The dog has the smell of bread, and though she’s moving now her fragrance trails. I turn on a lamp thinking there might be a cartoon version of her scent, “stink lines” in the air but only dust motes appear, full of motile contradictions. I see sparkles but not faces. I wonder if dogs see motes. We, dog and man, decide to go out. She’s at the door. I take her hint. In snow I see nothing. Light falls into the gray sea. My dog, my loaf of ancient bread, walks me among the trees.
Note: After I posted my dismay about Lera Auerbach’s operatic revival of Maeterlinck’s 1890 play “The Blind” on Facebook, her publisher Sikorski removed the following description from its website:
“At a lonely clearing in a wood, a group of blind people await the return of a priest who led them there in order to enable them to enjoy the last rays of the sun before the beginning of winter. Only the sound of the nearby sea can be heard. The longer they wait, the more restless the blind people become; in their desperation they realise that they are helpless and cannot move from their place. Their fear escalates to naked terror when they discover the corpse of the priest. The blind people form a circle round the dead man and begin to pray for forgiveness and salvation. Steps become perceptible during the prayer. The presence of something mysterious makes the blind people panic; they pray ever more fervently. In his mother’s arms, the small child, the only person in the group who can see, breaks out sobbing. What does the child see? Is it rescue, the rescue so ardently hoped for, or is it death?”
**
Here is Maeterlinck’s mise en scene, and the play’s opening dialogue:
A very ancient northern forest eternal of aspect, beneath a sky profoundly starred. In the midst, and towards the depths of night, a very old priest is seated wrapped in a wide black cloak. His head and the upper part of his body, slightly thrown back and mortally still, are leaning against the bole of an oak tree, huge and cavernous. His face is fearfully pale and of an inalterable waxen lividity ; his violet lips are parted. His eyes, dumb and fixed, no longer gaze at the visible side of eternity, and seem bleeding beneath a multitude of immemorial sorrows and of tears. His hair, of a most solemn white, falls in stiff and scanty locks upon a face more illumined and more weary than all else that surrounds it in the intent silence of the gloomy forest. His hands, extremely lean, are rigidly clasped on his lap. To the right, six old blind men are seated upon stones, the stumps of trees, and dead leaves. To the left, separated from them by an uprooted tree and fragments of rock, six women, blind also, are seated facing the old men. Three of them are praying and wailing in hollow voice and without pause. Another is extremely old. The fifth, in an attitude of mute insanity^ holds on her knees a little child asleep. The sixth is strangely young, and her hair inundates her whole being. The women, as well as the old men, are clothed in ample garments, sombre and uniform. Most of them sit waiting with their elbows on their knees and their faces between their hands; and all seem to have lost the habit of useless gesture, and no longer turn their heads at the stifled and restless noises of the island. Great funereal trees, yews, weeping willows, cypresses, enwrap them in their faithful shadows. Not far from the priest, a cluster of long and sickly daffodils blossoms in the night. It is extraordinarily dark in spite of the moonlight that here and there strives to dispel for a while the gloom of the foliage.
FIRST BLIND MAN.
Is he not coming yet?
SECOND BLIND MAN.
You have waked me!
FIRST BLIND MAN.
I was asleep too.
THIRD BLIND MAN.
I was asleep too.
FIRST BLIND MAN.
Is he not coming yet?
SECOND BLIND MAN.
I hear nothing coming.
THIRD BLIND MAN.
It must be about time to go back to the
asylum.
FIRST BLIND MAN.
We want to know where we arc!
SECOND BLIND MAN.
It has grown cold since he left
FIRST BLIND MAN.
We want to know where we are!
THE OLDEST BLIND MAN.
Does any one know where we are?
**
I was alerted to the upcoming performance of Auerbach’s opera by someone wishing to enlist me as a post-production panelist. I won’t name names, nor do I want to spoil the tenor of an idea–given the offensive and ableist representation of blindness at the center of Maeterlinck’s play, and with no evidence of irony from Auerbach herself, a panel of disability studies scholars to follow the July performance at Lincoln Center may be a good idea. I use conditional language because I’ve been trying (without success) to find a sufficiently tasteless analogy for this revival. A colleague who is a disability studies scholar likens it to staging “Triumph of the Will” or “Birth of a Nation” but I don’t think these will “do” for we fought wars against the “isms” in those examples and last I looked we haven’t broadly resisted pejorative and disenfranchising metaphors of disability in the arts or our politics.
