Reid My Mind

— Sound of water running from a sink, filling up an electric teapot.

TR:
One day, earlier this year, I’m in the middle of doing my thing… Whichever one of those things,
when I wanted a cup of tea.
As I waited for it to boil, I took out my phone.
This is one of the times when I’ll occasionally launch Twitter.
I don’t really spend much time on that platform like I used to.
And yes, I’m still calling it Twitter.

With a few minutes to spare, it’s a convenient distraction.
Swipe, swipe, swipe through the nonsense and then
I came across a tweet.
[Record Roz’s tweet]

Hmm! A young Blind person narrating AD?

That’s a story for Flipping the Script on Audio Description, right here on this podcast.

I’m Thomas Reid, your host and producer…. this is Reid My Mind Radio.
— Sound of teapot boiling

It’s tea time!

— Reid My Mind Radio Intro

Music: A calming ambient melody

TR
Act One

Why not?

TR:
After reading the tweet about Eleanor, the 12 year old Blind describer, I immediately reached out to the author of the tweet, Roz Charmer.

Roz:
I come from the UK. My pronouns are she her? I’m in my 60’s, I’ve got silver hair, and I’m wearing pink glasses. And I’m sitting in front of a microphone in a very tiny little booth at the moment.

TR:
Roz is an audio description professional.

Roz:
I started years ago at the National Theatre in London. And since then, I’ve sort of broadened my field to do things like circus and ballet and contemporary dance and opera. And I’m now really concentrating on working with small organizations where it seems that people don’t get the opportunity to hear about the new writing and the new performances.

My main focus is theater. I do do film and TV, but it tends to be for independents rather than for the big guys.

TR in Conversation with Roz:
And you write as well as narrate. Correct?

Roz:
Yes.

TR in Conversation with Roz:
So, tell me a little bit about how you met Eleanor.

Roz:
I work in a theater called the Old Vic, which is I think about the oldest Theatre in London at over years old.
The Old Vic does a Christmas show. It’s Charles Dickens Christmas Carol. And there is a character in it called Tiny Tim who is disabled in the story and in actual life. And they use three or four disabled children to play Tiny Tim. And Eleanor is one of those and has been I think she did three years running.

I met her at touch tours. And she is also a very ardent audio description consumer. So, she comes to a lot of shows that I’ve described. So, I got to know her through that.

Eleanor:
Hi, I’m Eleanor Stollery. My pronouns are she her, and I am 13 years old.

TR:
They grow so quickly! When I read the tweet, she was only!

First, a little background on Eleanor’s history with AD from a consumer point of view.

Eleanor:
So, when I listen to TV, there’s audio description on all the time. Mummy and daddy try and take me to as many theater shows as we can.
That are available and we can afford.

It’s a vital, vital thing for me, if there’s something that’s not audio described on TV, we will change over that. It’s, it’s sort of part of my lives now.

TR in conversation with Eleanor:
Do you by any chance, remember your first experience with audio description?

Eleanor:
Oh, gosh. I think my first experience was a Disney film. I lost my sight when I was about three or four. So, it was probably a year and a half into my sight loss.
So, it was a big change. But it’s a normal thing for me now.

I talked to my friends about it. And they say, Oh, Don’t you find it annoying. And I’m like, no, because it helps me so much.

TR in conversation with Eleanor:
You remember when you were three? You’re closer to three than I am.

Elanor laughs.

TR:
Eleanor wasn’t only interested in taking in film and theater.
By eight years old, she was performing in school plays and local drama clubs.

Eleanor:
I’ve always loved singing and acting and mimicking people’s voices and that kind of thing.

But there was an open audition for Christmas Carol, and I’d recently finished a regime of chemotherapy. And we had a quite a tough time. And my Mommy and Daddy were like, Why don’t we just do it?

TR in conversation with Eleanor and Tim:
Tim, dad, was that you who was like, Hey, let’s just go try it?

Tim
Yep, pretty much. Obviously, I can’t do anything without the approval of the other half Kelly. But we wanted to do something Just as a distraction from all that our daughter was going through and having to put up with.

I think we knew that Eleanor liked performing. We could get her even as a very young child to repeat words, which a child of her age wouldn’t necessarily know.
She would take direction very well. So perhaps it stemmed from that, we thought that she’d enjoy the experience.

So, we thought why not? Let’s go and see how an audition for a West End Show works.

To our complete amazement, she ended up getting the part and at such a prestigious theater.

Eleanor:
And I got a second audition.
It was an amazing experience, like you’d imagine it to be. And I got the part which was amazing.

I’ve done that for three years consecutively. And then after my first year, I got an agent. And she put me forward for some roles. And then I got a voice part in a cartoon called Milo, which is on Channel Five in the UK.

— Opening theme for “Milo”

Eleanor:
That kind of got me into the voiceover part of acting. Which then led to more auditions and just the crazy world of acting and performing.

— Scene from Milo:
Lark” (Voiced by Eleanor)
Then we saw how Lofty and Farmer tilly work as a team. So, we started to play together. And we won!

Music: A calming ambient melody

TR:
Act Two
Nothing About Us Without Us

TR:
Performing in the role of Tiny Tim for three years, professionally voice acting and auditioning, without even considering it consciously, Eleanor was perfectly positioning herself for an opportunity.

Roz:
We were doing a show called The witches. It’s based on a book by Roald Dahl. It’s a big musical and its child based. It’s a family show. And a lot of the people in it are children.

I was describing it with Andrew Holland, who is my colleague and who actually taught me everything I know.

