Allison Unfiltered

Finding art in the commun(ic)al and mundane.

2012-01-26T21:01:40-05:00

At a dinner party attended by artists up the wazoo last week, I heard for the first time about Joseph Grigely, an internationally-known deaf artist who has created works out of the conversations he's had on cocktail napkins and the like (interview with Grigely here, examples of his work here).

I found this interesting for a couple reasons. First, because apparently hearing people find this work enthralling while the rest of us have taken written communication for granted as a medium. Second, because it was the third time I'd heard about such work or ideas. The second time was when I attended Louise Stern's reading performance at Gallaudet -- she's apparently working on something similar.

And the first was when I hung out for the night in a bar with a fellow creative... who was hearing.

Near the end of the night I went to visit the loo, and when I came back I found the middle third of my notebook missing. He'd ripped them out and stolen them and then told me, in a roundabout way, that it was for art's sake. He planned to do something with those pages. I'm still waiting to find out what.

I was a little surprised. That was my notebook, and that was just as much my handwriting as it was his. But I let him have those pages. I would have just thrown them away anyway.

Today I was flipping through said notebook, looking frantically for blank pages to write on while I was in the middle of an interview, and I found this lost fragment from that night. Consider it my drunken, amateur, and meager contribution to this new genre of art.

Cat's out of the bag...

2011-12-14T08:23:31-05:00

...and when I left her last night, kid was alternating between brainmelt and jumping over the moon.

I'm taking this experience as proof that keeping secrets from offspring IS a good thing.

Kid gets her birthday present from Queen Alpo on Vimeo.

What it isn't...

2011-12-10T15:01:28-05:00

I first met Louise Stern when I was a freshman at the student newspaper. She was the features editor, responsible for being in tune with the scenesters in and outside of Gallaudet. I was a seventeen-year-old dork suffering from serious culture shock. I wore baggy all-purpose T-shirts and jeans because I didn't know any better; she wore peasant tops and distressed booties, her hair artfully arranged in a dark, mysterious flip with all the casual nonchalance I assigned to an upperclassman. The only art history major in her consort, she was too sophisticated and worldly and too far out of my league for me to ever have a conversation with her, though we attended the same meetings and knew the same people.

Fast-forward just over a decade. Now a London resident, Louise Stern has published a collection of short stories, Chattering, and founded her own contemporary art magazine for children, Maurice. She's also currently at work on both a novel and a play. I'm stuck over here in the DC area, still recovering from the aftermath of my divorce and battling with the final requirements of my MFA degree and constantly forgetting to call myself a "writer."

Color me jealous.

Or so I thought until I caught a "reading performance" Louise gave at Gallaudet December 1 with her creative collaborator (and ASL interpreter) Oliver Pouliot.

Together, the duo performed a story from her collection that I would later find out was called "The Wild Man." By "performed," I mean it was more theatrical than the other author readings I've attended (and I've attended my share -- Meg Wolitzer and T.C. Boyle, just to name-drop a couple). It was dark except for the front of the room, where track lighting lit up a platform. A photograph of a beached canoe on a tropical island served as the backdrop. Louise and Oliver entered stage right and took up their positions and began the story in ASL. The room went quiet as the story unfolded.

Louise narrated in ASL, with Oliver breaking in at moments with gestures I would call having roots in ASL but universal in their implied meaning. During the Q and A session that followed, I would find out that Oliver performed internal narration moments, and Louise performed the rest of her story. When they were done performing, they walked offstage, leaving us contemplating the empty space they'd left behind.

Hands waved in the air. It was nice.

So here's the thing that shamed me into silence until now: I understood absolutely none of the reading.

Nothing. I got some images, sure. I remember something about a black and white spotted rabbit, and something about three green huts, and I know there was a guy named Victor in the story, but I can't tell you what any of those has to do with anything. As the performance continued, I figured maybe it was one of those instances of "theatrical ASL," where the actors' lines get so stylized that people like me -- someone who isn't a native, yes, but proficient enough in the language that my students sigh in relief when they realize I'm one of them -- are hopelessly lost.

But then the Q and A session began and people started asking Louise questions about the story.

"When Victor saw the boat..." started one. I didn't get the rest of the question because I was utterly freaking out, scrambling to remember: boat? What boat? Ah, they must've read the book before today.

"Sorry, I haven't read the book yet, but... So he threw down the picture of the girlfriend, right? So I was wondering..." Shit... umm, what? There was a picture of a girlfriend?!

Then the discussion took an interesting turn -- people seemed to want to ask questions about Louise's choices -- to include deaf English, to choose a story that wasn't about a deaf character at all for her performance at Gallaudet -- and about how she exemplified what a deaf writer could be.