No, my analogy for Auerbach’s re-dedication of Maeterlinck is Amos ‘n Andy the American radio show from the Great Depression (later a series of movies and a TV sitcom) where two white men in black face (Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll) pretended to be aimless and shambling “negroes”.
Lest you think I’m being too hard on Auerbach, here is what she says about the enterprise:
“I love Maeterlinck. When I read ‘The Blind’ I thought to myself – this story is a perfect opera. Or anti-opera. And it needs to be done a-cappella. Since some of the characters are continuously praying or chanting – this provides a perfect structure for a chamber-music approach to balancing of the voices where some of the voices provide a constant harmonic base, while the others play more prominent voices.”
**
Once oppression is reduced to aesthetics you can say whatever you like. Amos ‘n Andy can be reconstituted as an ironic paean to oppression–two white men who had to make their terrible living by lampooning black men in the age of lynchings, You see, its man’s inhumanity to man!
Blindness lends itself to paltry and derisory metaphors–psychic imminence, vaticism, despair, death, compensatory talent, and of course utter hopelessness. These things have no genuine connection with blindness save that figurative influence holds a strong place in the public imagination. One wonders if Ms. Auerbach knows that 70 % of the blind remain unemployed in the United States despite having degrees from Princeton and Swarthmore. One wonders if Ms. Auerbach will stage this production with blind opera singers–though I already know the answer to that.
I was asked to say nothing about the upcoming performance or the effort to create a post-performance panel, as apparently Lincoln Center hasn’t decided whether this disability studies panel is a good idea. But they’ve apparently decided it will be lovely to have the audience experience blindness by means of artificial darkness and there will be atomizers with evocative scents and controlled temperature shifts for the credulous. I’m thinking odor of wormwood and gall might be nice. A few stinks from the illud tempus of superstitious ideas.
Back to Amos ‘n Andy. Would someone from Lincoln Center call up Al Sharpton and tell him “we’re staging an operatic revival of an old classic–it’s probably a good idea to have a panel, and we’d like you to be on it, but don’t say anything for the time being.
I’m an American poet, memoirist, translator, essayist, professor, public policy advisor, and disability rights activist. As a result I’m suspicious of aesthetes. I’m also chary of neo-liberalism and hipsterism. Don’t tell me to shut up. Here’s what I wrote on Facebook:
The description of the opera on Lera Auerbach’s website left me speechless, inasmuch as it employs nearly every conceivable “ableist” cliche about blindness one can employ–blindness is embedded in her précis with more cliches than any one person may creditably imagine. In fact the synopsis is so offensive I’m left with a dislocated mandible which I hope is a temporary condition as I’m at the MacDowell Colony for the Arts and there are no local dentists. How could Ms. Auerbach imagine that in 2013 blindness can still be used as a metaphor for lack of knowing or knowledgeability; powerlessness, spiritual failure, immobility, or worse, stand as a metonymic reduction for death itself?
It’s interesting to me that of the several disability studies scholars I’ve written to about this, only two have answered–one to say he likes Maeterlinck and while the premise is offensive, a nice panel should do just the trick. Another wrote to congratulate me for standing up for blind people. Most have avoided saying anything–I suspect they want to be on the panel. I know how politics works.
Now Sikorski has taken down the description. Good for them. But the conceit of the production lives on: blind people, aleotoric, driven by cosmological forces beyond our ken, people asleep or in terror. It’s really hard to believe. But then again it’s easy to believe. They don’t teach disability studies at Juilliard.
I know what’s coming: I’m going to be accused of extremism by disability studies scholars who want to be empaneled. But I talk daily to real blind people and they’re suffering, not because they lack education or technology or ambition but because he public still lives in Maeterlinck-land.
The blind are less powerful than the organized deaf, less apparent than wheelchair racers, and since blindness is a low incidence disability its easy to talk about us without hearing an informed response.
Meanwhile I’m going to write an opera in which the blind, like dragonfly larva, crawl over a murky lakebottom singing in indeterminate tones the Mosaic Standard from Ur.
See “Bad Cripple” for a related piece.
