where you're like,
maybe we all need someone to run to that hallmarking
nonsense that you did this about at the end of
the day.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Jerk, you feel comfortable to saying something like that to
someone telling me about my diet.
Speaker 4 (25:07):
I knew you were going to take it the wrong way.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
What's the that's the right way to take that?
Speaker 4 (25:11):
I think sometimes you sort of make yourself resistant, like, oh,
I don't matter, I'm just the fly on the wall
to watching the human condition. As you know, people live
and die and suffer, and babies are born and old
people lower it into the ground. Oh when the dirt
hits the coffin. That reminds me of my sponsor. I
think you just you use the thing to remove yourself
(25:33):
from what's actually going on. Okay, all right, you're like,
you know what really make this thing sing? Now, let
me just get a shot of you throwing your art
off the bridge. That's what we need to finish this.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Maybe Gregor thinks I'm being too prying with his mom
and this is just an expression of his protectiveness, so
I apologize to him and tell him I'll try to
be more respectful. It turns out that Gregor has little
respect for my respect.
Speaker 4 (26:01):
Yeah, hey, lady, I can be more respectful out there.
I won't tell you to throw your stuff in the
gar bitch, I'll tell you to throw it into recycling
bin that way. Don't want why there'll be no landfill,
you understand.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Very respectful?
Speaker 4 (26:14):
Who even separate out the green bottles from the Clini glass?
Speaker 10 (26:25):
Very good?
Speaker 2 (26:26):
John?
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Why would you even let me speak to your mother?
Speaker 2 (26:30):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (26:30):
I mean I thought maybe you could patch things up,
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
Over the next couple years, Eda continues to slowly search
out the right homes for her bottles, whereas in the past,
Edda was only able to give away a few. Gregor
estimates that she hands out about one hundred. During this time,
Milt is in and out of the hospital with cardiac
issues ranging from fainting spells and high blood pressure to
an actual heart attack. But then in the summer of
(27:04):
twenty twenty two, it's Edda who received some bad news.
Years after Gregor and I first spoke, Gregor phones to
tell me his mother has been diagnosed with brain cancer.
The doctor found nine metastases in her brain. They went
to three different hospitals in five days, and the consensus
was that it wasn't a matter of months, but of weeks.
(27:27):
In what felt like only days, Eda went from carrying
laundry up the stairs to needing to be carried up
the stairs herself. With Ata's illness, Gregor decides to move in.
The whole family does into the big packed house they
grew up in. A hospital bed is set up on
(27:48):
the main floor in Ata's old office, and Gregor wakes
up at sunrise and sits at at his bedside in silence.
He speaks with her, makes her comfortable. He tells her
it's okay to go, that everything is okay.
Speaker 4 (28:05):
And I stayed there for six weeks, eight weeks, and
sort of did the bedside vigil as she slowly died.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
In those final weeks, Gregor saw a change come over Edda.
Speaker 4 (28:22):
In the years running up to her death, she would
say things like, listen, there's a rolled up rug in
the attic that's worth a lot of money. Make sure
that they don't, you know, cheat you out.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
Of that one.
Speaker 4 (28:34):
That was always kind of a sort of joke, sort
of real thing. But when the actual room of death
and dying was happening, that stuff didn't really come up.
It felt more like she was at peace with a
lot of stuff, and a lot of the stuff. She
told me she would be laying there with her eyes
(28:54):
shut but smiling, and I'm like, you know, Mom, what
are you thinking about it? And she's just just with
her hand. She would indicate that she's like dancing by
just flowing her hand in the air. It felt like
a great death.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
The words on the bottles had finally sunk in. In the end,
Eda could dance out of the world gracefully, no grasping.
It's the living who are left to grasp.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
Since my mom died, it feels like it's harder to
throw things out than I thought.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
This is Gregor's sister Lexi. Again, like Eda, Lexi is
an artist, and like Gregor, she's surprised by how, after
all the years trying to get her mom to let
go of her stuff, she herself is finding it so
hard to let go of that very same stuff.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
It just feels really hard to like her art. It
feels it's like a part of her. Yeah, but it's
not her.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
I had an interesting conversation with my dad the other day,
who is of course, really you know, grief stricken, and he.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
Was saying why do people art?