We were going to do three performances of it. And one was going to be a school performance. So it was thought that we could use a child’s voice for the school’s performance.
I didn’t want to do a school performance without having the input of a blind child.

TR:
The importance of authentic casting can never be understated.
When it comes to audio description that not only applies to the voice of the narrator,
it also means Blind quality control or having a member of the target audience review the script.

David:
We’d had a production at the globe of a retelling of Cymbeline. It was in present day dress and the young people in the audience who are visually impaired are very keen to know what footwear the different characters were wearing.

So back to the fact that a different sort of Crillon, or father Gail gave a sense of status and Elizabethan times, it was evident that for these teenagers, the different trainers that were being worn gave a sense of status in the modern time. And that hadn’t been mentioned because it wasn’t a consideration of us to describe it.

We weren’t viewing the world through that sense of what was important in the costume to a young person.

TR:
That’s David Bellwood.

David:
My pronouns are he him. I’m something year old. Sis, white man, non-disabled. I think that’s an important thing to point out.

I am the head of access at the National Theatre, so I am responsible for the experience of Deaf, disabled and neurodivergent people who have contact with the National Theatre on any level. So that might be as members of staff, it might be as scholars or students. It might be visitors to our theaters, it might be actors, it might be people who watch our work online or in the cinema, it might be people who have popped into the foyer for a coffee or gone into our bookshop, or when to hire costumes. So there’s quite a range of points of contact. But the fundamental piece is try to make sure that we deliver something like equity to deaf, disabled neurodivergent people in all the work that we do.

Roz:
And I knew Eleanor and I knew she was a theater goer.

Eleanor:
And she said, Hey, I’m working on the witches. It’s a kids play, would you like to consult on the script? And I was like, oh, yeah, that’ll be great to help other kids. You can sit there as an adult and go, oh, a child might not understand that word. But you’ll never get as good as a child who sort of remembers not understanding those words? Or, you know, still doesn’t? There were a few words in that script, where I was like, what does that word mean? Even as a 12, 13 year old. And the youngest children there were eight. So you can imagine, there were a few words in there that I thought they wouldn’t understand. But to begin with, it was just a consulting role. And I was just going to help edit the script and work out what would make sense and what wouldn’t.

TR:
In 2020, Warner Brother’s released the film adaptation of The Witches starring Ann Hathaway.
Response from the disability community quickly followed due to the portrayal of the witches
as having split hands, or a limb difference having fewer than five fingers or toes.
Fortunately, the National Theater was taking a different approach.

David:
We had the script of the witches leant away from anything that could or potentially resemble disability, the audio description needed to parallel that care, and that attention to detail.

We have a young person, which provides us with a prism of what’s important. We have a young person who’s an incredibly talented actor and deliver operation. And we have a young person who understands best practice and audio description. So sort of notes from Roz going ;

Roz:
Well, why don’t we use Eleanor?

David:
So we did.

Eleanor and her father was like, Yes, we can do this gonna be great. It’s scary, but it’s exciting.

Roz:
So then it was really a question of…
Roz and David in time:
how are we going to do this?

David:
How would we do it?

— Music begins: A creschendoing swoosh culminates to … “Stop” Q-Tip “Breathe & Stop” followed by a fun, upbeat, high energy Hip Hop groove.

TR:
Hey! Many of you have been asking how you can support the podcast!

Here’s two ways to do that …

Reid My Mind Radio Merch!

T-Shirts, hoodies, Coffee Mugs and more….

All With Reid My Mind Radio inspired themes:

— Sample: “Check this Out”
— Sample: “One”

For those of us who are serious about our AD, say it with your chest!

An Audio Description icon with the letters AD, is accompanied by the phrase “Snob Squad” in capital letters.
Beneath in quotes is the text: Quality First.

— Sample: “Two”

If you want humans creating all aspects of your AD.
Say it with your chest!

In a black-and-white nutrition label, the text reads:
100% ORGANIC
Text below reads: Audio Description is for Humans
Underneath, in all caps, it says, “GET THE AI OUT OF HERE!!

no artificial intelligence added.
On the bottom center is a QR Code.

— Sci Fi data transmission
— Keyboard typing
— R E I D M Y M I N D dot C O M

Guess where the QR Code leads you!

— Sample: “Three”

. Of course, there’s the classic.

Audio Description is More than entertainment

— Sample: “Four”

. And just to represent for the podcast…
Official!!!
Reid My Mind Radio Family!

— Sounds of a digital camera taking pictures

Consider posting a picture in your shirt.
Don’t forget the image description.

— Sounds of a digital camera taking pictures

Get as creative as you like with it!
Tag @ReidMyMindRadio on FB or IG.
@tsreid on Twitter.

And!

If you want to buy me a coffee or a tea, , you can do that too.

To support!

Visit ReidMyMind.com/Support

And with all sincerity, your support is greatly appreciated.

Now let’s
— Sample: “Stop” Q-Tip
here and get back to the episode!
Music Ends
—
Music: A calming ambient melody

TR:
Act Three
Break it down!

TR:
Let’s break the narration process down into small manageable chunks.

— “Sample: Break”
Music begins: An exciting, upbeat electronic dance tune.

TR:
First, accessing the information or reading the script.

Eleanor:
I didn’t want to use one hand to read Braille, because that would take ages. Some parts in that show are very fast. And I had to read the line quite quickly. It had to be super speedy.

I used paper script of Braille, just so that I could be more fluent, and, faster and not knowing no other sort of sounds from the audio description box

So we did a couple practice runs before the actual show, where just a couple of people from the National Theatre and my mummy sat in the audience and just listened to it.
And they said, there was one point where the line went over an actor speaking maybe we need to cut that one down. So we cut the script down a lot, but there was still just over lines for me to read during that whole show.

