Colorblind Sometimes

Last night I saw interdisciplinary hip hop artist Baba Israel perform. The roots of Baba's beatboxing, storytelling and radical pedagogy run deep within his DNA: From the 50s through the 80s, his parents were members of legendary anarchist performing arts ensemble The Living Theatre, and Baba's own work traces a vibrant through-line from his folks' relationships to New York's jazz revolutionaries, Beat poets, Yippee upstarts, squatter cartoonists and avant gardettes, coupled with brushes with his own generation's most talented MCs and DJs of more recent decades.

I sat close so I could see the man more clearly, and was surprised when, 50 minutes in, Baba mentioned his own "white skin." I thought he was mixed, Black and Ashkenazi Jew, but later learned that presumed African half was actually Anglo. And, "Yeah," he later told me when I told him what my head had done, "I get asked if I'm Latino sometimes."

Being a person who sometimes sees only in shadow, I often cannot determine details such as skin tone. In this specific instance, I thought of Adam Mansbach's 2005 novel, Angry Black White Boy, a modern nod to Richard Wright's Native Son and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, but about a white cab driver steeped in hip hop culture. When the cabbie starts robbing businessmen at gunpoint, the papers all report that he's black because those robbed don't see their assailant's skin beyond the barrel of a gun and that B-boy affect in his voice. 

I've been told and consoled, "the blind are also colorblind," but Adam Mansbach and Baba Israel show that the sighted can also be blind. Seeing skin tone and ethnicity is a multi-sensory process, and one infused with judgments based on our own experiences—a brown paper bag test that continuously constructs the façade of race. That façade may be a bit more malleable for someone like me who sometimes doesn't see and can't differentiate subtleties in skin pigment, therefore other senses and experiences must play a bigger part: a voice, a narrative, an accent, a gesture, a stance and all other aesthetics coalesce into a picture of personhood, with my mind sussing up said person's culture and then creating some imaginary color that corresponds to it. For Baba Israel, that color was "black"—not the kind in the Crayola 8-pack, but a complex cultural blackness that could also include swaths of "white" (or pink, or beige, or whatever color "Caucasian" is). But at the mention of his own "white skin", the fictitious pigment began to fade and presumed melanin grew thin.

Colorblind? Sometimes. And sometimes just colorblinded by judgments picked up that I can't quite put down, no matter how hard I let go.

Visible Man, Invisible Man

Today in the train station an Amtrak employee asked a guy with a walker what he wanted from the store—which brand of water he preferred, how salty he liked his pretzels, and so on. Three minutes later she was back with the stuff. He and I were about the same age, but exhibited the visibility of our disabilities differedly: he with walker, I with no black glasses nor white cane.

I'd bought my ticket over the phone to get the visually impaired discount. They always ask if I need assistance, and I say that I don't, even though I can't see the timetable and have trouble finding my track. On the occasions that I have requested assistance, the folks doing the assisting act upon assumptions of extreme incapacity. In airports they just put any person with a disability in a wheelchair and get someone else to roll them to the gate to avoid any mobility mishaps. In a way it's nice to be taken care of, but summary treatment of anyone with a disability can be de-personalizing. 

So when I'm asked, "Will you need assistance?" I have to choose between anonymity and bumbling my way toward the gate, or visibly getting pushed around in a wheelchair with white cane and black glasses in tow. Today I choose to be left alone. Will I choose to be over-assisted tomorrow?

Blind Song #8: "This is how I see you"

Right up there with Mason's earlier post featuring Christine Ha, the video for Lionel Richie's grammy-winning hit "Hello" always got me. Laura Carrington, a fully sighted actor, stars as a blind art student stalked by the love-struck Richie.

"Hello," he croons on an anonymous late-nite phone call, "is it me you're looking for?"

It falls somewhere between tearjerkingly touching and completely creepy, especially when Carrington turns the tables on Richie at the end:

The bust of Richie featured in the video has been the subject of derision in many media. Here's Scottish art student Dylan McCaughtry with his own Lionel bust that he made while blindfolded:

 

A more appetizing version is this 20-pounder, rendered in chocolate:

For links to these and more, check out "The clay head from the Lionel Richie 'Hello' video" Facebook page.

