Disability has changed how I relate to the world and the people around me; it has even changed the possibility of whether or not we can connect. (Do you turn away or towards the disabled woman on the dance floor?)
It has effectively destroyed the old ways we related in family life, cutting through older understandings of each other. We have not recovered. We might be beginning to look for new ways, but mostly we have not returned to the old. Disability has made the rifts and tensions that were in my family into positive canyons studded with landmines. Ain't no one ever going there or coming back.
Perhaps these splits would have happened regardless of disability; there might have been some other trigger that would have revealed the weaknesses in the ways we relate, but as it was, it was disability.
I don't really want to run into the long story. Don't you ever feel that you cannot, simply cannot, tell that story again; the very negativity of it is a horror by itself. (Stops evil self from regurgitating with glee some of the awful quotes from hours of screaming family rows; blogger self envisions a post that is just a series of quotes, one after the other, all taken out of context, with every word twisted, of course. Uh oh. Blogger self actually did that -- petty revenge or expiation of pain?).
What disability has taught me is the power of movement. And movement is relationship. As a performer, you can't just push onto the stage, do your thing, and roll off. Even if you execute everything perfectly, you won't have made a connection with your audience -- you have to be able to connect with the dancers around you and with the people you can't see, people somewhere out there in the audience. Even before that, though, the most important part of movement is your relationship with your body: disability taught me that.
I've always been a non-body person. I used not to do "goofy-new-age" arts and rituals; even when I was a semi-professional musician, I relied on my technique and my soul to produce music. My body was not part of the picture. If I cared about my body at all, it was in relationship to my appearance. I didn't connect appearance to body, though; I thought appearance was in the absence of body -- it's thinness -- and in the face. I didn't know that body, or perhaps, I should say, embodiment, is the key to appearance.
I managed without a body-sense until I was in my early thirties. I tried not to look too often in the mirror; I moved through the world preceded, I hoped, by my accreditations. I was an academic type; I had degrees, publications. I could take your argument down in seconds or freeze you with the twitch of an eyebrow, the slide of my pair of glasses. I lived for what my brain could produce. But then, suddenly, there was the body.
Disability has taught me to perceive the world through the physicality of my embodiment (as opposed to say, the lens of my race). It started for me with the perception of pain and its absences. The learning journey continued with misperception, paresthesia, and involuntary movement -- a care program, medication, and now physical therapy. I watched how others constructed narratives around and for me, regardless of my actual self.
Disability asks you stop and look at yourself -- because if you don't, you will go under. It asks you to take note, to test, experiment, try, fail, and test again. It unleashes fear. Sadness. And fear again. It asks you to be your fullest self (Weird, right, because the rest of the world thinks of it as an end).
For me, I learned from disability, how to move in dance. That, too, was a body-led, disability-based experience. Repeated passes across the floor -- moving on a high, low, medium level. In a group, with the group, starting, stopping, fast pace, slow pace, medium. All these with an understanding that these parameters were individual and contingent: fast for me on that day, high for me on that day. Such instructions meant that I was the only obstacle in the room. No longer was dance an exclusionary discourse; we each of us in that class dug deep, disabled and non to learn what the body teaches.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Exorcising Ghosts: II
You're just doing it to get attention.
He'll never want to have sex with you.
Does he still have sex with you?
You don't understand what hearing this does to me.
I don't believe you.
You ought to get your arse over here and get yourself sorted out.
If you sit down, you'll lose it.
I've never known you give up so fast. You disappoint me.
Can't you see how I feel?
You're so angry all the time.
Have you tried....
Well, if you don't want to hear what we have to say, ....
I've worked hard all these years to have to hear this?
If you would just....
You have to be kidding.
You can't go through life like that.
If you can do that, you can certainly....
No family member of ours...
It's not our fault.
It's not my fault.
Why don't you....
After all we've done for you, ....
He'll never want to have sex with you.
Does he still have sex with you?
You don't understand what hearing this does to me.
I don't believe you.
You ought to get your arse over here and get yourself sorted out.
If you sit down, you'll lose it.
I've never known you give up so fast. You disappoint me.
Can't you see how I feel?
You're so angry all the time.
Have you tried....
Well, if you don't want to hear what we have to say, ....
I've worked hard all these years to have to hear this?
If you would just....
You have to be kidding.
You can't go through life like that.
If you can do that, you can certainly....
No family member of ours...
It's not our fault.
It's not my fault.
Why don't you....
After all we've done for you, ....
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Saying Something Awful
Recently, two moments of my life concerned saying something "awful." They've stuck around in my head for a while. It's partly that moment of word-dorkiness; the w and f look funny next to each other. It's partly that, well, awful, is a word that I've always taken a secret pleasure in; I've enjoyed the slightly contradictory meanings -- awe-inspiring (semi, mostly approving) and awful, terrible (yikes). I know that I am not the only person in the world who knows about and appreciates these things (really!), but somehow the awe of "awful" has always been a personal, secret delight ('cept all y'all now know about it).
The tension between the two meanings has often seemed to offer a way of changing life and circumstance. There's a promise there: If you can somehow get through the awful, you will be able to look back with awe at this moment of horror. The terrible must ultimately pass; the nondescript, too, must yield. And change, somehow, I've been telling myself, can only be for the better. I think, though, that this week, the awful reared its head less as a force for good than as an agent of destruction. I think, this week, I learned that change doesn't have to come only after you've blown up the baby, the bathtub, and the elephant (or something like that). This week, I learned that there is value in seeking a more moderated way.
I took two parking spots, because the disabled one was legitimately taken. It was raining (hard), but I didn't think that what I did would be an issue.
A man swerves round the corner and attempts to park, (despite my open door) in the spot that is almost empty. He fails, of course; he sees that he won't fit, beeps his horn, and then drives off. I admit full responsibility for this one; I was feeling pissy. So, I roll down my window and yell, "You got a problem?" to him as he passes. I'm not sure quite what I expected in response, but I was surprised by the intensity of his comeback.
He was late for his appointment (I know because I was the appointment before him and I ran over); he was clearly frustrated; he reached for insults he thought worked best. Without knowing that I was disabled, he accused me of having an intellectual disability and of all kinds of inability and incompetence. In a stream of invective, he threw at me every negative association with disability and human worth. At first, I tried to explain (pissily, yes, but explain, nonetheless). The torrent was too great, however; I yielded to my own inclinations. I f-worded him, I said something about him getting off his lazy ass, and ... ; he walked off before I could finish. I was furious, but I wasn't about to chase him into the PT's office and keep yelling at him or vice versa.