TR:
Practice makes perfect. Eleanor did the first half in one sitting. Then the second and eventually did the entire performance once or twice on her own before the big day.

Eleanor:
Very, very stressful. But at the same time I was so happy that it all went well.

TR:
It’s live theater, stress comes with the job.

Roz:
When you’re doing live theater, it’s a very fluid piece of work, because you might get a very enthusiastic audience one night, and they’ll be clapping for a long time. And then you might get one that only claps for a short time. And then the actors on stage come in a bit quicker. We had children, and they were absolutely going wild. They were laughing, they were really having a great time. So sometimes, the actors had to sort of do a bit of filler work before they could actually say their line because it just wouldn’t be heard. And in that case, I had to give Eleanor some ad libs to do, so people wouldn’t feel that they were being left behind. And they knew what The rest of the audience were laughing at at the same time as they did.

TR:
You might think the way to handle these situations would be for Roz to serve as a secondary narrator covering the spontaneous description.

Roz:
no, no, I would just give her the words.

We talked about it beforehand. And I said there will be these pinch points. We knew where they were likely to be. And I said, I may just come in. And if I come in, I’m going to give you just a couple of words. And I’d like you to deliver it in the way I give it to you.

So if I said something like, his head drops off, she would do his head drops off. So it was exactly the same kind of delivery.

TR:
Timing changes may not always require new description, but rather a prompt to read a particular line.

Roz:
each line of description was given a letter. So the first line was A, the second line was B.

Because it’s live theater, somebody didn’t do something. . We just don’t say that line. But I had to give her the next line and tell her to jump D. Next one E

she had to react really quickly.

Music Ends
— Sample: “Break”

TR:
Imagine for a moment, you’re enjoying a live performance at a theater with audio description.
You’re really into this performance when all of a sudden, after the narrator provides a bit of description and the actors continue with their dialog, you hear;
— Newspaper paper rustling
— A person coughing
— sniffling and someone blowing their nose

TR:
Or Worse!

— Silly fart sound

TR:
You just can’t over state the importance of assuring the narrator closes the microphone in between their narration. I’m just saying! Silly Mischievous giggle)

Eleanor:
We worked out a way that I could read the script, and go out to the audience, because in a normal audio description scenario, the audio describer would have a fader, which would mean they would need another hand to move the switches and press buttons and stuff. But obviously, I needed to read Braille.

The amazing sound people at the National Theatre came up with a system where I used a foot pedal to Cue my voice and go out to the audience.

David:
See, this is the technical wizardry of the sound department.

They could make sure that the audience didn’t hear any click on click off, which often happens when mics are switched. So it did perform the same purpose as the fader

The pedal was vital, because Eleanor was receiving vocal cues from Roz , so if the fader was up, at any point, the audience would have heard Roz give a vocal cue. So the technical accuracy of Eleanor’s delivery, relied on the two of them working in tandem, to make sure that the audience never heard that vocal cue. But did hear the complete line of audio description. They actually nailed it. Absolutely. Nailed it. But it wasn’t no easy task.

Eleanor:
It was a great idea. And it really, really worked.

There were a lot of people helping us work out how to do this, which was great. We got a lot of support.

TR in conversation with David:
Yeh, I’d be curious to see if others adapt to the foot pedal approach. That’d be interesting. Because that’s what usually happens with access. Right? It becomes something that works for everyone.

David
yeah, I think that’s right.

You’ve made a good point. I will actually tomorrow make sure that they’re aware of it.

Music: A calming ambient melody

TR:
Act Four
The bigger picture!

TR:
Act Four – The Bigger Picture

TR:
Audio description is more than entertainment!

Meaning, there’s a bigger picture.

For example, Roz wasn’t just concerned about the performance,
she understood the importance in making sure that Eleanor wouldn’t become discouraged by the process.

That’s real support.

Roz:
She was so excited. And she was so enthusiastic and she was so enjoying the process. And she was very concentrated while we were working.

Eleanor:
The first half was the very upbeat, very fast half, and the second half it calmed down a little bit. So once I got through that first half, I was like, I’m okay, now. I’ve got this.

Roz:
She knows her abilities. And she knows how to communicate those abilities to people. She knew what she was doing.

I mean, she wants to do it again. And I would have absolutely no hesitation in working with her again, she was all smiles most of the time.

TR:
Focusing on the bigger picture helps you recognize the blurred line between who is giving and receiving support.

Roz:
It was a very much two way process, because she was learning from me, but I was learning from her. And we were both new to this. Neither of us had done it before.

I’ve worked with disabled describers. But I hadn’t worked with anybody who was blind before, as a describer. So we were feeling our way all the time.

I think what she was teaching me was, how she negotiated something for the first time and how she negotiated it herself. And what I was trying to do was to just listen, and find out where her fears were.

TR in Conversation with Roz:
why is this important? In general and to you?

Roz:
I do believe that we’ve a long way to go before we have authentic voices. People who actually represent the piece that is out there.

It’s important for me to be able to say this is something that is missing within the audio description field.

It was important to get a child because I think in the witches, I would have been the witch. I’m the old woman who is talking into your ear. And we wanted to actually represent the fact that it was a child story.
And it was told through a child’s mind. So even an adult I think listening would have had a different perspective.

It means now we’ve worked through a lot of the issues, we’ve solved a lot of the problems.

I’d like to be able to share it with people and let them know that this is possible. Anything is possible if you’ve got the will.

TR:
Of course, there’s no one solution for every situation.