Technorati Tags: Bad Cripple, Lera Auerbach, Maeterlinck, Lincoln Center, American Opera Project, Disability Studies, Blindness as metaphor, Amos ‘n Andy, Contemporary art and disability
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Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering (S&E) provides a broad base of quantitative information about the participation of these groups in S&E education and employment. A Digest highlights key issues and trends through graphics and text, and detailed statistical tables provide data on higher education enrollments, degrees, institutions, and financial support and on employment status, occupations, sectors, and salaries. Links to other NSF and non-NSF sources of data are provided. |
(BBC News)
March 1, 2013
LOUGHBOROUGH, ENGLAND– [Excerpt provided by Inclusion Daily Express] Whether you like it or not, there’s a good chance you are going to have to work longer than your parents.
Many countries are heading for what is commonly known as the Demographic Timebomb. This means an increasing proportion of their populations falling into older age-brackets.
A combination of longer life and lower birth rates mean an early retirement – or even a normal retirement – may just not be on the cards. Even if your sector or nation is lucky enough to be awash with workers, falling pension returns mean you will probably want to stay on anyway.
Of course, there is already technology available that will solve many of the problems associated with older workforces. These are often designed with disability in mind, rather than age.
“Scan and read applications are becoming increasingly popular,” says Glenn Tookey, chief executive of Sight and Sound Technology. “This technology makes printed or electronic text accessible by speaking text aloud.”
“In addition, the software gives users the ability to write and edit documents as well as including features for note taking, summarising content, and outlining text,” he adds.
But there’s plenty more on the way.
Entire article:
How Old Age Technology could help stop a demographic time bomb
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21535772
(BBC News)
March 1, 2013
CORNWALL, ENGLAND– [Excerpt provided by Inclusion Daily Express] A councillor who said disabled children should be “put down” has resigned.
Collin Brewer, a Cornwall councillor, made the comment to a charity worker in 2011, saying disabled children cost the authority too much money.
He made the comments to a Disability Cornwall member at a stall at County Hall in Truro.
Mr. Brewer said it was unlikely he would be a candidate in the May elections. “I was wrong, I admit it. I will continue to apologise,” he said.
Steve Paget, the chairman of Disability Cornwall, said: “Finally he’s seen sense and resigned. This situation should never have got to this stage.”
Entire article:
‘Put disabled down’ councillor Collin Brewer resigns
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-21612089
(Star-Ledger)
March 1, 2013
NEWARK, NEW JERSEY– [Excerpt provided by Inclusion Daily Express] How would you feel if an internet search about your neurological condition produced a suggestion you be exterminated?
Autism activists have succeeded in getting Google to change the results of its automated search process so that offensive “hate speech” doesn’t routinely show up as a suggested match.
Until today, typing “Autistic people should . . . ” into Google’s search engine would produce four so-called “auto-complete” suggestions: that they “be killed,” “die,” or “be exterminated.”
In response, an autism activist group staged an online protest called a Flash Blog, which encouraged people with autism to counteract those violent suggestions with poetry and positive awareness of the developmental condition.
Another Flash Blog was scheduled for this Saturday, but Google today announced it would be cleaning up the automatic search results to eliminate results the company considers “hate speech,” said Jason Freidenfelds, a company spokesperson.
Entire article:
Google eliminates ‘die’ search suggestion for autism
http://tinyurl.com/ide0301131
Related:
You blogged in Autistic People Should? You deserve credit. (Autistic People Should . . . )
http://autisticpeopleshould.blogspot.com/
You can sing a long time when alone. I sang once to the plum colored sky at a window in Helsinki. I was singing to the future, that army of empty high rises. Really, you can sing to anything. Today I will sing to a stand of bicycles. I’m going to sing a song called, “After the Attack” because there are children in _________.
–For Ken and Kit
When I was very small I thought there was a man inside the window. He was frosted like the glass and more than once I knew he was the one doing the talking. I think he’s asleep now in the apportioned mansion of collective childhood. Meantime I try to think what I knew back then, not as a Romantic, but because a blind child hears in the humming of houses an “echo game” –a left-brain/right brain link between facts and bigger abstractions.
