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Writers, artists, rocks and trees

23 Thursday Jun 2016

Posted by in Travel and deaf

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Sydney Harbour Bridge

John and I leave Armidale early in the morning, heading south. The day before, on our drive through Uralla, Ginny pointed out Moons Bakery, open from 4.00am and a truckies’ favourite. But it’s still too early for us to think about food.

The roads are quiet and we make good time. We pass through Murrurundi and hit racehorse country. The vast Emirates Park, with a picture of a horse and jockey on its stone gateway, has black post and rail fences. I’m surprised. Aren’t these fences usually white? What’s with this rebellious black?

We come into Singleton in the Hunter Valley and see coal trains and power stations. From Singleton we take Putty Road to Windsor, through the mountains and forest, a quiet narrow two-way road with little traffic.

The road seems to go on forever, up and down mountains, winding and straightening out and winding again, with beautiful views over the mountains. We are in the Hawkesbury Valley now. Finally we come into Windsor and stop at nearby Richmond for a break. It was a beautiful drive for me but exhausting for John.

Still, as Breda and I later agree, rather this quiet endless road than the racetrack that is the Pacific motorway into Sydney.

From Richmond to Springwood in the Blue Mountains we take Hawkesbury Road up the mountain on hairpin bends, it’s breathtaking. We pull into a lookout and through the smoke haze see Sydney’s towers in the distance.

I’ve been to Springwood many times. When I worked for Deaf Australia, I often stayed here with Breda and Cameron, getting the 7.30am train to Sydney each day with Breda, but John hasn’t been here before.

We drive around looking for a supermarket, I know there is one on the main street but I can’t seem to see it. Eventually we find one on a back street but the shelves are almost completely bare, as if there is some impending disaster and everyone has raided the shop. We’ve never seen a supermarket like this. What’s going on? Later Cameron tells us he’s surprised the store is still open, it’s been going out of business for months. He also tells us where the other supermarket is and I can’t believe I missed it.

After managing to find some supplies to contribute to the household pantry, we find Cameron, Taffy the dog and Kasha the host student at home. Breda isn’t due home for a few hours and Rowan has just left for work, delivering pizzas in this his gap year.

The back deck is the perfect place for a late afternoon tea. I love this house, it’s very Breda and Cameron and it backs onto the Blue Mountains national park with wonderful peaceful views of mountains, trees and changing light. Today we have a glorious pink sunset.

I’ve previously met Kasha when talking with Breda on Skype, and it’s good to meet him in person. He boards here for school terms but is going home for an extended weekend. Deaf community families often have deaf students boarding with them like this so they can attend a school that best suits them. We chat about school and home, he seems a nice, friendly, confident teenager. It always gives me hope, for deaf people, for the deaf community and the future, when I chat like this in Auslan with young deaf people.

This is a bilingual household where everyone uses both English and Auslan to varying degrees of fluency. Breda, Kasha and I are deaf, Cameron, Rowan and John are hearing. No one gets excluded and conversation is wide-ranging and animated.

Kasha leaves early next morning and Breda, John and I get an early train down to Sydney, leaving Cameron to work at home on his video productions.

We are going to the Sydney Writers’ Festival, a major reason John and I have made this trip.

Breda and I had been so excited to learn the organisers would provide some interpreted sessions. Two keynotes and a couple more, they said. We interpreted this optimistically and pored over the program, sending in our list.

Oh no, came the reply. All sessions in one venue are being live captioned, so they really could only stretch to a total of three interpreted sessions in addition to the two high-profile keynotes.

Over four days!

Most of the festival program is free but the captioned sessions have an entrance fee. We are so disappointed. But still, we are going. But only to the free sessions. Why should we have to pay for access? Other people at the festival don’t have to.

Today’s interpreted session is about history writing. Breda enjoys it. Although history interests me, I struggle to stay awake. John is unimpressed.

Breda goes to work and John and I stroll along the waterfront from Walsh Bay, under the Harbour Bridge towards Circular Quay. There is a cruise ship in port and everything looks so splendid: the sparkling water, the big white ship, the Opera House, Circular Quay with its ferries and background of skyscrapers. We stop at the Rocks for lunch at the Munich Brauhaus before catching a ferry to Watson’s Bay – because it’s the next one leaving and because being on a boat on the harbour is my number one thing to do in Sydney. Some smoke from burnoffs in the mountains hangs over the harbour but it’s a beautiful sunny day and we drink it in, standing in the boat’s prow, the wind in our hair.