We’re talking about creating an environment for success. That’s the blue print.

Roz:
Somebody’s got to be first, somebody’s got to trust. Somebody who is running a theater group has got to trust the fact that this is possible. And it’s going to give a good experience to the audience.

#TR
Again, the bigger picture.

Tim
With live theater, we very rarely get audio described performances. They are few and far between. Which is a sad reality.

TR:
And while she’s just getting started bringing some of that access to the community, as far as we can tell,
Eleanor is the first Blind person to narrate a live theatrical performance in the UK.

Roz:
It’s a small community. And I think we would have heard whether somebody had done it live. to actually sit in a box, and do that description and deliver it in the more traditional way, really, which is people with headsets sitting in an audience, and you in a box somewhere, overlooking the stage, with your script in front of you and delivering at that moment. I haven’t heard anybody who had done that, let alone a 12 year old

TR in conversation with David:
Have you, yourself, or anyone there at the theater get any direct feedback?

David:
Really important in this sort of role is not to expect gratitude. Access is a civil right. And if we ask of disabled people to be grateful, I feel that there’s a power dynamic in there, which is really quite unhealthy. It’s important, we don’t go looking for praise.

So the feedback came in over time, it was overwhelmingly positive, which is absolutely fantastic. And just proved to us the validity of it, but also meant that we could speak directly to Eleanor and say, Look at what you succeeded, which is really important. And we’re still talking about that feedback and the response from those young people today.

TR in conversation with Eleanor:
What does that mean to you? The fact that there are other blind students who get to hear a blind Narrator doing that? Does that mean anything to you?

Eleanor:
It means so much to me, because I know that if that was me experiencing a visually impaired audio describer describing that show, it would be amazing.

I just hope, maybe I brought a nice first experience of the theater to some of those children.

TR in conversation with Eleanor:
When you say it would have been amazing for you to experience, what would that have meant for you?

Eleanor:
I find it quite relatable, maybe there was some kids that will be like, oh, gosh, I wouldn’t be able to do that. But I like that kind of thing. So if I’d been in that situation sitting there listening to it, I could think, Hey, I could do that, maybe I could do that one day. It’s possible.

TR in conversation with Eleanor:
Absolutely prove it’s more than possible. It is a thing.

Do you have any Blind or visually impaired mentors ? Whether you know them personally or not? Are there people that you can look to that you say, Okay, this is a path for me.

Eleanor:
There aren’t that many out there that sort of make themselves known that they’re just kind of in the background, which is great, really, because it’s amazing to me In a visually impaired actress or actor, but at the same time, maybe you don’t want all that fame.

Tim:
There was a film we watched recently on Netflix.

Eleanor:
it was a series, All the Light We Cannot See. That was amazing.

Tim
Aria Libertti

Eleanor:
That was really good!

TR:
The mini series which debuted on Netflix, received wide recognition for authentic casting for the role of
Marie Laure LeBlanc played by Aria Mia Loberti and Nell Sutton both of whom are Blind.

And y’all know there’s a strong Reid My Mind Radio Family connection here right?

Our brother Joe Strechay was one of the producers for the Netflix project.
In general, Joe’s doing that work increasing disability representation in front and behind screen.

The Audio Description was produced by the folks from IDC with narration
by Fern Lulham, a Blind narrator.

P.S. I believe she’s in the UK.

(Whispering….) You should reach out to Eleanor…. I’m just saying.

Music begins: A bright, synth intro leading into a hopeful inspirational beat.

TR in conversation with Eleanor:
Maybe like you said, some of the younger folks will be able to see you guys and say, hey, yeah, this is possible.

Eleanor:
Yeah, I really hope so. That’s what was kind of powering me through when I got to those harder parts of the show. I thought I hope this is helping others.

TR:
There it is, the big picture!

While I recognize the importance of connecting the dots to the bigger picture and have a lot more to say about that, I’ll save that for another time.

Let’s celebrate Eleanor’s success and all of the love and support that was poured into this young lady.
Imagine what we can do if that was the standard approach to access.

Access is for consumers and creators!

Big shout out to Roz Charmer, David Bellwood, Tim and the youngest to do it… Eleanor Stolery. You are all official members of the Reid My Mind Radio family!

— Airhorn

TR:
If you’re interested in following Eleanor, her social media manager and security has the details

Tim:
Eleanors Voice on Facebook
@ERStollery on Twitter and Instagram

TR:
And you can chat more with Roz.

Roz
@ELSIEBIADS I will spell that for you E L S I E B I A DS
But also it’s ross.charmers@gmail.com.

TR:
You know, it’s a lot of work producing this podcast. But it means a lot to me and I hope to you too.

I appreciate you all and hope you continue rocking with Reid My Mind Radio, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Transcripts and more are over at ReidMyMind.com.

There’s only one way to get there no matter who you are.
King or Queen, Duke or Dutchess, you have to spell it right!
That’s R to the E, I… D!
— “D, and that’s me in the place to be!”, Slick Rick

Like my last name.

— Reid My Mind Radio Outro

Peace.

Hide the transcript

TR:
Hosting and producing a podcast alone, requires taking on multiple roles.
Ring master, assuring everyone in the audience is aware and entertained. Knowing when to bring out the next act, do something silly to make an audience member giggle a bit or call in the clowns.

We juggle all sorts of responsibilities, walk a fine line when picking and choosing what to include or leave out of an episode.
Hopefully, we make it look easy so others can simply enjoy themselves and walk away feeling informed, uplifted, encouraged with a smile on their face.
With that said, there’s only one way to kick off this first episode of our Flipping the Script on Audio Description season.