Just in front of me, partially obscured by the massive door of her SUV, the voice of an observer said, "that was awful." She closed her door and drove off. I couldn't tell what she meant: me? had I been awful? the man? (he'd certainly been awful) the whole thing? The awful things that I said didn't change anything. They didn't get him to come back and hear my explanation; they didn't earn me the support of the bystander; they left me feeling poisoned and frustrated. I wasn't even able to let off my steam of righteous indignation. And next week when I go for PT, the bystander will presumably be at her appointment, the nasty man coming afterwards, and I will also be there. All three of us will get to restage without reenacting the nasty little scene.
Some things, maybe literally, are too nasty to say. If I hadn't sworn at him -- no, I am not sorry -- the position would be a little different. I wouldn't now be worried that the bystander might find me foul-mouthed and undeserving (yeah, yeah). Nor would I be concerned about rolling out of the office and into this guy; will his incoherent rage have dissipated? I escalated and handled the situation poorly. I wish I hadn't; I will try to do something better next time (without being a crippled saint--choke). I said something awful and the situation remained awful.
The second time I encountered awful-saying this week was in a very different circumstance. The idea was (I think; I could have it wrong) that some times, you have to say the awful thing, point out the elephant in the room, smash the myth, transgress the boundary, say the awful thing. I latched on to it immediately. Yes, this is what it meant for "awful" to work its awesome power. We sometimes must speak truth to the establishment and to ourselves. Then, I set to thinking. What kinds of awful things set us free? What kinds of awful things are simply should not be said.
If you've read me for a while, you will probably know that I believe in language -- its power to hurt, to gut, and to free (I've created a new label with some of my language related posts here). I believe in what people often call "political correctness," and I firmly believe in not saying stuff. I don't think political correctness is political; I think it is "correct: because it is morally just, fair, and right not to say certain stuff. It's not pandering, so much as a way of demonstrating respect. You don't need to rail down centuries of injustice and hatred just to make a point. You don't need oppression to say what you have to say. You DO need language to build a society and a culture that treats all people fairly. *We* need language to build relationships, connective threads, and bridges. Language makes us who we are. Too often, it is the only way we exist in and for each other.
So, yes, given how language works and how we use it, I believe that there are things too awful to say. And I am not sure about "saying the awful thing" as a strategy for breaking stasis. How we move when we are bound is a life and a dance question. How we speak when we are stuck or stabbed with injustice is an equally important problem. How we know what to say and when or if we should speak are things I suppose we learn, slowly, as we rub against each other.
In some American dialects, I can't hear the difference between "offal" and "awful." (I suppose there are some British speakers whose distinction is equally as hard to discern, but I'm a native British speaker, so I mostly get that). I recognize that these occasional homophones, offal, awful and awe-ful are different and that what I am about to say would have most linguists shaking their fingers, but I'm wondering about that "butchered inner parts" part of offal.
I'm thinking, in other words, about effect rather than intent. If the effect of your words is to slaughter the innards of some other being, perhaps you, I, we shouldn't be uttering those words. Perhaps, the truth and my intent as I see them matter less than how they are received -- perhaps even to the extent that the nature of the awful is less about perceived social boundaries, expectations, and norms than about the web we weave with our words.
Worlds don't change because you make people quake in their boots, free yourself of social inhibitions, or even because you position yourself as an arbiter of life around you. Worlds change because words shape the invisible ties that link us.
The tension between the two meanings has often seemed to offer a way of changing life and circumstance. There's a promise there: If you can somehow get through the awful, you will be able to look back with awe at this moment of horror. The terrible must ultimately pass; the nondescript, too, must yield. And change, somehow, I've been telling myself, can only be for the better. I think, though, that this week, the awful reared its head less as a force for good than as an agent of destruction. I think, this week, I learned that change doesn't have to come only after you've blown up the baby, the bathtub, and the elephant (or something like that). This week, I learned that there is value in seeking a more moderated way.
I took two parking spots, because the disabled one was legitimately taken. It was raining (hard), but I didn't think that what I did would be an issue.
A man swerves round the corner and attempts to park, (despite my open door) in the spot that is almost empty. He fails, of course; he sees that he won't fit, beeps his horn, and then drives off. I admit full responsibility for this one; I was feeling pissy. So, I roll down my window and yell, "You got a problem?" to him as he passes. I'm not sure quite what I expected in response, but I was surprised by the intensity of his comeback.
He was late for his appointment (I know because I was the appointment before him and I ran over); he was clearly frustrated; he reached for insults he thought worked best. Without knowing that I was disabled, he accused me of having an intellectual disability and of all kinds of inability and incompetence. In a stream of invective, he threw at me every negative association with disability and human worth. At first, I tried to explain (pissily, yes, but explain, nonetheless). The torrent was too great, however; I yielded to my own inclinations. I f-worded him, I said something about him getting off his lazy ass, and ... ; he walked off before I could finish. I was furious, but I wasn't about to chase him into the PT's office and keep yelling at him or vice versa.
Just in front of me, partially obscured by the massive door of her SUV, the voice of an observer said, "that was awful." She closed her door and drove off. I couldn't tell what she meant: me? had I been awful? the man? (he'd certainly been awful) the whole thing? The awful things that I said didn't change anything. They didn't get him to come back and hear my explanation; they didn't earn me the support of the bystander; they left me feeling poisoned and frustrated. I wasn't even able to let off my steam of righteous indignation. And next week when I go for PT, the bystander will presumably be at her appointment, the nasty man coming afterwards, and I will also be there. All three of us will get to restage without reenacting the nasty little scene.
Some things, maybe literally, are too nasty to say. If I hadn't sworn at him -- no, I am not sorry -- the position would be a little different. I wouldn't now be worried that the bystander might find me foul-mouthed and undeserving (yeah, yeah). Nor would I be concerned about rolling out of the office and into this guy; will his incoherent rage have dissipated? I escalated and handled the situation poorly. I wish I hadn't; I will try to do something better next time (without being a crippled saint--choke). I said something awful and the situation remained awful.
The second time I encountered awful-saying this week was in a very different circumstance. The idea was (I think; I could have it wrong) that some times, you have to say the awful thing, point out the elephant in the room, smash the myth, transgress the boundary, say the awful thing. I latched on to it immediately. Yes, this is what it meant for "awful" to work its awesome power. We sometimes must speak truth to the establishment and to ourselves. Then, I set to thinking. What kinds of awful things set us free? What kinds of awful things are simply should not be said.