In the 1980s I lived for a year at Neutral Bay and worked at the University of NSW, getting a ferry and a bus to work each day. In the winter dark I’d often sit out on the ferry deck on the trip home, rugged up against the cold, looking at the city lights, the Harbour Bridge, the Opera House, and the clear night skies and watching the seagulls flying along beside the boat, and I’d fall in love all over again with this glorious harbour.

To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, anyone tired of Sydney Harbour is tired of life.

We get the 2.48pm train back to Springwood. I want John to see how spectacular the mountains are in the late afternoon light, but he falls asleep!

“It’s just rocks and trees!” he says. “It’s not like it’s Niagara Falls!”

Next morning, while everyone else works, John and I drive to Faulconbridge, the next town up the mountain, and visit the Norman Lindsay Gallery. http://www.normanlindsay.com.au/

Wandering through the gallery, admiring the incredible art, mostly of nudes, John turns to me and says, “This bloke was a sex maniac!” But he’s impressed.

Lindsay’s talent was very broad: drawing, painting watercolours and oils, etching, sculpture, writing and even model ship building.

The gallery is in the house where he lived. It’s a lovely white sandstone house with big rooms and high ceilings, verandas with columns, a grape arbor along one side, and a large detached kitchen connected to the house by an enclosed walkway with sculpture courtyards on either side. In the grounds are sculptures, fountains, a painting studio, an etching studio and a café. This artist was surely not impoverished.

We take the path down to the swimming pool at the edge of the bush. It is empty of water and a little overgrown with grass but it’s easy to imagine how magnificent it was in its heyday. It is enormous, the concrete edge on the opposite side looking out over the mountains like an infinity pool. Beside the steps down to it are curved stone terraces like an ancient amphitheatre.

“Imagine how many people might have sat here watching the goings-on in the pool!” John comments.

We catch an early afternoon train down to Sydney where I meet up with Breda at Walsh Bay for the second interpreted Writers’ Festival session. John goes off to do his own thing for an hour, he’s had enough, he says, of writers pontificating.

Breda and I both enjoy this session, especially Don Watson talking about how management-speak (‘agile’, ‘impact’) is taking over our everyday use of language. We duck out a little early to dash for the train at Circular Quay, via what feels like a million stairs through the Rocks.

At Town Hall we weave our way through the crowds outside, to find our seats to see Gloria Steinem in conversation with Jennifer Byrne. John and several deaf people are already there and Cameron joins us soon after.

We have front row seats, reserved because we need to be able to see the Auslan interpreter. Being deaf does on occasion come with extra benefits – and it doesn’t hurt our hearing partners either!

Sydney Town Hall is magnificent, with soaring organ pipes, a gallery above, leadlight and beautifully ornate embellishments. Tonight it is packed. This event has sold out.

Gloria Steinem is inspiring. Even John is engrossed. She talks about her latest book, My life on the road; her childhood with a father who packed the family into the car each year, moving them to a new place; and her own choice as an adult to spend a lot of time on the road, meeting, listening to and working with people.

Afterwards Breda, Sofya and I buy her book and join a long queue. Ahead of me I see Yvonne, a woman I knew many years ago when I lived in Sydney. I catch her eye, she excuses herself from her friends, and we catch up while the queue slowly moves us towards the marvellous Ms Steinem, who signs my book and smiles when I say and sign ‘thank you’.

Across the road we join the rest of our group at a restaurant in the resplendent Queen Victoria Building. Champagne is poured and we drink in celebration with Alastair McEwin, on his appointment as the new Disability Discrimination Commissioner, which he is due to take up in July. We are all so excited to see one of our own take on this influential role.

But Al is still Al, this guy from Adelaide we’ve known for so many years, still making us laugh. We tell him he’s going to have to watch himself now, people will be watching him.

It’s a deaf community goodnight – the “long goodbye” – and we have to run for the train but we make it home just before midnight.

It’s been a great night. All these people I’ve not seen for a while, Gloria Steinem’s enthusiasm for life at 82 and the promise for the future that Al’s appointment brings, fill me with optimism.

Killing saucepans

27 Thursday Nov 2014

Posted by in Culture and deaf

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This morning I almost killed a saucepan. It’s the sort of thing that happens sometimes in a deaf person’s life.

While I waited for my breakfast egg to boil, I ate some blueberries and yoghurt, sipped a cup of tea and browsed through a new book about women’s sheds, a gift from a friend. Engrossed in this marvellous book, I suddenly smelled something burning. And I remembered my egg.

Fortunately it hadn’t quite boiled dry, the egg was still delicious and the saucepan survived.

Lots of things like this have happened in my life, some with a worse outcome.