Brian:
ladies and gentlemen children of all ages. I’m Brian Velazquez from Omnium circus. We would like to welcome you and your family to Reid My Mind Radio!

Now here’s your host Thomas Reid!

TR:
(Energetically)
See, now that’s how you do it baby! Let’s go!

Audio Reid My Mind Theme Music

TR:
It was summer, 2023 and I’m at an event at the Lighthouse in New York city. It was my first time there. I was in conversation with someone when soon after a young gentleman introduced himself to me.

Brian:
My name is Brian Velasquez. I am the Outreach Coordinator, with Omnium a bold new circus.

TR:
He went on to tell me a little about the circus when I quickly realized I not only heard of them but I wanted them on the podcast. They’re a perfect fit.

Omnium not only provides an accessible experience to the children of all ages, but many of the acts include disabled performers.

TR in Conversation with Brian:
Tell me a little bit about how you came to learn about and work with Omnium circus.

Brian:
. Growing up, I used to love going to the circus when I was little. But as with all things I grew out of it. Long and behold I start my first year of college.
I’ve always wanted to be a Braille teacher, that was my mind set since I was around so many Braille teachers growing up.

TR:
Soon after beginning his course work in education, Brian realized he really wasn’t interested in being a teacher. So he moved from the school of education and discovered therapeutic recreation.

Brian:
Continued with that work with geriatrics. Graduated with a degree in therapeutic rec in 2015.

TR:
Soon after, Brian began working at Coney Island Hospital.

— “Where Brooklyn at…” Notorious BIG

Brian:
I implemented a program with the residents where we learned about the loading and unloading of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum Bailey Circus train. So we watched a video on that we did some threading, we answered questions, we discussed it. And a little sparked started to form.

TR:
It wasn’t the first time Brian used the circus as a way to facilitate therapy in his work.
I don’t think he ever so called “grew out” of his love for the circus. And why should he?

Brian:
Little by little something begins to draw me back.
I come across Lisa Lewis because I look up tickets to go to the Big Apple Circus in New York City.
I saw they needed a volunteer for circus of the senses. I was like why not? It wasn’t gonna affect work. So I connected with Lisa B. Lewis.
And the rest is history.

Lisa:
My name is Lisa Lewis and I am the founder and executive director of Omnium circus. I am five foot tall, I have dark brown hair, relatively pale skin, red glasses. Generally I’m wearing red lipstick. My pronouns are she and her.

TR:
As it turns out, these two, Brian and Lisa actually have a history together.

Lisa:
Brian was eight years old and came to circus of the senses. He loved it. He came every year. I know Brian, I know his classmates, I knew his teachers. We’ve all stayed very good friends.
I just adore Brian. He’s so smart. His insights are so interesting. I’m a big, big, big, big, big Brian fan.

So fast forward a bunch of years. And Brian wanted to come and be a part of the circus.
At that time, I was still with Big Apple. So I said, Why don’t you come Be Our Guest ringmaster for circus of the senses.

TR:
The Big Apple Circus which began in 1977 is a one ring circus mostly residential to New York City. Community involvement and outreach has always been a part of their philosophy.

Circus of the senses was the Big Apple Circus outreach to children with disabilities.

Lisa:
So they would give away tickets to kids with disabilities. And we provided audio description, American Sign Language interpreters. And that really kind of clicked to listen to people to realize their enjoyment to know that these people wanted to love the circus just as much as everybody else wants to love the circus. And a simple access was all that’s needed to be able to include them in this popular entertainment. And they only got it once a season same now with Broadway shows. If you’re deaf and you want to see an interpreted show, you only get one shot at it. To me, that’s just not right. I always thought how, how could we make this so that anybody can come to any show?

TR:
That question would ultimately lead to the creation of Omnium Circus.

Lisa:
I eventually ran the program. I eventually split it off so that we had one show for people for whom the access of audio description and American Sign Language was beneficial and Another one for people with sensory needs, and autism. So we created two different programs.

And then finally, by the time the pandemic had hit, and everybody was kind of sitting around I thought,? could we create a show that not only was accessible to everybody, at any show?

TR:
Looking even further at the make up of the circus, Lisa noticed other disparities.

Lisa:
I live in New York City. This is not a monochromatic place. This is an incredibly diverse and vibrant community. And we thrive for our diversity, because we each have so much to offer.

Could we bring that to the ring? So that was part of what I was thinking, Could we do that?

TR:
Lisa wanted to bring all of that to the ring.

But this was during the pandemic, so Lisa had to use a different approach.

Lisa:
We made a virtual version.

we pull together a group of artists from all over the world from all different abilities to really showcase the beauty of the human spirit. And we collaborated with an organization in New York, called Disability unite. And we created a platform online that would provide for different channels of simultaneous access.

TR:
That included audio description, captions, Spanish language translation…

Lisa:
As a person who signs I got really tired of looking to the side to watch the interpreter and missing all the action. To me, that was annoying and a circus. So I wanted it integrated, I wanted the person who was signing a, to be deaf and b, to make sure that it was integrated and part of the action.

. So you’re still enjoying the same show at the same level. That’s equity. Then we put it out. Let’s just see what happens. And we ended up getting almost 30,000 people watching it in 16 states and five countries.
That gave us the energy to say, Okay, let’s see what we got to do to make this a reality.

TR:
this performance called “A Celebration of Diversity” is still available for purchase on Eventbrite. I’ll link you to it directly on this episode’s blog post at ReidMyMind.com.

TR in conversation with Lisa:
So how big is your organization?

Lisa:
Our whole organization is actually not that big.