If you've read me for a while, you will probably know that I believe in language -- its power to hurt, to gut, and to free (I've created a new label with some of my language related posts here). I believe in what people often call "political correctness," and I firmly believe in not saying stuff. I don't think political correctness is political; I think it is "correct: because it is morally just, fair, and right not to say certain stuff. It's not pandering, so much as a way of demonstrating respect. You don't need to rail down centuries of injustice and hatred just to make a point. You don't need oppression to say what you have to say. You DO need language to build a society and a culture that treats all people fairly. *We* need language to build relationships, connective threads, and bridges. Language makes us who we are. Too often, it is the only way we exist in and for each other.
So, yes, given how language works and how we use it, I believe that there are things too awful to say. And I am not sure about "saying the awful thing" as a strategy for breaking stasis. How we move when we are bound is a life and a dance question. How we speak when we are stuck or stabbed with injustice is an equally important problem. How we know what to say and when or if we should speak are things I suppose we learn, slowly, as we rub against each other.
In some American dialects, I can't hear the difference between "offal" and "awful." (I suppose there are some British speakers whose distinction is equally as hard to discern, but I'm a native British speaker, so I mostly get that). I recognize that these occasional homophones, offal, awful and awe-ful are different and that what I am about to say would have most linguists shaking their fingers, but I'm wondering about that "butchered inner parts" part of offal.
I'm thinking, in other words, about effect rather than intent. If the effect of your words is to slaughter the innards of some other being, perhaps you, I, we shouldn't be uttering those words. Perhaps, the truth and my intent as I see them matter less than how they are received -- perhaps even to the extent that the nature of the awful is less about perceived social boundaries, expectations, and norms than about the web we weave with our words.
Worlds don't change because you make people quake in their boots, free yourself of social inhibitions, or even because you position yourself as an arbiter of life around you. Worlds change because words shape the invisible ties that link us.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Internetz Down
Dunno how it happened -- a storm or two??? -- And the net connexion at home is down, down, down.
ATT says it has no record of us having an account with them. We pay ATT money every month; they can't find us? (Sigh). I will have to go digging in the mass of unpacked boxes until I find the right piece of financial stuff because right now, I can't find any record of having paid them, either.
So, blogging will be intermittent.
WCD
ATT says it has no record of us having an account with them. We pay ATT money every month; they can't find us? (Sigh). I will have to go digging in the mass of unpacked boxes until I find the right piece of financial stuff because right now, I can't find any record of having paid them, either.
So, blogging will be intermittent.
WCD
Thursday, January 14, 2010
In My Creative Life
A couple of days ago, bfp asked herself and us the equivalent of "where are you in your creative life?" That question hit home.
I think the short answer is that I am stuck. That of course is not so much a place as a statement of condition. I hope that the distinction will help me move beyond the sensation. For stuck, I am. At West Coast, we often play with stuck or bound movement; that contradiction seems useful, too. In class and on stage, it always generates interesting movement both to dance and to watch. How you move when you are stuck is the key question, no?
Mostly, I have appreciated the idea that in my dance life (as opposed to my former life) there is nothing but the present, the next movement, the next project, the next class, the absence of planned career and target lists, the absence of stress, the .... And mostly, I have been able to commit to the utter and incredible singularity of each of my daily experiences. That's a new for me (I've been a follow the rules/worry about the next thing girl all my life). So, let me come clean. I have no reason to complain about being stuck. I am where I wanted to be; I worked to be here. And I will work harder to stay here. I even kind of feel it is wrong to feel stuck because I am dancing unbelievable work with unbelievable people. Dancers would kill to be in pieces by choreographers I have had the honor to dance for. And believe me, honor is an understatement.
And yet, I feel stuck. (I don't mean to sound whiny, honestly; I am trying to access a complicated feeling about how to develop as a dancer and person this year.)
While I enjoy the experience of being in the present, I also realize that I have nowhere else to go (that thought that makes me worried. Will I always be here doing only the daily? What if? Worse, what when....? Am I trapped in the present? Should I be planning/saving for the future?). My skills are limited: I am not so much a creator of work as I am an interpreter and realizer of other people's visions. I am a tool, literally, but probably not in the negative common use of the word. Understand, please, that I don't find that a bad thing. It's what I am best at in this field; it's where I find the most pleasure, and my pleasure in my work is what keeps me here. And yet, this particular skill set is also one of the things that prevents me from doing many other different things.
I want to work at the highest possible level; that's where I am. (There aren't that many places for a disabled dancer to go at a company level and I have been too shy/injured to build networks of other people to move with -- should work on changing that). So, here, I am. At the very best place to be. I am not a starter upper -- I won't be starting my own company or even be doing significant amounts of my own choreography. I am not a fixer-upper, either. In addition to the work, I have to think of the other side of the coin as my body. That's not just my job, it's also me. I have to recognize that I have physical limits -- and I don't mean my disability: grin -- that's part of my job. It's that I need a body to live with when I am done with my job. So, I have to remember that I should not be doing certain things (like slamming onto my shoulders or torquing my hip). I am recognizing that my current approach to dancing -- hard on, full out (or perhaps I have my prepositions mixed) is perhaps more suited to someone in their twenties and less appropriate for a (wannabe grand) old dame. There's a reason so many dancers don't dance at my age; it's that the body cries in the morning when it gets up and cringes through rehearsals. Even the adrenaline of performance can seem insufficient.
So, I have to grow as a dancer before I discover that I can't do it anymore. I have mapped out for myself a set of things to achieve and accomplish this year. Some are classes to take; some are new conversations to have; some new experiences to extend my range. If I can do these things, I will be happy -- and I can use the tools that I will have learned to in all walks of whatever life I happen to be in.
In addition to whatever happens next, I also have to plan for disability itself. If I trash my shoulders dancing, I won't have them for mobility when I am sixty. It's all very well to say, but there will be powerchairs ... There may or may not be, depending on how access is granted to this wonderful device. I can imagine a world where my insurance company says, "You know, you did this to yourself in an unapproved use of your chair. Don't expect us and your fellow citizens to pay for it." "But it was ART," I will weakly protest. "Yes," they will say, "and this is the budget."
The other thing is pain. I am so scared of reinjuring myself and of the pain that comes with it. Accidents happen, but stuff shouldn't happen because I wasn't focused or wasn't taking care or was simply doing stupid stuff. I am so scared of pain. Every small twinge has me running to the heating pad, the ice pack, the hot pool, the ... pain has a way of getting inside my head and freezing me. And at this point, even the things that are disability related pain and not dance-related pain are scary. I know that they aren't the same thing. I know that disability related pain doesn't mean that I am hurt; it just means that I am hurting. Different thing. Different, brain, really.