A Crossing Conundrum

In recent years I've seen several cities reclaiming their streetscapes for pedestrians. Half a block from me there's this 5-way intersection that was difficult to cross until a city project expanded the corners and demarcated them with big colorful chunks of granite and these 3-foot wide flower pots with all sorts of plants growing in them. The shorter distance between corners makes for safer street crossing, and I even a sense of ownership as a pedestrian when I sit on the granite slabs with friends surrounded by foliage.

This winter they've been ripping up the corner to do some work on the pipes below the street. When I went to cross this morning, I was confused, not so much because of the bulldozers and road cones and caution tape, but because the giant pots and obelisks had shifted to make room for the work. As I spent time trying to navigate the confusion, I realized that my ability to "see" at that intersection is based mostly on memory. Although I could not draw a map of where those pots and rocks normally are, I've become accustomed to having them as markers of place and safe passage. Move them around and I don't know where I am in relation to what.

Snow Days Are Painful Days

My head is throbbing. And it hurts to look at anything. Even with my eyes closed.

"Snow blindness" is a well known condition that's a specific form of photokeratitis, a painful reaction to ultraviolet light. In the case of snow blindness, snow and ice reflect UV rays from the sun and the cornea responds by becoming inflamed.

The distinction between photophobia (light sensitivity) and photokeratitus is an important one in that it explains why sunny days and incandescent lights are okay for me, but overcast days and fluorescent lights are intolerable. And photophobia goes away as soon as the lights are out, but photokeratitis persists because the inflammation if pulling on muscles all over my face and head.

Still, I love the snow, even when it gives me a migraine.

Atomic Visions

The pixelated banner at the top of this blog shows
how I might see an image made up of smooth lines.

As a kid I was obsessed with atoms. I marveled at how small they were, and how they made up everything in the universe. Also, I hypothesized that I could actually see them with my naked eyes because when I look around, everything I see is made up of tiny, shimmering dots, kind of like the static on an old TV set that congeals into pictures when tuned to the right signal.

Even as a kid I knew that my hypothesis was really just a fantasy. My pixelated vision is likely me seeing my retinas give out, cell by cell. While it's kind of cool to have this dot-matrix view of the world, that constant background shimmer makes me a little less sure of what I'm seeing as my cones gradually give out. But every once in a while, it's fun to pretend that I have superpowers.

Cooperative Coercion

Our neighborhood food co-op was a quirky relic from the 1970s when I joined it: a tiny storefront run by volunteer members, with bulk bins, homemade granola, and prices hand-written in Sharpie marker on the cans, bottles, boxes and bags of grocery items. There were no barcode readers or shelf tags, and no computer on the premises until maybe 2005.

Fast forward a decade to that same co-op (sort of), now run by 50 paid employees in a bigger building outfitted with modern technology, including UPC scanners and PLU codes. Food, and particularly natural/organic food, has gotten a lot pricier, but the co-op joined a network that makes deals to get discounts on certain items, and these are highlighted through email and print marketing, plus big sale signs and stylish product displays like you'd see at Trader Joe's.

Another thing that changed in that decade is my vision: I now have a harder time finding things in any grocery store and I am more likely to buy something that's easier to see. This wasn't an issue in the old co-op when my vision was a little better and everything held equal shelf space, so my eyes were not drawn to some things over others. But the new co-op's sale signs pull my attention solely to those products and I have trouble seeing the others, so I end up buying what's on sale and ignoring the stuff I can't see as well, especially the bulk bins that I often went for in the old store.

Is it just me, or do people who can see better also get sucked into buying what's "on sale", even though there may be better deals elsewhere in the store that just aren't as clearly mark(et)ed? Cuious to know—leave your answer in the comments below.

Blind Song #7: Would You Rather...

Etta James' turn to ask:

"Would you rather go blind,
or see someone you love walk away from you?"