Twenty five percent of our performers have disabilities. Forty percent of our overall organization have disabilities. The performers are obviously the largest part of our company.

Outside of performers There are maybe eight of us. Nine. Well, we’re small and mighty.

TR in Conversation with Brian:
What do you do as an outreach coordinator?

Brian:
I reach out to organizations, such as schools, community centers, NFB, ACB

It is a little scary at first, especially reaching out to schools, it’s a little daunting, but I’m starting to getting used to that more. Most people. They’re like, Oh, wow, send me information.

I work remotely.

we all work as a team when it comes to outreach. We have someone that does flyers for us, we have someone that may send a couple of emails for us to help out. So all the work is spread out evenly so we can all work together as a team and do the best we can to get people in seats.

— Music Begins Quarter note hi hat open to a slow bass heavy groove.

TR:
The best way to get people in the seats is to have great performers.

Lisa:
Some of the acts in the show, especially this year are just incredible.

We have a young woman who plays our lead, who is the world’s fastest juggler. Our choreographer and onsite director who also does a crossbow act just set the Guinness Book of World Records, because he shot a crossbow looking into a mirror over his right shoulder 25 feet to hit an apple off the top of his wife’s head.

TR in conversation with Lisa:
Oh my god. How long were they married?

Lisa:
They’re still married!

TR in conversation with Lisa:
I’m gonna ask my wife after this is done.

Lisa & TR Laugh!

Lisa:
We have a dancer who’s a seven time NCAA gymnastics champion, who also is a wheelchair user, who does a beautiful, beautiful acrobatic dance.

We have a gorgeous aerialist, who also came up through the world of gymnastics and does this beautiful aerial silks duet with her husband.

Brian:
It’s done by Miss Chandrika Bower and Dominic Bower. And the husband plays the trombone during part of the act and it is just such a beautiful act. You see the romance? You see the passion.

TR in Conversation with Brian:
He’s in the air playing trombone? Oh my gosh!

Lisa:
It’s just this gorgeous love story. She happened to have been born without legs.

Brian:
We have a female ringmaster. Danette Shepard Vaughan. African American. She is phenomenal.

Lisa:
She’s got this gorgeous, Jazzy singing voice and her partner. We call the character of the poet who is a full dancer. He is death and he performs the entire show in ASL.

Brian:
And we have another act that I like is the King Charles troupe?
I don’t know if you’re familiar with them?

TR in Conversation with Brian:
Wait, are they on the unicycles?

Brian:
Yes, they are.

TR
I remember seeing this talented group who perform these amazing basketball acrobatic stunts on unicycles. I first saw them when my oldest daughter was only about two or three. They performed with the UniverSoul Circus. We went at least twice. During one performance, I actually got picked from the audience to go into the ring and dance with ReRun from the show What’s Happening. You know, Roger, Dee, Dwayne? Shirley from the diner?

— Transition – Theme music from “What’s Happening”

TR in conversation with Lisa:
I’m really curious. How do you go about finding these acts?

Lisa:
We have the world’s most amazing artistic director. His name is Noe Espana. He has sixth generation fifth generation circus. His wife is sixth or seventh sixth generation circus. His kids are now Seventh Generation circus. And they know everybody, Noe finds our acts. He creates the shows. He writes the shows. He puts everything together. He is a creative genius. Wow. Okay. And we take applications, although, in all fairness, you gotta be good. (Laughs) Be really good. Noe’s picky.

TR in Conversation with Lisa:
Yeh, so you’re getting people walking in off the street like “Hey, I want to apply for the circus?”

TR:
Duh! I know that’s not the case.
Obviously circus performers require a lot of skill that come from years of practice and experience. Many begin perfecting their acts from childhood.

Lisa’s love for the circus also began as a child, but it wasn’t until she attended college where she came across the opportunity to get involved.

Lisa:
One of my roommates was trying to teach me how to juggle. I was a miserable failure. But I was in the theater department and Ringling Brothers had just posted an audition for clown College.

She goes, Why don’t you go try out this audition, at least maybe you’ll learn to juggle. So I went to the audition. And I fell in love.
I felt like yes, this is where I belong.
I was one of 50 students out of a pool of over 2000 [that were accepted that particular year.]
And in 1986, I went to Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey circus clown College, and my journey began.

TR:
In addition to clown college, Lisa did finish her degree and went on to get a Masters in Circus history.

Lisa:
Circus is an art form and always has been an art form. That can include so many people, because it’s not a language based art form. It’s not an intellect based art form. It’s a heart. It’s a feeling. It’s a visceral enjoyment. And so it can bring all kinds of communities together, and has been since the beginning of time.

TR:
That ability to bring people together made it an effective way to impact society.

(Lisa:
the electric light bulb was introduced in a circus, because everyone was afraid of it. So the circus was the first to light with electric light bulbs to show everyone that that was okay.

Barnum introduced the horseless carriage in a circus. Cars started becoming popular. So it’s a really wonderful way of reaching large groups of people.

I love it for its ability to include. I love it for its ability to entertain. I love it for its ability to showcase the best of the best. It’s like watching the Olympics. You see the best of the best people who’ve spent their lives for generations dedicated to learning a specific art form and you see what amazing things the human body can accomplish all bodies, any shapes, any sizes, anything. The amazing accomplishments of the human spirit.

TR in conversation with Lisa:
What’s the relationship between freak shows and circus?
Lisa 50
I’m actually really glad you asked that question.