As uni student in the 1970s, my soft contact lenses had to be sterilised daily by boiling within a special container in a pot of water. One morning I put them on to boil and sat down to study. The lenses and their container had boiled dry and melted before I smelled them and remembered.

And I once flooded my sister’s kitchen.  About to wash up, I was distracted by friends walking by inviting me to join them on a twilight walk and off I went, forgetting that the tap was running and the plug was in the sink.  My sister, who was out at the time, returned soon afterwards, to find water pouring out her back door.  She was not amused!

When you’re deaf you don’t hear things boiling on the stove, taps running and all sorts of other things.  So over the years I have learned to be more mindful of what I am doing but still occasionally I slip up. Like this morning.

The fact that I don’t hear can sometimes have quite scary impacts. One morning, as a student living in a shared house in Townsville, I put my washing on in the laundry under the house and went upstairs to get ready for the day. Just as I began brushing my teeth a terrible banging began vibrating through the house. Shocked, I dropped the toothbrush into the sink and rushed downstairs.

There the washing machine gently thunk-thunked, oblivious to the drama.

Not the washing machine then.

I raced back upstairs. Frantically I went through the kitchen and living room, running my hands over every appliance, everything mechanical in the house, trying to locate where this terrible banging was coming from. Home alone, I considered running to fetch a neighbour to come and tell me what it was.

Be calm, I told myself. Think. Look. I stood in the living room where I could see into most rooms in the house and slowly looked around me, focussing. My eyes came to rest on the bathroom sink tap. It was still running. It was the only thing moving. I walked back into the bathroom and put my hand on the tap. I turned it off and the banging stopped. I turned it back on and the banging started up again.

Enlightenment arrived.  The water pipes!

Nowadays I recognise vibration in the water pipes as soon as I turn on an offending tap and this is one of those stories that is funny afterwards. I dined out on it for years. But at the time, as a young and inexperienced person home alone, it was quite terrifying.

For those who believe every deaf person should have a hearing aid or cochlear implant, these are probably wonderful stories to endorse that belief.

But I don’t see it that way.

While some people who use hearing aids or cochlear implants can hear and understand a lot, for many, sounds are not easily recognisable.

I once worked with a woman whose hearing aid was annoyingly unhelpful for recognising sounds.  If I coughed or dropped something on my desk her head would pop up with a ‘What? What was that?’ alarmed expression on her face.  It perplexed me why she bothered with this useless hearing aid.

To me these experiences indicate that we all need to learn life skills that suit our circumstances.  And we do learn them.

Sometimes if I’m feeling lazy I’ll ask a hearing family member if the washing machine has stopped spinning yet, but I get quite annoyed if I haven’t asked and someone tells me it has stopped or that the kettle has boiled.  It’s as if they think I can’t cope.

As deaf people, we experience our environment differently to hearing people.  It’s not always easy to articulate these differences or for hearing people to imagine them and help deaf children learn life skills that are different to their own.  Often, quite simple differences.

Out in the car one day, I reminded my husband to turn off the lights as we emerged from one of Brisbane’s road tunnels.  He told me something I didn’t know: when he turns the engine off the car beeps if the lights are on.  So while my hearing husband relies on the car to remind him, I rely on a little routine I have established: enter tunnel, lights on; exit tunnel, lights off.  It works for me.  His way works for him.

Many of these life skills we develop with experience over time. Many we can learn from each other by sharing stories from our own lives. The different ways we do things and the stories we tell about them become part of our deaf culture.

Sharing these stories with each other validates and normalises our experiences. This is one of the things that is most valuable for deaf children when they grow up with other deaf people of various ages in their lives.

Some things we just learn best by being with people like us. Much of what will help us on our life’s journey is communicated just by doing things together and by sharing stories. Stories about things like almost killing saucepans.

Do you have any ‘killing saucepans’ type of stories that you would like to share here?

There’ll be music and dancing

10 Monday Nov 2014

Posted by in Culture and deaf

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IMGP3303Last week I went to the ballet and was reminded of a question I was asked a couple of years ago: how to make ballet accessible for deaf people.

I have been a ballet subscriber for decades. It has never bothered me that I don’t hear the music. I see the dance.

When I lived in Sydney in the 1980s and early 1990s I subscribed to the Australian Ballet. Here in Brisbane I enjoyed the Queensland Ballet for years under the brilliant French artistic director Francois Klaus. When he retired two years ago, Li Cunxin became artistic director and Queensland Ballet was reinvigorated; its standard and popularity grew.