Taking care of yourself as a dancer is a necessary precursor to the acts of creation that people see on stage. Non-disabled dancers go through years of training so that they come to know what their limits are, how to take care of themselves, and how to prepare to dance. Disabled dancers don't show up with years of training. We have to figure out our limits (what, I shouldn't have done that! If I want to do that, I should use these muscles?) It is also a kind of responsibility we have to each other in the company; we don't have understudies. (Runs to ice her shoulders and her hip just in case.
So, this year, I have to grow. I have to grow for myself as a dancer and thinker. I have to grow as a writer. I will take on new projects, ideas, experiments. I will allow myself to fail, to be told "NO." (Well, all right, "no.") And maybe, just maybe, at the end of the year, I will have dug deep enough so that I will not only be unstuck, I will be have seen the curtain go up on new vistas.
X-posted at flipfloppingjoy
More Auditions -- America's Got Talent Needs YOU
"tis the season ...
If you do "wheeldance" as either a duet or in a group and you feel like you might be a star, here's an email that just showed up in my inbox for "exceptional Wheeldance talent in the Orlando, FL, Portland, OR or Atlantic City, NJ area." And, of course, you could win $1,000,000.00
Here's how to do it. Audition information is on their website. It looks like you can do it in person (via their process) or via video (also via their process). It also looks like preregistration is part of that process. Remember dates and places could change, so keep your eye on the process and the site.
And... good luck!
If you do "wheeldance" as either a duet or in a group and you feel like you might be a star, here's an email that just showed up in my inbox for "exceptional Wheeldance talent in the Orlando, FL, Portland, OR or Atlantic City, NJ area." And, of course, you could win $1,000,000.00
Here's how to do it. Audition information is on their website. It looks like you can do it in person (via their process) or via video (also via their process). It also looks like preregistration is part of that process. Remember dates and places could change, so keep your eye on the process and the site.
And... good luck!
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
How To Catch A Taxi
They don't always stop, you know. In fact, most of the time in New York, catching a taxi is much more than just waving your arm. Boston taxis are not much better, apparently. None of this is surprising. No one wants to get out and put the chair in the boot. No one wants to lift the chair. And, worse, no one wants to have to lift the client -- not that a client necessarily wants either a lift or to be lifted.
So here you are. Stalemate. You've called 311 for a taxi (in NYC) and not had much luck (for whatever reason). Now, you are out on the street. What should you do? First, check you aren't in your powerchair. If you have to go beyond driving distance in a powerchair, you are going to have to make a bus trip. (Simi Linton's experiences remind me of how important being able to ride the bus is. Link is to an old NYT piece that I don't think is behind a firewall; it's a beautiful essay). But if you are in a manual, you can try and catch a taxi.
At rush hour, I always ask the nicest looking person around me to catch one for me. I've waved and waved and waved; it's just easier to perpetrate a sort of deception than be deceived. And when the taxi driver is annoyed that I'm his passenger, I smile. And I tip well in the hopes that I will shame him into better behaviour for someone else. Rush hour and shift changes are hard times of day to catch a taxi; I say fight fire with fire. And then be gracious when you win.
OT contributes this strategy: Wait until they are at the light. Slide down the curb cut and get right up in their path. They have to choose between taking you and smooshing you. Smile. I bang on windows and bonnets when drivers look in the other direction. I smile. And I yell. And I swear. I'm sure that I am a joy to behold.
The thing about the article linked above is that the author, Erica Noonan, makes it seem that the wheelchair user (Ms. Zakim) left behind doesn't just understand her bad taxi experience as a systemic problem -- a matter of injustice for all people. There's a kind of odd personal twist that the writer allows to come through -- a justified pride in independence that, as the newspaper interprets it, comes across as an almost, well, I don't have the words for it.
Here's the quote: "It made me angry. I can transfer (from the wheelchair) very easily. The assumption was made that people in wheelchairs must not be independent." When I see this quote, I want to ask, but what about those who can't transfer as easily. They need transportation just as much. Use your personal rage and make it go system-wide. Get transportation for everyone and you will be just fine. Which, as both Ms. Zakim's letter to the editor and the article as a whole, suggest that Ms. Zakim is happy to do.
And then, the article writer adds to the strangeness of the whole thing: "She never got to show the driver that she lifts herself onto the seat and disassembles her own wheelchair without assistance. The wheels and seat can be placed next to her, as Zakim does when driving her own car, or stowed in the trunk like any other piece of luggage."
It was never about being able to do a "show and tell" and nor should it be. Transportation is a critical part of individual mobility; we don't enter into it with a need to show how cool we are. The article writer, Ms. Noonan, does Ms. Zakim no favours here. Instead of understanding the politics of individual mobility, she interprets Ms. Zakim's nascent political anger as a disappointment at a lost personal performance opportunity. I think I see where she is coming from.
For a long while, I have been saddened at the "If I can just show you, you will be amazed." "If you can just give me the chance, I will work hard" tags that have attached themselves to questions of equality and access. It is wrong that we have to plead to be the one individual who will be different from all those others, the one disabled person who can do it, who will be there, can work, can .... It is wrong that we have to plead for special chances and that we have to negatively distinguish ourselves from other members of the community to do it.
And that's what I think went wrong here. Ms. Noonan writes as if Ms. Zakim is the exception, "the one good cripple." Ms. Zakim is personally outraged and interested in systemic justice.
Catching a taxi is never simple nor are the implications of mobility.
So here you are. Stalemate. You've called 311 for a taxi (in NYC) and not had much luck (for whatever reason). Now, you are out on the street. What should you do? First, check you aren't in your powerchair. If you have to go beyond driving distance in a powerchair, you are going to have to make a bus trip. (Simi Linton's experiences remind me of how important being able to ride the bus is. Link is to an old NYT piece that I don't think is behind a firewall; it's a beautiful essay). But if you are in a manual, you can try and catch a taxi.
At rush hour, I always ask the nicest looking person around me to catch one for me. I've waved and waved and waved; it's just easier to perpetrate a sort of deception than be deceived. And when the taxi driver is annoyed that I'm his passenger, I smile. And I tip well in the hopes that I will shame him into better behaviour for someone else. Rush hour and shift changes are hard times of day to catch a taxi; I say fight fire with fire. And then be gracious when you win.
OT contributes this strategy: Wait until they are at the light. Slide down the curb cut and get right up in their path. They have to choose between taking you and smooshing you. Smile. I bang on windows and bonnets when drivers look in the other direction. I smile. And I yell. And I swear. I'm sure that I am a joy to behold.