It's an intense proposition, and Beyoncé gets to amp up the melodrama in this cover version—Thanks Hollywood:



What about you? Would you rather go blind than see someone you love walk away from you? If not, you'd be sighted and single, otherwise you'd be blind…and single? Or do you get to keep your relationship in exchange for losing your vision? Leave your answers in the comments below.

A Stigma 'Tis Him

How an astigmatist might see
a Snellen eye chart

In the past day lots of friends asked for the address to this blog.

Thanks for that, friends.

If any post provokes insight, we hope that you'll leave a comment. This is a dialogue.

My vision can obscure knowing who people are. On the street the other day someone said hi to me and I stopped and talked to her for a minute and then said goodbye. I have no idea who she was. Maybe you? Let me know.

And just now a Facebook friend requested the link to this blog. I looked at their profile. "Who the heck is Mike Miles?" The guy in the picture looked vaguely familiar—Someone I met in passing? Who's the woman next to him—Oh! It's my friend Mika. But her boyfriend's name isn't Mike…

Duh. My brain changed Mika's «a» into an «e» because this brain plays the odds that a name starting with "Mik" is going to be "Mike" not "Mika". And then, assuming Mike is male, brain tells eyes to look at the taller person with the most facial hair in the photo, essentially invisibilizing the woman right next to him—you know, the one that I spent six hours a day with last summer? That one.

How my brain blurred out Mika
and invented "Mike"

Many things can factor into astigmatism, a visual condition where a person can look at two equidistant objects and one seems sharper, the other blurrier. It's what optometrists are testing when they ask you to read a bunch of equally sized letters on an eye chart. Faulty cone cells in my retina contribute to my astigmatism—parts of my eye see better than others, so the start of a word might come clear while the end of it blurs, and I may discern one friend's face but not another's even when they're both a few feet away. 

But there's also a component of astigmatism that's taught and learned, like seeing the word "Mike" instead of "Mika." It isn't pure optics, but also experience that leads to bias and a visual preference for the brain chooses to see. Besides favoring "Mike" over "Mika" in print, my brain might have taken visual information from the photo and favored taller over shorter, male over female, and a plethora of other variables based on my own experience growing up and living in this world.

Cultural astigmatism test: What parts
of this sign attract your attention?

In that sense, astigmatism is as much a social construct as it is an optical one. When I walk down a street in Chinatown or West Bengal, it's the Latin characters that pop into my eyes and brain over the Mandarin glyphs or Devanagari script because I grew up speaking English, not Chinese or Bengali.

My own street has many businesses that don't register with me visually because they aren't places that offer things to someone of my gendered and cultural profile. There are African hair braiding and nail salons within a block or two of my home, but because I've got European hair and keep my nails short and plain, I can't tell you how many of these businesses there are or even what streets they're between, even though I might go into shorefronts right next door to them every day.

I'm curious as an astigmatist: Do people with "normal" vision have cultural astigmatism? When you look at this warning sign from India, which scripts and symbols draw your gaze and which do you tune out? Are you more aware of some places and people and things in your environment than you are of others? And how do you see or not see them? Share your thoughts in the comment section below

This is What Cone Dystrophy Looks Like

What I see

What I don't see

What I see that you don't see

That's cone dystrophy for me.

Folks have long asked how I see the world.
I've never been able to describe it completely.
But some friends of mine have. And they don't even know it. 

The Forcefield collective from Providence were adept at capturing the experience of seeing/not seeing/seeing what others don't see. I went to countless happenings at Fort Thunder because the guys from Forcefield who lived and worked there made that experience beautiful—that experience of seeing the unseeable. 

Only now can I articulate that my spotty optical vision felt at home within Forcefield's luminous artistic vision. This video piece of theirs especially captures the progression of cone dystrophy: Imagine seeing everything that you see, but with this superimposed upon it:

I recently re-saw this video piece on a giant screen at the RISD Museum.
Having that going all the time in the background—that's my life in a nutshell.

Savior?

After reading this blog, a friend offered to proofread things for me. She said that she'd spotted typos in an email I'd just sent out to 900 people. Oops.

Discovering errors in my work embarrasses and frustrates me, especially after pouring over every word and sentence and that I write before sending things out. Yet the typos are always there. A proofreader feels like a savior, and like defeat—a resignation to having crossed that line from sightedness into blindness.