Speaker 3 (30:10):
And he thinks the reason people make art is so
that they're not forgotten when they die, like you do
something that remains in the world.
Speaker 4 (30:21):
I think of her a lot.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Do you still carry with you your mother's love? Do
you feel it?
Speaker 4 (30:28):
I carry her with me. I mean in the way
that you know, when I experience something I can't help
but hear my mother's voice making fun of me for
my description of what I'm experiencing. I might be describing something,
(30:49):
telling her about just some Quotadian thing in the day.
You know, this is a nice sunset, but I've a
nicer if that truck weren't backing up, and I can
hear her being like, why are you so rotten? You
know what is wrong with you? I mean, that's that
type of thing.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
You can try to move your aging parents out of
their house. You can treat death like a to do
list with items to check off, but ultimately you can't
control how people live or die. Even after Eda's death,
Milt remained in that very same house. It's Dmitri and
his own family that move in so that Milt doesn't
have to be alone. And over the next few years, Gregor,
(31:40):
in fits and starts and with disregard for what anyone thinks,
continues to work on the museum. Only it's become less
about a full fledged museum open to the public and
more of just a place to honor his mom. And
then one day Gregor texts saying he found a sealed
box and the Victorian with my name on it written
(32:00):
in Eda's hand. When the box arrives, I unravel what
seems like yards and yards a bubble wrap. Edta had
taken great care. The bottle is a beautiful blue, the
blue of a childhood toy. It's crevaceous and feels good
in my hand upon it, Eta laid out her words
(32:20):
to me, I would.
Speaker 6 (32:22):
Love to live like a river flows carried by the
surprise of its own unfolding.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
See what I mean, I do? But how dare she?
I'm kidding? Cue the outro music, Cue the dime story
in sight. Whether it's to a museum in the wilds
of upstate New York or to a landfill, none of
us knows where we're flowing. In the face of that,
(32:49):
we need to learn how to let go. My feeling
about what comes after death is constantly changing. I don't
have a spiritual practice, so all I have is a feeling.
And my feeling today is that bodies are vessels, just
like colorful bottles are vessels, just like podcasts and houses
packed with stuff and all of art is. It's all
(33:12):
just stuff, and stuff can be beautiful, but it's there
to help us get closer to the non stuff, because,
like the words Da inscribed on one of her final bottles,
all important matters are invisible.
Speaker 11 (34:12):
Now that the furnitures returning to its goodwill home, now
that the last.
Speaker 6 (34:23):
Month's rent is scheming with.
Speaker 5 (34:25):
The damage to posle, take this moment to dissolve. If
we meant it if we see we felt around for
from things that accidentally.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
This episode of Heavyweight was produced by Phoebe Flanagan and
me Jonathan Goldstein. Our senior producer is Khalila Holt and
our supervising producer is Stevie Lane. Editorial guidance from Emily Condon.
Special thanks to Steve marsh Amy, Gaines McQuaid and Sarah Nix.
Our production council is Jake Flanagan. Emmamonger mixed the episode
with a music by Christine Fellows, John K. Sampson and
(35:12):
Bobby Lord. Additional scoring by Boxwood Orchestra and Blue Dot Sessions.
Our theme song is by The Weaker Thands courtesy of
Epitaph Records. Follow us on Instagram at Heavyweight Podcast or
email us at Heavyweight at Pushkin dot fm, and if
you'd like your very own Eta Berlick original her bottles
(35:32):
can be found on her Instagram at Eta Berlick. We'll
be back next week with a new episode. Can you
believe it? Back in the saddle hiding behind that mic
oh yeah, oh yeah. So I wanted to go through
(36:00):
the entire thing just to make sure the fact and
also make sure that your mother made. She put bird
poop with googly eyes.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
Is that correct. She's called you geez okay.
Speaker 4 (36:10):
How many times would you say you were rejected by
girls in the dozens?
Speaker 2 (36:14):
Is that correct?
Speaker 10 (36:17):
H
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