The thing about the article linked above is that the author, Erica Noonan, makes it seem that the wheelchair user (Ms. Zakim) left behind doesn't just understand her bad taxi experience as a systemic problem -- a matter of injustice for all people. There's a kind of odd personal twist that the writer allows to come through -- a justified pride in independence that, as the newspaper interprets it, comes across as an almost, well, I don't have the words for it.
Here's the quote: "It made me angry. I can transfer (from the wheelchair) very easily. The assumption was made that people in wheelchairs must not be independent." When I see this quote, I want to ask, but what about those who can't transfer as easily. They need transportation just as much. Use your personal rage and make it go system-wide. Get transportation for everyone and you will be just fine. Which, as both Ms. Zakim's letter to the editor and the article as a whole, suggest that Ms. Zakim is happy to do.
And then, the article writer adds to the strangeness of the whole thing: "She never got to show the driver that she lifts herself onto the seat and disassembles her own wheelchair without assistance. The wheels and seat can be placed next to her, as Zakim does when driving her own car, or stowed in the trunk like any other piece of luggage."
It was never about being able to do a "show and tell" and nor should it be. Transportation is a critical part of individual mobility; we don't enter into it with a need to show how cool we are. The article writer, Ms. Noonan, does Ms. Zakim no favours here. Instead of understanding the politics of individual mobility, she interprets Ms. Zakim's nascent political anger as a disappointment at a lost personal performance opportunity. I think I see where she is coming from.
For a long while, I have been saddened at the "If I can just show you, you will be amazed." "If you can just give me the chance, I will work hard" tags that have attached themselves to questions of equality and access. It is wrong that we have to plead to be the one individual who will be different from all those others, the one disabled person who can do it, who will be there, can work, can .... It is wrong that we have to plead for special chances and that we have to negatively distinguish ourselves from other members of the community to do it.
And that's what I think went wrong here. Ms. Noonan writes as if Ms. Zakim is the exception, "the one good cripple." Ms. Zakim is personally outraged and interested in systemic justice.
Catching a taxi is never simple nor are the implications of mobility.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Audition for Glee
You know you want to. Get out there. Do your thing. Make the producers sit up. Give them a chance to do better, to actually hire a disabled person as a regular member of the cast.
And spare a poor non-disabled person the physical harm of faking disabled.
From the Guardian on the Ian Drury film: "For the Dury film, he spent months walking with a heavy 70s-style calliper attached to his leg and working out only on the right side of his body." He's been left with back pain, and a "massive weird muscle" has developed in his groin. "I'm still recovering from it all."
And then, there's the rumours about Hugh Laurie's hip (link is to Google search on the topic).
It's hard work playing a disabled person. Let someone more qualified to do it, do it.
Smile.
And spare a poor non-disabled person the physical harm of faking disabled.
From the Guardian on the Ian Drury film: "For the Dury film, he spent months walking with a heavy 70s-style calliper attached to his leg and working out only on the right side of his body." He's been left with back pain, and a "massive weird muscle" has developed in his groin. "I'm still recovering from it all."
And then, there's the rumours about Hugh Laurie's hip (link is to Google search on the topic).
It's hard work playing a disabled person. Let someone more qualified to do it, do it.
Smile.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Environment and Privilege
The title is a little misleading, but I couldn't think of a better way to describe it.
The local council where I live is trying to limit house size in an area of land that is both residential and rural/open space. It's a tough conversation, but one we need to have as a community. What are the rights of homeowners? And what are their responsibilities to themselves and their communities? What are the limits of municipal authority? I do believe in limits: no one needs a 48,000 sq ft house like the one down the road from us; I just don't know where to put them. 10,000? 2,000? 8,000? At any rate, I firmly disapprove of the way our planning people are going about the process. Who knows how things will work out.
In any case, I was shocked to read on our neighborhood listserv, the following argument against regulated house size (in paraphrase): Extremely limited house sizes will increase traffic and harm the environment. Two career families often have live-in nannies. This means more floor space and greater energy costs, yes, but in total the larger house will reduce environmental pollution because a live-in will reduce daily car trips from the more affordable cities that are far away.
Stunned.
We were a 3.5 job family -- each parent held down one full time and a variety of other jobs. I say jobs because they weren't exactly careers in the modern sense. We were latchkey kids -- I don't recommend the experience -- but the idea that we would have live-in staff didn't even occur to us. That was for books, television programmes and the upper classes. We could barely hire a teenage baby sitter and, in any case, we were the people who were live-ins. My grandmother lived-in for a dentist-lawyer couple in Long Island; the stories she told about her two charges (they lifted her skirts, called her the N-word, etc. etc.) She and I, even as a kid, were glad when she earned her green card and could work independently (in the sweatshops of NYC's garment district!).
For this idea to be a winner, I see a series of casual and untrue assumptions. That, well, everyone in the neighborhood must have the same kind of wealth as the writer (they don't). That everyone in the neighborhood is white or at least not Latino/a or African-American because the people who perform these kinds of jobs are overwhelmingly not white or Asian (they aren't). That a live-in member of household staff is a common occurrence -- various residents on one of the roads that I drive every day regularly have hired valet staff working private parties, so I guess it might be -- but the people I've met so far either aren't in that kind of position or are more discreet.
It's the first time I've seen an argument that uses the environment as a prop for personal race and class privilege. Usually, it's more systemic -- you can't dump your waste in my backyard because it's bad for the environment.
Wow. Just wow.
The local council where I live is trying to limit house size in an area of land that is both residential and rural/open space. It's a tough conversation, but one we need to have as a community. What are the rights of homeowners? And what are their responsibilities to themselves and their communities? What are the limits of municipal authority? I do believe in limits: no one needs a 48,000 sq ft house like the one down the road from us; I just don't know where to put them. 10,000? 2,000? 8,000? At any rate, I firmly disapprove of the way our planning people are going about the process. Who knows how things will work out.
In any case, I was shocked to read on our neighborhood listserv, the following argument against regulated house size (in paraphrase): Extremely limited house sizes will increase traffic and harm the environment. Two career families often have live-in nannies. This means more floor space and greater energy costs, yes, but in total the larger house will reduce environmental pollution because a live-in will reduce daily car trips from the more affordable cities that are far away.
Stunned.