I've lived with one foot in each world for so long, and my retinas keep nudging me slowly out of one world and into the other. Is one world better than the other? Or just different?

Blind Song #6: Elton Tom

When we put together a playlist for our Blind Games workshop, we found that depictions of blindness fell into a handful of archetypes. A fascinating one is when blindness gets linked to the supernatural.

In songs of love or devotion, being blinded is usually a metaphor for being struck by some higher power: Tom Waits' "Blind Love", Thomas Dolby's "She Blinded Me With Science", and Springsteen's "Blinded By The Light" are all examples.

Beyond pop songs, in many literary and theatrical traditions, lacking a sense of sight often comes with special abilities attached: Tiresias the blind oracle of Thebes, the blind swordsman in the Zatochi franchise of samurai films, and Marvel Comics' Daredevil all fit into that category of "blind superheroes".

In 1969, The Who brought these theatrical and pop traditions together in their rock opera Tommy, recreated for the screen in 1975. Here Elton John takes a scornful look at Roger Daltrey's superpowers in one of the film's many pivotal scenes:

Blind Birding

Today a friend asked me out for birdwatching.

I explained that I can't really see birds.

"Not even with binoculars?"

Not even with binoculars.

"Well, you must use your other senses then."

Yes. I do.

Give Me an Answer or Give Me a Ride

Today I bought a train ticket. It's a for a trip that I've known about for quite a while, and I also know other people who are going that way at the same time. I've asked them about carpooling and have been waiting for an answer. Meanwhile train fares were increasing, so I just bought a train ticket in case no ride comes through. And if one of the drivers ends up saying that they want to carpool, I can cancel my train ticket, but Amtrak will keep 10% of what I paid on top of what I end up chipping in for gas and tolls. At this point, will a carpool save me money?

It's understandable to have plans hanging in the balance—it happens to me all the time. And also, I'm often at the mercy of people who can drive. I forever feel like a kid in this respect: children are un-abled in many ways through social and physical constraints, and learning to drive is a rite of passage into the ableness of adulthood. Not having that ableness can feel like being trapped in childhood, and every friend with the ability to drive plays the parental role of choosing to offer a ride or not. But this space in between—this maybe—has set me back before. 

Toasted

I didn't see the deli label stuck to the foil of the pastry I popped into the toaster oven. Not until both pastry and label had been toasted. In the past, I've had rubber bands boiled or fried as part of my meal for similar reasons, but I've gotten better at avoiding that.

And yes, the URL of this post reveals that its title was originally "Tosted". Typos are getting progressively more difficult for me to spot.

Blinded by the Light (of a low-vision assistive device)

Taxi in NYC. Screen in backseat shines so bright, speaks so loud. Driver says he can't turn it off. Screen says its for people like me: we who are visually impaired. But  the screen itself is damaging my vision, even though I know the fare.

Nothing But Blue

Today my friend told me that I looked like I was looking through her. With sun in one eye, my brain had to invent information for what I couldn't see. This happens all the time and no one ever knows—not unless I tell them.

The other day in the café I did: Our retinal photographer introduced her friend to us. She was backlit, and after she walked away, I admitted that I couldn't see her face, only her blue blue coat. I think maybe blue is easier for me to see, especially when it's blue blue. 

To Do or Daiya

More than once (and I mean lots) someone has stopped me from eating something that looks moldy. When that person knows me, they find it kind of hilarious that they can see the mold and I can't. And because they are laughing, I'm usually like, "Is this really moldy? Or are they just fucking with me?"

Well today no one was in my kitchen to stop me from eating the vegan cheese that had gone south. It seemed fine yesterday, but had someone been here, would they have stopped me from eating it then? Or the day before? Or the day before that? I swear, I just bought the stuff—It should be fine!

Retinas Enlarged

Here's a picture from Monday's photo shoot:

Curious to know what makes this retina different from others.

Blind Song #5: Un-avoiding Björk

One of the people who came to all three sessions of Blind Games this weekend sent us this musical number from the 2000 film Dancer in the Dark. The first time I saw that film, I sobbed my brains out and then spent two days in bed recovering. No joke.