Li Cunxin is famous for his autobiography, Mao’s Last Dancer. What is perhaps less well known is that he and his Australian wife Mary Li have a daughter who is deaf: Sophie.  I met Sophie, a delightful young woman, last year at a 4Senses music gig organised for Deaf Australia by a team of hearing volunteers who wanted to make live music accessible for deaf people.

4Senses was held three times over two years and was always a wonderful event. The music was loud and made more accessible by balloons to hold against one’s body, subwoofers to sit on and feel the vibrations, and artistic visual interpretations and captions on big screens; and the lyrics were interpreted into Auslan. But 4Senses never made much money and the number of deaf people attending was always disappointing.

Although there are deaf people who love music, it isn’t a big part of life for most. It just isn’t something we relate to. It isn’t part of our culture. It isn’t part of our environment.

This was brought home to me many years ago when I lived alone. During a dinner party a hearing friend remarked on how quiet it was without music playing in the background.  It hadn’t occurred to me to play music. I didn’t even own any music or anything on which to play it.

So it was hard work convincing deaf people that an event like 4Senses was worth attending.

Many hearing people struggle to understand this. For them, music is so beautiful, why wouldn’t deaf people want to be able to hear it or at least access it any way we can?

I’m one of those deaf people who like music. I learned Scottish Highland dancing as a child and was learning to play the piano when I became deaf at the age of nine, so I had a basic grounding in music’s loveliness.

Living in Sydney in my twenties and thirties, a group of us, mostly deaf people, often had parties at 204, a friend’s house in Summer Hill, affectionately known by its number. 204 parties always had loud music.

One friend in particular, an actor at the time with the Australian Theatre of the Deaf, was a brilliant sign singer. Although I’m not a fan of sign singing because it is seldom done well, I adored his sign rendition of Money changes everything and at almost every party I’d pester him to perform it.

In my late thirties and early forties I had piano lessons again and learned to play a little. I loved it but it’s hard to learn this sort of thing when you’re older.

My piano teacher, Bernice, who is 83 now, subscribes with me and another hearing friend to the Queensland Ballet. (And next year we’ll be joined by a deaf friend. Yes!)

In the interval at the ballet last week we were discussing Gough Whitlam’s memorial service, held the day before, and how much we all love the song Jerusalem. I love the lyrics but am not familiar with the music. I asked Bernice if she could teach me to play it or if the music would be too complicated for my piano abilities.  She said she would rewrite it for me in a simpler version. How lucky I am to have such a beautiful friend!

But my interest in music isn’t overly profound. I don’t hanker for it or lament my inability to hear it. I don’t even much notice its absence. I am used to not hearing music. I am used to being able to feel only its vibrations and rhythms and, through the piano, to some extent its melodies.  I take what I can from it and enjoy that and that is enough for me.

At the ballet it is enough for me that I see the dance; I don’t think about missing out on the music, I just enjoy the dancing.

When we were organising the first 4Senses gig, my hearing husband, who loves music, commented that deaf people don’t know the lyrics or understand the culture that surrounds music. I’d never thought of that before and I was quite stuck by his comment.

It seems to me that more than the music itself, what’s important for deaf people is understanding the cultural aspects of music, especially its lyrics.

What I like about Jerusalem is its rousing battle cry, the soaring call to action in its lyrics. I want to learn to play the music because I want to feel how (I imagine) it soars for those marvellous words: Bring me my bow of burning gold! Bring me my arrows of desire!

And it interests me that the lyrics are a poem written by William Blake, that in this song, Jerusalem is a metaphor for heaven, a place of universal love and peace. It was such a marvellous final song for Gough!  These are the things that we deaf people need to learn about, not so much to hear the music.

So last week as I sat watching the ballet I remembered that question asked of me at the beginning of Li Cunxin’s directorship, when the Queensland Ballet’s CEO contacted me at Deaf Australia, where I was then Executive Officer. We arranged to meet to discuss ideas, but for various reasons, several meetings had to be cancelled and we never did meet.

To be honest, even though I adore ballet, in the context of the large number of issues Deaf Australia is called upon to advocate, it wasn’t a high priority.

Last week’s ballet event was a number of short pieces by new and emerging choreographers, held in the studio. It was an up close and personal evening. We sat closer to the dancers than is possible in a theatre.

We watched as Li coached two dancers through a rehearsal session. We listened as Li and a choreographer explained aspects of their dance creations and the audience asked questions.

Well, other people watched, listened and asked questions. I watched. And I rather wished I had met with the CEO two years ago. It would have been wonderful to have an Auslan interpreter there in the studio.

I guess it’s time for me to talk with Queensland Ballet in my own interests as a subscriber.

Do you have other ideas for how we can make ballet and the culture that surrounds music more accessible for deaf people?