We were a 3.5 job family -- each parent held down one full time and a variety of other jobs. I say jobs because they weren't exactly careers in the modern sense. We were latchkey kids -- I don't recommend the experience -- but the idea that we would have live-in staff didn't even occur to us. That was for books, television programmes and the upper classes. We could barely hire a teenage baby sitter and, in any case, we were the people who were live-ins. My grandmother lived-in for a dentist-lawyer couple in Long Island; the stories she told about her two charges (they lifted her skirts, called her the N-word, etc. etc.) She and I, even as a kid, were glad when she earned her green card and could work independently (in the sweatshops of NYC's garment district!).
For this idea to be a winner, I see a series of casual and untrue assumptions. That, well, everyone in the neighborhood must have the same kind of wealth as the writer (they don't). That everyone in the neighborhood is white or at least not Latino/a or African-American because the people who perform these kinds of jobs are overwhelmingly not white or Asian (they aren't). That a live-in member of household staff is a common occurrence -- various residents on one of the roads that I drive every day regularly have hired valet staff working private parties, so I guess it might be -- but the people I've met so far either aren't in that kind of position or are more discreet.
It's the first time I've seen an argument that uses the environment as a prop for personal race and class privilege. Usually, it's more systemic -- you can't dump your waste in my backyard because it's bad for the environment.
Wow. Just wow.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
"Sad Cowbell Girl?"
I was disgusted to see the "sad cowbell girl" story turn up in my feedreader this evening.
The backstory is that a camera passed by a musician playing for the Boise State team; her expression/mien apparently did not meet what people thought was the appropriate look for a band musician at a football game: a new internet figure was born -- "sad cowbell girl." (The feminist reading here is utterly juicy, but beside my main point -- is it significant that I separate a mainstream feminist reading in order for the disability reading to become visible?) Anyway, the video went viral. There were spoofs and various kinds of mocking videos.
And then, it turned out that she was blind. All kinds of ugly broke loose.
The commentary here on Mashable is pretty nasty and so utterly typical. With a headline like "Entire Internet hangs its head in shame," I suppose there was nothing more to be expected. But things are more complicated than the simple story.
According to Mashable (which reprints the tweet verbatim), @Miller4Life notifies the world: she's blind, be nice (summary, not quote). You can check out other twitter responses here. "Be nice to the poor disabled girl; she can't help," it is the general gist. Please. How about, "she's as deserving of your respect as any other musician at our school"? Ms. Miller's own twitter stream rides high on how she shamed the Internet -- and she had hardly any followers! Then, Ms. Miller continues in her own stream, "**** [gives student's name] a sweet girl. She may not be fully blind but she does have an impairment. She uses a dog 4 help around BSU." Congratulations and kudos pour in. As far as the twitterverse is concerned, Ms. Miller has performed a laudable act of kindness.
The thing is, though, that in some sense, what she did was not wrong -- it was how and why she did it that I find problematic. Ms. Miller was right to call people out for their indifference and cruelty; she was right to ask that we maintain a minimum of common decency towards each other. Those things should have been true for any person who happened to be caught on camera and who becomes an involuntary figure of fun. It's a decency issue, not a disability issue: we should behave well and responsibly towards each other. You should take the video down because it was insensitive/mean/whatever -- not just because the person caricatured is disabled.
But Ms. Miller didn't manage to say that -- yes, she could have managed it in 140 characters. What she actually said and the implications of what she said go towards perpetuating a kind of ugliness that is equally as bad (if not worse) than the situation she was trying to rectify.
Let's just take that second quote. What do I see here? That the student is not deserving of respect, only a charitable niceness. She's a "sweet girl" not a woman: it's infantilizing to refer to her this way. Then, there's the "may not be fully blind" -- I don't know what to make of this. Something like .... she's fully deserving of your pity even if she's not fully blind -- and if she were "fully blind," well then.... And then, there's the dog. If she has a dog, she must have an impairment .... seems to be the implication. A service dog validates her disability because, you know, blindness can only be defined as entirely without sight.
I find these kinds of utterances saddening. Disappointing. And embittering. It's as if the disability rights movement and the disability culture I know and love somehow didn't exist. Once more, a random person with a disability is caught in the crossfire between living her life as she wishes and the projections, expectations, patronage, and stereotypes of a cruel and yet in some cases well-meaning able-bodied world.
We should be ashamed -- both for our puerile meanness and for the way our society treats disabled people.
The backstory is that a camera passed by a musician playing for the Boise State team; her expression/mien apparently did not meet what people thought was the appropriate look for a band musician at a football game: a new internet figure was born -- "sad cowbell girl." (The feminist reading here is utterly juicy, but beside my main point -- is it significant that I separate a mainstream feminist reading in order for the disability reading to become visible?) Anyway, the video went viral. There were spoofs and various kinds of mocking videos.
And then, it turned out that she was blind. All kinds of ugly broke loose.
The commentary here on Mashable is pretty nasty and so utterly typical. With a headline like "Entire Internet hangs its head in shame," I suppose there was nothing more to be expected. But things are more complicated than the simple story.
According to Mashable (which reprints the tweet verbatim), @Miller4Life notifies the world: she's blind, be nice (summary, not quote). You can check out other twitter responses here. "Be nice to the poor disabled girl; she can't help," it is the general gist. Please. How about, "she's as deserving of your respect as any other musician at our school"? Ms. Miller's own twitter stream rides high on how she shamed the Internet -- and she had hardly any followers! Then, Ms. Miller continues in her own stream, "**** [gives student's name] a sweet girl. She may not be fully blind but she does have an impairment. She uses a dog 4 help around BSU." Congratulations and kudos pour in. As far as the twitterverse is concerned, Ms. Miller has performed a laudable act of kindness.
The thing is, though, that in some sense, what she did was not wrong -- it was how and why she did it that I find problematic. Ms. Miller was right to call people out for their indifference and cruelty; she was right to ask that we maintain a minimum of common decency towards each other. Those things should have been true for any person who happened to be caught on camera and who becomes an involuntary figure of fun. It's a decency issue, not a disability issue: we should behave well and responsibly towards each other. You should take the video down because it was insensitive/mean/whatever -- not just because the person caricatured is disabled.
But Ms. Miller didn't manage to say that -- yes, she could have managed it in 140 characters. What she actually said and the implications of what she said go towards perpetuating a kind of ugliness that is equally as bad (if not worse) than the situation she was trying to rectify.
Let's just take that second quote. What do I see here? That the student is not deserving of respect, only a charitable niceness. She's a "sweet girl" not a woman: it's infantilizing to refer to her this way. Then, there's the "may not be fully blind" -- I don't know what to make of this. Something like .... she's fully deserving of your pity even if she's not fully blind -- and if she were "fully blind," well then.... And then, there's the dog. If she has a dog, she must have an impairment .... seems to be the implication. A service dog validates her disability because, you know, blindness can only be defined as entirely without sight.