So back in time, humanity was a lot less advanced. There were different water fountains, there were different bathrooms. We weren’t real nice to each other, to say the least,
And one of those not very nice things. Concerned persons with disabilities. They were thrown in institutions, they were drowned. They were killed. They were hidden away. They were not given respect as individuals.

TR
As awful as that sounds, Lisa points out a very real and practical side.

Lisa:
So the freak show, quote, unquote, at that time, provided viable employment when people couldn’t get jobs. No one would hire you if you had a disability. The Circus provided employment, you could buy a house you could raise your family, they had a life they had a community to become involved with.
the circus created a very positive space within a very negative paradigm.
So we’re reclaiming the paradigm, but not showing people because of what makes them different than 75% of the world. But what makes them unique and special and their incredible talent and artistry to lift them up. So that the world can see that we all are people and inside each one of us is a beautiful gift, regardless of the body to which you are born or the skin you are in.

TR:
Lisa went on to work for Ringling Brothers, freelanced as a clown and ended up working in the Clown Care Unit, an outreach program of the Big Apple Circus.
Clown Care Clown Doctors are specially selected professional performers who are trained to work in the sensitive hospital environment. Using minimal make-up, evocative costumes, juggling, comedy, magic and music these “clown doctors” help ease the stress of illness and aid in a patients’ healing.
In pairs they make “ Clown Rounds” visiting children throughout the hospital from bedside to all sorts of patient encounters.

Meet Lisa’s former clown doctor partner, Liz Bolick.

Liz:
I go by she her hers pronouns. I am six feet tall, with reddish brown hair to my shoulders a little bit curly. I have an oval face, I’m a Caucasian woman kind of shapely.

Liz:
I had worked with the Big Apple Circus for many, many years in New York City as a performer, and as a clown doctor in the clown care unit, working with their specialty programs with hospital clowning. And then I started doing pre show for the circus of the senses,.

Lisa Lewis approached me and asked me if I’d be interested in being an audio describer. I said, Sure. That sounds cool. How do you do that?

TR in conversation with Liz:
Oh my goodness.
I used to go to New York Hospital. On the east side?
I used to love the clowns. I used to have such a good time.

Liz

How old were you?

TR in Conversation with Liz:
I was a grown ass man.
The clowns and I would connect because I’m hysterical. And they’re like this is the only person who really seems to be enjoying this.

Liz:
I was at New York Hospital. for 20 years doing it at New York Hospital, Columbia Presbyterian. Then I went out to Einstein in the Bronx. Your doctor sneakers, that was me.

TR in conversation with Liz:
Wow. Okay.

Liz 24
you probably saw me play. Crazy high top sneakers on. That’s how kids remembered me buy my shoes
TR in conversation with Liz:
I would look forward to go just to see the clowns.

Liz:
Well, it makes me happy that we made a difference in that in those moments for you. Right.

TR in conversation with Liz:
Absolutely.
I think for other parents, it was just a little levity.
It was really nice.

Liz:
Great for the staff to sometimes a little joy. It just breaks people out of their sorrow or their stress for five seconds. Yeah. And it makes a difference. And so I’m blessed to have done it.

TR:
To continue providing access to joy, Lisa signed Liz up for a two week audio description course at the Theater Development Fund.

In addition to AD training, TDF offers Accessibility Programs that provide a membership service for theatregoers with disabilities that require some form of access including wheelchair seating, captions, ASL and audio description. You can check them out at TDF.org.

Liz:
I found it fascinating. And then one day, she said, Alright, jump in. I said You mean today.

TR:
Just like making clown doctor rounds, at Omnium, audio description is done in pairs.

Liz was paired with Carl Anthony Tramon.

(Liz:
I was absolutely nervous. But she had Carl there as the audio describer, who is brilliant and has done this for years and years and years. And she said, just jump in and work with Carl.

it was one of the best things I ever did.

I remember sitting next to Carl, and I was sweating. I was so scared. And I turned to Carl and I said, Do you have any advice for me, and he turned to me with this big smile on his face and said, just talk like it’s a conversation. So imagine we’re kids seeing the circus for the first time. And let’s describe what we see and have fun.

I had this great experience. And I got to work with a master. Of course. Generally, you don’t get to work as a team. But I think I was extremely lucky that not only did I get placed with a partner, my first experience, but Carl Tramon, was that partner.

TR:
Unfortunately, Carl was not available for this interview but brother, if you’re listening,
I’m extending an open invitation to you to come on the podcast
and share your experience with audio description.

Although Liz was new to AD, the skills she gained as a clown doctor were perfect for describing a live circus.
Liz:
It makes you very present. And you have to be in the moment. And there’s nothing more in the moment than audio description,

You really have to be aware of what’s happening right in that second.

TR:
Being prepared to respond quickly to something unexpected is crucial in live description. However, there’s still a lot of preparation that goes into the role.

Liz:
I’m somebody that likes a lot of rehearsal and likes to feel really prepared. So I’m usually over prepared.

I get to know the individual acts, I like to look up their websites know what skills they’re doing, what’s a history of their family? How do you pronounce their name? If they’re doing a Diablo act? What’s the history of that Diablo? That’s a Chinese yo, yo, what are the terms for it? I’ll watch YouTube videos of how to do Diablo and it’ll give me all these terms.

TR:
Those unfamiliar with the process of AD are surprised by the amount of research and preparation required to write effective description. Even when it appears to be spontaneous.

And of course, whenever possible, go to the source.

Liz:
I like to speak to the artists directly if I can.

I’m lucky because I’ve been part of circus for so many years that I understand a lot of the acts.