Example: today snow fell from the roof and I thought, “international date line”–somewhere a ship was crossing to yesterday. Bang. A timpani. A thing pops up. All poets do it. But kids with disabilities, they do it even more. Bang. A dragon glitters in a hedgerow. Bang.There’s your father’s whisky in a glass, the sun shining through. Bang. There’s your blue-scarf whisper of quiet amusement because they left you alone. I didn’t want to be forgiven. I didn’t care much for games. Bang. There was a fiddle. It must have belonged to my grandfather. He didn’t like music, but he left it for me. Bang. Whenever I was in danger I saw that old violin.
Here comes a dog who knows something big. She’s a “distraction dog” and today is “distraction day” at Guiding Eyes. At Guiding Eyes everyone has a job, dogs and humans, even this hyperactive Jack Russell Terrier with big eyes. Her name is “Daisy”. Her assigned duty is to leap, twirl, stand, lick, bark, and of course, act larger than she really is.
She’s joined by several canine comic actors. “Moose” a chocolate Lab, who looks hungover, like he had a few too many Brandy Alexanders last night at the Kennel Club; “Maxine” a Rottweiler, graceful and wide awake; “Leah” a Golden Retriever who started as a guide dog but was released because of noise distraction–to spare her feelings they call her a “career change dog” and her new role requires her merely to look good, something all Goldens can do. There’s “Simon” another career changer with the tallest ears of any German Shepherd you’ll ever see. And there’s a Lhasa named “Bingo” who spins around and around, waiting for the big show.
Everyone, dogs and dog trainers, has a position–this is like gym class in school–in a moment the action will begin but now positions are being parceled out and a few basic rules are revisited. There’s a line of folding chairs in the middle of a great room and portable fencing affixed alongside, effectively dividing the space into two zones. The distraction dogs are on the east side, running up and down the fence, happy at their unbelievable luck. Their job is to make noise, leap and romp, but above all, to try with every canine guile to trick working guide dogs into losing their focus. What a great job!
In the wild dogs play when the world allows it–when the pack has been fed and the fields are safe. So this isn’t just an exercise, not to the distraction dogs, this is a signature moment of collective goodness. The game means its a good life.
Now come the guide dogs wearing their brand new leather harnesses. Each works beside her trainer, alert, wiggling just a little, because pandemonium is just two feet away on the far side of a temporary fence. Guide dog one is leading her trainer, head up, tail wagging. Daisy the Jack Russell is hopping up and down like her paws are on fire and she’s yipping at the top of her voice, the Jack Russell way of saying “No one gets out of here alive!”
And because Daisy is on fire, the others perk up. Moose shakes off his hangover and barks as if a miracle is occurring. It’s the surprised bark of a Lab, a little bemused. And he follows Daisy up and down the fence. If he was a man he’d be clapping his hands. And Leah the Golden gets the scoots–she runs up and down without paying any apparent attention to the guide dog–she’s going as fast as she can straight toward a far wall. Then, like an outfielder, she hits the breaks, spins, and runs as fast as she can in the opposite direction. Sheer joy has overtaken her. Then in the middle of the room she just throws herself into spinning. She’s officially become a dervish. Simon the shepherd looks concerned as if this might be catching and then he starts barking as if issuing orders.
And our guide dog is walking her side of the fence like a true stoic, never breaking stride, even when Bingo the Lhasa goes stumbling into a chair, knocks it, then backs up and issues a stream of ancient invective–a shouting, tiny, hairy little savant with beady eyes and a lot to say.
More dogs are introduced to the distraction side: beagles, a poodle, a few undefinable ones, and the pandemonium is fair wondrous. Noses are sharp, eyes are sharp, barks and yelps and open field running and across the fence the guide dogs and handlers walk the gauntlet like officers of the deck, so poised and focused its unlike any dog-work you’ve ever seen. Distraction day, the pure Apollonian-Dionysian game that shows all the glories of dogs at work and play.
The blue house stood at the end of a dirt road. It was the home of eight dogs, a kind of Pippi Longstocking affair, no humans, just dogs. No one knew how they came to live there or what happened to the original owners. And no one knew why the town didn’t come and tear the house down, except the town had two policemen and a creaking fire truck and the dog house caused no problems–it was far away and anonymous both as structure and habitat. If the dogs came and went it was their own business. People understood the dogs had business. This was in the last days before television. People understood many things about their ambient atmosphere. The blue house was just the leftover of a local oddity. And the dogs went in and out of the windows and were untroubled.
Planet of the Blind 