I find these kinds of utterances saddening. Disappointing. And embittering. It's as if the disability rights movement and the disability culture I know and love somehow didn't exist. Once more, a random person with a disability is caught in the crossfire between living her life as she wishes and the projections, expectations, patronage, and stereotypes of a cruel and yet in some cases well-meaning able-bodied world.
We should be ashamed -- both for our puerile meanness and for the way our society treats disabled people.
Monday, January 4, 2010
Dance in Brooklyn
News just arrived of this one.
Tuesday, January 5th
Doors: 6:30pm/Show: 7:30pm
Tix: $10.00
BUY TICKETS HERE
Tami Stronach Dance presents:
An evening with Tami Stronach Dance
& special guests
One of those guest artists is Kris Lenzo in a new solo. Galapagos Arts Space says:
“Passage Hawk” choreographed by James Morrow challenges the genre of wheelchair dancing finding nontraditional ways of exploring both movement and the use of the apparatus itself. Performed by Olympian Kris Lenzo, National Champion in Wheelchair Track and Basketball, “Passage Hawk,” takes its participants on a journey of a young hawk during its first migration.
I know Kris and have seen him dance. Umm. Wow. Breathtaking strength, grace, and power. Excerpts from Passage Hawk are on YouTube, but the upload seems to be flawed: it's all black.
If you can go tomorrow and see Kris dance, I think you will enjoy it.
Tuesday, January 5th
Doors: 6:30pm/Show: 7:30pm
Tix: $10.00
BUY TICKETS HERE
Tami Stronach Dance presents:
An evening with Tami Stronach Dance
& special guests
One of those guest artists is Kris Lenzo in a new solo. Galapagos Arts Space says:
“Passage Hawk” choreographed by James Morrow challenges the genre of wheelchair dancing finding nontraditional ways of exploring both movement and the use of the apparatus itself. Performed by Olympian Kris Lenzo, National Champion in Wheelchair Track and Basketball, “Passage Hawk,” takes its participants on a journey of a young hawk during its first migration.
I know Kris and have seen him dance. Umm. Wow. Breathtaking strength, grace, and power. Excerpts from Passage Hawk are on YouTube, but the upload seems to be flawed: it's all black.
If you can go tomorrow and see Kris dance, I think you will enjoy it.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Disabled People Gamble Or toot, Toot, oops
I was struck by how the writer of this article couldn't get what he wanted from his headline: "Disabled People Used Access-A-Ride To Get To Casinos."
To me, this is only a newsy piece only if you can get some scandal or moral outrage going. Oh, the horror! Publicly funded transit used for the immoral purpose of gambling. And what are those cripples doing going to casinos, anyway! The whole thing is wrong. Just wrong. But that is not the story the very short piece tells. The source for this piece is the NY Daily News -- a NY gossip rag. Again, the headline is scandal-mongering: "Access-A-Ride gives passengers lift to Yonkers' Empire City Casino, despite skyrocketing budget." Whew. Not only are disabled people responsible for the cost of health care, we are also responsible for the fact that the city is broke and for MTA's massive deficit.
A closer look gets to the real stories hidden in the details of the Daily News piece and, secondarily, in the Gothamist blog post. This is from the NY Daily News
The good thing about this article is that it does underscore a critical point. Again, the Daily News (though the quotation is in both articles):
Except that the presumption of movement depends on an assumption of access to mobility. And that is tricky in terms of economic status and disability status. If public transport is your primary way of moving around (by choice or by compulsion) and you are disabled, you may find that your mobility is limited if not restricted. And that will affect how and where you live. How and where you can work (if you can get a job). How often you can see your friends -- your friends can see you.... You can imagine how the list seems endless.
Mobility is critical. Personal mobility is crucial, but so is social mobility. Both are important aspects of disability policy. The stories of Medicare restricting access to appropriate wheelchairs have now circulated the disability blogosphere quite rapidly. I still think, though, that we need more publicly to discuss social mobility -- to reinforce its place in the minds of those who make policy. How is it that Greyhound is still impossible; Amtrak is dodgy; the NYC subway is an assault course; the buses touch and go? How is it that Access-A-Ride is so costly, so unreliable, and so late? Do people know what it means to take paratrans service? It's not like a private car service, believe me. It is what it is: Public transit that people use to go about whatever business or pleasure they might choose.
With mobility comes the freedom of movement that enables a certain degree of independence. The disability rights movement stresses interdependence over independence -- the latter being a kind of American founding myth -- but independence is a key part of interdependence. Facilitating unrestricted movement enables all of us to be in the world in as many ways as we might choose. That has to be a public good.
To me, this is only a newsy piece only if you can get some scandal or moral outrage going. Oh, the horror! Publicly funded transit used for the immoral purpose of gambling. And what are those cripples doing going to casinos, anyway! The whole thing is wrong. Just wrong. But that is not the story the very short piece tells. The source for this piece is the NY Daily News -- a NY gossip rag. Again, the headline is scandal-mongering: "Access-A-Ride gives passengers lift to Yonkers' Empire City Casino, despite skyrocketing budget." Whew. Not only are disabled people responsible for the cost of health care, we are also responsible for the fact that the city is broke and for MTA's massive deficit.
A closer look gets to the real stories hidden in the details of the Daily News piece and, secondarily, in the Gothamist blog post. This is from the NY Daily News
The fare is the base subway-bus fare: $2.25. The actual per-trip cost to NYC Transit, which hires private companies to operate the service, is $53 dollars, Parker saidBecause what neither essay understands is that quite so many people wouldn't have to use Access-A-Ride and other individualized transit services if the subway and other forms of mass transit were more accessible. If, for example, you could use the subway to get to work, a doctor's office, the shopping mall, and the airport (places that a large number of Access-A-Ride clients go), the number of people using the service would go down. Sure, there will always be someone who can't use public transit or there might be destinations public transit doesn't serve (and you can't drive/can't afford a car, etc. etc.), but if MTA did its job and made transit truly accessible to more destinations, the city wouldn't be paying quite as much for paratrans services.
.... [snip: WCD. Informs us helpfully that disabled people can also bring a spouse/attendant at a significantly reduced rate].
In 1999, there were approximately 48,000 registered Access-A-Ride users. By last year, that figure had risen to 123,000, NYC Transit statistics show. Trips have soared during the same time period from 1.6 million to 7.2 million last year.