And this isn't a verbatim quote, but I inferred some frustration on Louise's part as she responded that she didn't necessarily want to write deaf stories for the sake of being deaf, and that if people wanted to question why she wrote things the way she did, they could, but she didn't have to justify herself.

It's a bit of bravado I admire -- so many times I've whined to told people who read my work-in-progress and tell me I need to include more deaf stuff, "but I don't want to! I'm not just deaf! It's boring to me. I just want to write my story!"

But Louise did say something about writing her stories that I found interesting. In English, on paper, the words all have the same sort of level of physical presence. As she turned to her collaboration with Oliver as a way to bring those words alive in the three-dimensional world of ASL, she found it exciting. More than once, she used the phrase "push boundaries" -- that darling of artists everywhere.

That's also something she said that stopped my jealousy cold: she's grown up in a deaf family using ASL, so to see her written work coming back to signs? Exciting!

I grew up with a hearing family using spoken and written and cued English. When it's my turn to breathe life into my words in front of an audience, so far it still looks like my best option is to co-opt a language I learned later in life and rely on a second person to convey my original words to the audience. Not exciting. The opposite of exciting; it feels like a betrayal to my own work.

Since the reading performance, I've bought my own copy of Chattering (which was the first time I knew what the story she performed was called). And experienced sheer relief as the images I saw Louise sign resolved themselves into a narrative I was more comfortable with, securely right there on the page in English. (And I'm happy to report she does do some novel things with the form, so ahead and add Chattering to your to-read list!)

I've blogged before about my frustration with the idea of author readings and what I'll do when it's my turn to present my own work. Seeing Louise, a published writer and accomplished artist, in person and still experiencing her own frustrations even as she finds her outlet, stirred up my own ambivalence. I wish Louise well, though I'll be jealous of her no more. She's carving her own niche out, and I've yet to make a dent in mine, but our works are and will continue to be different.

Ah, well. Oliver said something in the Q and A session that I think describes quite well how I feel about my own writing and the eventual presentation(s) I'll make: sometimes it's easier to describe something by what it isn't than what it is.

Unleash the way you think about communicating

2011-12-06T20:36:23-05:00

Saw this ad for the Samsung SII on a friend's Facebook today and I immediately thought of all the research us deafies have been doing on ASL and of Alan Hurwitz's quote in the WaPo story on Gallaudet that called ASL a "value-add."

Maybe I'm crazy, but after googling finger tutting for myself and seeing Wikipedia call it an interpretative street style, I can't help but think of parallels to the things ASL advocates have been trying to convince the world at large of: there is value in communicating in space, in time, and in visual and tactile ways.

But anyhoo... I'm amazed. In mere seconds this video, titled "Unleash your fingers," abandons the whole need-to-convince framework and jumps into the "wow" realm. Seriously, dudes.

Oh, and one other cool parallel? It's nearly impossible to capture ASL without video. I dare you to find me more links to finger tutting sites that are just text than those that rely on video.

Because the President has to answer too many questions, that's why.

2011-10-23T23:53:08-04:00

Upon seeing the White House in person for the first time in either our lives, this is what my beloved child had to say:

- Why do they need such a big house? There's only the President, the mommy, the daughter, and the sister.

- Why are there so many windows? (Because it's a big house.) Well, WHY DO THEY NEED A BIG HOUSE?! We only have an apartment!

- Why can't we go inside? (Because we need an appointment, we can't just walk in and surprise the First Family at dinner or whatever.) Well, why don't they just go into a room while we go in and look around and when we're done they can come out?

- Why can't we see the daughter's bedroom? (Would you like thousands of people coming into our apartment and seeing your bedroom?) Yes! (Even your underwear?) Mom, that's stupid. I'd put it in a DRAWER.

- Why can't we go in?

- Why are there so many police? (Because people have tried to hurt the president before.) Why don't we tell them to stop? We can reinforce positive behavior and give them something like power bucks. If they behave they can get a prize. What? You mean shoot him? But that's NOT NICE!

- Why can't we go in?

- Is the President home? Can I meet his daughters?

- Are they eating dinner now?

- Why can't we go in?

- How big is the mommy's closet, do you think?

- How many bathrooms does it have?

- They really don't need that many rooms. Let's see, they need three bedrooms, a kitchen, a living room, a room to watch TV... No, that place is TOO BIG FOR THEM.

- Why can't we go in?

- Like, whoah. They have a huge backyard, don't they? No fair.

After a gazillion questions like this, it was such a huge relief to find my standby answer translates quite well when concerning matters of national governance:

- I wish I were the President's daughter. Yeah! I want to be the President's daughter. Can I?

- I don't know, honey. You'd have to ask your father about that, 'cause I don't want to be President.

A pause -- during which I could finally catch my breath. And then:

- But why not?

- *splutter*