As a kid whose parents debated whether or not to have a child for risk of passing an eye disease onto him (me), my reaction was a personal one: Björk plays a woman who's losing her vision and trying to raise funds to save her own son from going blind. She faces oppression at every turn—for being disabled, for being a woman, for being an artist, for being an immigrant, for being a single mom, and she also has these lapses into an illusory world that are on one hand a decay of mental health, and on the other hand a fantastic alternate reality filled with color, music and dancing.

I have rarely felt as mortified as I did at the end of Dancer in the Dark when all of Björk's hardships come to a head. It's one of my favorite films and I've avoided it ever since seeing it. Here's to facing fear:

Retinas Exposed

Today we met with our retinal photographer. In a café.

I love taking the clinical experience out of the clinic. Having someone pointing a gun up to our eyes while everyone around us is drinking coffee and tea and playing chess makes the eye exam a more pedestrian affair—a "Café Clinique," like street theatre, subway musicians or a circus in the park, we blur the lines between what is and isn't performance, and also what is and isn't clinical.

No Read, No Reed

In 4th grade I took up clarinet, but gave it up three years later when I got braces. Too much metal in my mouth.

In my early 20s I found a saxophone at a yard sale. They were offering free lessons at a school in Chicago for anyone who passed a music reading test. But by then my vision was failing and I couldn't read sheet music, so I failed the test.

Now I can make noises on a single-reed instrument, but jumping in a band and following along with the sheet music is out of the question, and Rasaan Roland Kirk I am not. 

Blind Car

I can see cars, but never the people inside them, so if someone makes hand motions or other signs from the driver's seat, that communication does not reach me. Tonight I stood on a corner motioning for a car to go, but it wouldn't move. I waved my hands vigorously like a traffic cop, and then amped it up into curtsies and bows, eventually genuflecting gestures that conjured a virtual street-wide red carpet for this car to drive upon. What was the driver doing? I have no idea. The car did nothing. In fact, I'm still standing on that freezing curb, waiting for the car to go.

Blind Games + Blind Song #4

Tonight we hosted the first of three public workshops toward developing this theatre project. For two hours, 32 people interacted through a series of games where some or all of the participants had their eyes closed. These blind games get us in touch with our ability to trust and also to be uncomfortable, and specific games dynamize specific senses. Many of the games worked with the sense of touch, and also with spatial awareness, proprioception and teleception. We played some games to a musical soundtrack, and one game had a soundscape created by half the people in the room guiding the other half through animal-like sounds. But really, this song was everyone's favorite part of the evening:

Blind Song #3: Dr. No

Like all good nursery rhymes, this ditty's roots are politically charged and a tad violent. The first 007 flick brings us full circle and manages to further ridicule blindness:

Blind Song #2: Odd Squad

Formerly blind vision therapist Meir Schneider tells this joke about his home city:

Q: Why is San Francisco so full of potholes?
A: It's braille for blind drivers.

Yep, Meir Schneider drives.

And so does this blind MC.
In more ways than one:

Blind Song #1: Run DMC

Collecting songs that refer to blindness, usually figuratively, sometimes literally:

Unseen Menu = Untasted Lassi

We went to a hip little Indian takeout spot in Manhattan. "Ooh! They have vegan mango lassi!" said my friend who could see the menu. We ordered it, and then she told me, "Oh, they also have one with turmeric, cardamom and crushed almonds." I would've rather had that if I'd known it was there. The mango lassi was nothing special.

First-World Problem: It is a privilege to have choices of what to drink.
And it is also a privilege to see the options.

Ha

A Query

Based on sound alone which animal sounds like it would have the strangest appearance?

Cold Cardboard in the Dark

Cold night in Philly. In the passenger seat of a car, I see people in the middle of intersections holding cardboard signs. What do they say? I cannot see, I cannot say, but I can guess. 

Mason's First Post

Mason is nightblind. He has poor night vision. He finds it hard to read from books because the text is too small and he has to be sitting by a good light source. Reading on a computer screen is in one sense easier (it is illuminated and he can zoom in to make the text very large), but the quality of the light is very harsh and gives him headaches. He likes audio books.