The good thing about this article is that it does underscore a critical point. Again, the Daily News (though the quotation is in both articles):
MTA Transit spokeswoman Deirdre Parker defended the policy. "The law is clear; we can't prioritize trips and we do not ask what your purpose is," she said. "It's just like the bus and subway. We don't ask where you're going on the bus or subway. It's public transportation."This is the real story. We assume we have the freedom of movement because the legal basis for it can be extrapolated from the Article IV of the US constitution. It seems logical and, probably natural, to extend that thinking to freedom of movement anywhere. In the city. In the countryside. In the state. And into the next state. Residents of the US (and I hope no one would restrict this privilege only to documented residents) can move without formal sanction from any governmental authority.
Except that the presumption of movement depends on an assumption of access to mobility. And that is tricky in terms of economic status and disability status. If public transport is your primary way of moving around (by choice or by compulsion) and you are disabled, you may find that your mobility is limited if not restricted. And that will affect how and where you live. How and where you can work (if you can get a job). How often you can see your friends -- your friends can see you.... You can imagine how the list seems endless.
Mobility is critical. Personal mobility is crucial, but so is social mobility. Both are important aspects of disability policy. The stories of Medicare restricting access to appropriate wheelchairs have now circulated the disability blogosphere quite rapidly. I still think, though, that we need more publicly to discuss social mobility -- to reinforce its place in the minds of those who make policy. How is it that Greyhound is still impossible; Amtrak is dodgy; the NYC subway is an assault course; the buses touch and go? How is it that Access-A-Ride is so costly, so unreliable, and so late? Do people know what it means to take paratrans service? It's not like a private car service, believe me. It is what it is: Public transit that people use to go about whatever business or pleasure they might choose.
With mobility comes the freedom of movement that enables a certain degree of independence. The disability rights movement stresses interdependence over independence -- the latter being a kind of American founding myth -- but independence is a key part of interdependence. Facilitating unrestricted movement enables all of us to be in the world in as many ways as we might choose. That has to be a public good.
Friday, January 1, 2010
Occupational Meme
This one is for Andrea over at Andrea's Buzzing! It's a meme about stupid stuff people say about your job. People say stupid stuff about my job all the time, mostly, I think, because it is disability related. In fact, people have a hard time seeing my job as a job (rather than therapy or something else emotionally skewed).
I don't usually do memes but this one is so relevant to my emotional life at the moment. It's the New Year and like everyone else I am reflecting on the meaning of my life; I am trying to figure out who and what I am. How do I value my life and my work? How much attention should I/do I pay to others' assessment of my self, my life, and my work? (And being a performer, other people's valuations do matter a lot).
I am also thinking ahead to the next decade; I had one of those milestone birthdays this year. I recognized then that I cannot keep dancing the way that I currently do forever. There's a reason that most professional dancers reconfigure their careers about 10 years earlier than I even started dancing. Course, they've been at it a lot longer than I have, but most of them don't start with the additional wear and tear that a disability imposes on the body.
How long? What next? What do I want? How do I want to be in this world?
In the meantime, some thoughts.
I don't usually do memes but this one is so relevant to my emotional life at the moment. It's the New Year and like everyone else I am reflecting on the meaning of my life; I am trying to figure out who and what I am. How do I value my life and my work? How much attention should I/do I pay to others' assessment of my self, my life, and my work? (And being a performer, other people's valuations do matter a lot).
I am also thinking ahead to the next decade; I had one of those milestone birthdays this year. I recognized then that I cannot keep dancing the way that I currently do forever. There's a reason that most professional dancers reconfigure their careers about 10 years earlier than I even started dancing. Course, they've been at it a lot longer than I have, but most of them don't start with the additional wear and tear that a disability imposes on the body.
How long? What next? What do I want? How do I want to be in this world?
In the meantime, some thoughts.
Q.: What term or phrase from your job/occupation do people mangle?
A.: I work for a professional physically integrated dance company. People usually can't get that all out in one go. I've heard various scramblings of integrated dance company, physically dance company, etc. Often, people just give up; we're a disabled dance company (not -- we have disabled and nondisabled dancers; that would be the integration). Or, better yet, they go with "mixed abilities" dance company. Hate that one. As our artistic director says, "It makes us sound like there's some good dancers and some bad dancers." Snort.
Q.: What broadly erroneous assumption do people make about your preferences and your career choice?
A.: That it's therapeutic. Ha! That we don't get paid -- it's just something we do, poor things. That the nondisabled dancers are taking pity on us.... Oh, and that's just for starters.
Q.: What trivia challenge do people pose when they hear about what you do for a living?
A.: They don't. Physically integrated dance is really only 20 years' old and people are so not familiar with it. They don't know the history, the tradition -- that there *is* a tradition, even. They don't understand why and how physically integrated dance exists as an art form, so they don't ask.
Q.: What basic fact about your job/occupation do people rarely understand?
A.: That I am a professional. That I don't just show up and wave my arms around. That I work damned hard. That I train my body, that I prepare, take classes, and study. We talk a lot about naturalistic, organic, pedestrian movements and swear by the philosophy that any body and any one can dance. But that doesn't mean that what I do doesn't take work, skills, and preparation beyond the experience of having fun.
Q.: Did you always want to be a/n ___?
A.: I rarely get this one, but when I do it is in the patronizing context of finally "getting to dance as a disabled person." It must be so wonderful to be liberated from that body.
Q.: You musta been a weird kid, huh?
A.:?? No one ever has ever said that about me because no one thinks that a disabled child could dream and live the life of a dancer.
Q.: How did some totally unrelated previous job prepare you for your current occupation?
A.: Because I came to dance late, people often ask whether my degrees and training have helped in two former careers have helped. I always say not really. It's not strictly true, though, but it is important to me to stress this as gospel. The facts of the courses I took and taught don't matter in my dance career -- nor does it matter that I have published on my subjects. To the extent that I have a background as a semi-professional musician means that I am an experienced performer, but that doesn't make me a good dancer. All the expertise that I have garnered in other walks of life tells me not to assume. Professional level dance is just that. You don't just walk-in and assume that because you kicked ass in your former career that you can be a star here, too. I always say I am a beginner. Because I am. And insodoing, I believe that I respect the years of experience and training that my colleagues have. And I think that it reminds of who and what I am: a beginner.
Q.: So what do you do for a living?
A.: I am employed by my dance company. This is my living. Except that I don't actually earn enough to live on, given where the company is based. All of the dancers take supplemental work. I don't, because I am supported by the Wizard. I hate the connection between work, money, and living. And if you don't know it, I seriously love this awesome essay by Sunny Taylor on work, disability, and living.
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