A Fare Race

Today we took the train out to Germantown to perform in somebody's home. A couple of audience members texted and called to say that their bus was running late. Why didn't they just take the commuter train? It's faster, more reliable, and doesn't have to contend with traffic. It's also more expensive, and although this might not be the reason that these folks chose the bus, many people do choose slower transit options to save money. I don't take that into account for myself because public transit is half price for visually impaired people. So if a blind person and a sighted person each pays SEPTA the same fare to get from central Philly to Germantown, the blind person will get there first.

The Sound of Popcorn

Looking for the jar of unpopped popcorn in my friend's kitchen, I found it solely by its sound. Popcorn's percussive quality is far from almonds or oats and utterly unlike rice. 

All I Can See is IKEA

I don't get on buses by myself. Only the subway has stops that are clearly marked. Maybe.

But today I took a bus to Red Hook to go to my friend's dance rehearsal. I was resistant because I sometimes I miss my stop, and sometimes I miss the bus altogether. But I went anyway to overcome these anxieties. She texted me directions—so many directions, so many options. I could either take the IKEA shuttle, which would overshoot my destination by a couple blocks, or the B61, which winds around Red Hook making all the stops en route to IKEA. I ended up boarding the B61 and tracked its progress on my phone, sure that I'd get off close to where I needed to go. And then suddenly, everyone was disembarking and I saw the unmistakable blue and yellow edifice of IKEA. If only Brooklyn's streets were half as well marked as that.

Yelled At in Yoga Class

New York, New York, a sunny yoga studio on the northeast corner of 8th Ave. and 17th St. I'm in the corner of that corner, right in the path of sun coming in from the south. I can't see shit and the instructor doesn't use the words left and right too often. "Morgan! Where's your sail? Can't you see what everyone else is doing?" Yep, the lunge we were just doing had evolved into Warrior III. I came out and squinted around to see people's hands in ten different configurations behind their backs. "Now lower an arm to the ground and stretch the other one up." Which arm? Are we doing Half Moon or the revolved form of the pose? Everyone knew I was the new kid in class, but I didn't walk in advertising my dis/ability with dark glasses, white cane and seeing eye dog. And whether I can see or not, and whether you know that or not, stop shouting at me. Just give everybody the support they need when they need it.

Blinded by the Light

I have a system for cleaning the apartment: back to front. I start in the kitchen, hit the dishes and fridge, trash, compost and recycling, then move onto living room, bathroom, hallway and bedroom. But the other day, I had to scramble the order because sunlight shone a bit too brightly through the kitchen's windows.

Photophobia, literally "fear of light", is one of the many symptoms of Cone Dystrophy. While I've long since gotten over light as a source of fear, I still can't see when things are too bright. So I waited a few hours to clean the kitchen, and then it was too late—it was time to do other things. So the dishes sat, the fridge remained cluttered, and this impeded my ability to prepare meals the following day. 

This doesn't happen all the time, but often enough that I should probably rig up some window shades so that I can just my dishes whenever I please. But I do love the sunlight streaming in through the kitchen windows.

Welcome Rods, Welcome Cones

You have found us: two fellows with two lifetimes of vision and blindness under our brows. One of us grew up with night blindness, the other has been blinded by the light since birth. We met in 2011 and have collaborated on seven theatre projects since, all informed by our unique visions, yet our blindness has remained in the background. Until now.

In 2015, Mason Rosenthal and Morgan FitzPatrick Andrews embark on a new endeavor called Rods & Comes, a play, perhaps, about vision lost and blindness found. We begin this project with a public workshop on January 9th in Philadelphia, and also this journal of all things visual: When do our visual impediments impede us? What are our weird work-arounds to surmount shortsightedness? And how do we see depictions of blindness in the world around us?

Our aim is to document things as they come up, to notice things that normally go unnoticed, and to deeper this dialogue that has thus far been a more casual conversation. If you're here, stick around. And stay tuned for updates on Rods & Cones as it develops.