What is the seer real? What is the Hulu back? What are the aerialists? What’s a tight rope? What’s a high wire? I know a lot of what these acts are, but describing them to someone who’s never seen them was the trick. So I needed to increase my vocabulary, but also make it down to earth simplistic and really describe what the actual physical movements of the body and the person are not necessarily technical terms.

So it’s like preparing for a role in the theater and then you have to throw it away and be in the moment.

TR:
Liz, who is also a costume designer and producer, brings all of that plus her extensive knowledge and experience as a circus performer to AD. The combination of her and Carl who she says is great at describing the technical enables her to sprinkle interesting facts about other details.

Liz:
So I can talk about the sparkling outfits and what they’re made of, I can talk about the Top Hats and the colors of the lights changing from a design point of view, a costume point of view, and you don’t always have time for all of that. So I also do a big prep, I also have quite a bit of pre show available that I rewrite in advance, so that if kids come 15 minutes early, and if technically have time in the theater, I can give a lot of background on each and every act, or the biggest moments, including costumes and descriptions of the people in the show that you may not have time for in the moment. Because circus happens really fast.

TR:
This sounds like the approach heard in sports. Play by play commentator paired with another who provides interesting facts and adds color to the broadcast.

Liz:
For me, it’s the essence of what’s happening emotionally, for the audience, because it helps bring them into the moment of the danger of the excitement and the anticipation of the moment that maybe they’re going to miss or maybe they’re going to make it. Now those things I think innately are in the timing and the tenor of my voice. I think it makes a better show.

I’ll go like (Starts in a whisper and moves to louder more excited voice) “And now, walking up the thing, and the thing and they turn and they flip and they go!”

TR in conversation with Liz:
And that’s such a big difference from standard audio description for a film or a Broadway production. Have you ever done any of those?

Liz:
I’m starting to really

TR in conversation with Liz:
Okay, So what’s the difference like for you? Because it’s less emoting.

Liz:
First, that was shocking. I couldn’t even speak. Like, I’m sitting there, I say, and he moves on, and the lights come up, and then they talked for like, 30 minutes. It was so weird for me. I’m used to talking non stop because you can’t talk over the dialog, right.
So then you kind of have to follow a script. But if I’m following a script, I’m not in the moment as much.

TR:
Being in the moment never replaces the need for preparation.

Liz:
I would watch the videos over and over and over again, if I get my hands on them. I go to a dress rehearsal , and then I’ll go to a show. So there’s a ton of prep.

TR:
This is a public service announcement!

If we do the math and calculate the hourly rate based on the actual amount of time put into preparing and describing live theater, well, let’s just say this group is highly under paid.

Automation and artificial intelligence isn’t the way to resolve that rather it’s changing the way we think about access.

That concludes our public service announcement.

Liz:
I would try to talk to the producers in the playwrights and the actors, I still like to ask an actor how they want to be called.
How do they want to be described not necessarily how I would see them.

Different people from all races and cultures want to be described differently.

TR in conversation with Liz:
Is it easier within the circus to get access then in Broadway or Off Broadway plays?

Liz:
It’s easier for me in the circus because generally like Omnium I’ve been with them for so many years. I know a lot of people, these are my friends. I’m doing one show for a whole season.

TR:
Outside of Omnium, Liz doesn’t always have the opportunity or permission to directly speak with the performers. But, Liz is spunky, she was a clown after all!

Liz:
I’ll just show up grab people. While they’re offstage, I’ll just show up and work my way and being sweet and funny. That always works. Kindness goes a long way. I think most people feel happy that you’re asking.

TR in conversation with Liz:
It’s a combination of probably parents and children. Who are you describing for in your mind?

Liz:
More like family audiences. I think the good thing about the circus is that anyone in that room feels like they’re five years old. First of all, but you can’t talk down to people and especially children, like children are a lot smarter and hipper than anything. So even when I’m working with a two year old, I’m not treating them like a baby.
Fun and energetic but not too super technical.

TR in conversation with Liz:
do you have any favorite acts that stick out to you that you really like to describe?

Liz:
Well, I love to describe the clown acts, because I’m a clown myself. So I love to describe the comic timing.

I like to add narrative to a silent comedy routine. is really fun because I’m a silent comedian, physical comedian.

TR in conversation with Liz:
What type of things are you describing?

Liz:
Well, like their first facial expressions, like if you have a comedy team, like we have dick and Tiffany, Monday and Riley in the show, I’ve known them their whole lives. So like, take a look over at her she’ll kind of flip her head. And it’d be like, she’s not super happy. He better watch out. She’s gonna smack him on. Oops, she did. She smacked him on the butt.

Liz:
there’s like silly beats that happened.

TR:
With two describers, Liz and Carl can bounce off one another to really bring out the emotion of what’s taking place visually.

Liz:
He’ll be like, Oh, no, he didn’t. And I go, Oh, yes, he did. Like, well, we get into like a comedy routine about it. We’ll do it together.

We have a pretty good trading off back and forth repartee that goes on, and just happens naturally.
And we’re lucky because we can both improvise really? Well. He’s a great actor, singer, dancer, Director. So we’re both good at improvising. And I think we’re both aware of each other’s strengths, I would say. Plus, we would do the same show over and over, especially at the very beginning, we did the same show, like for an entire season. So then you have your rhythm and beats and we’re kind of rehearsed in a way we kind of go oh, we kind of know each other’s parts a little bit. That’s

TR in conversation with Liz:
That’s like a show within the show.

TR:
The circus is about two hours with a 15 minute intermission. I can imagine it really helps to have multiple describers working together.

Omnium also offers one hour special events for schools. Exposing even more children to the joys of the circus.

In fact, during some of the special events, some of these children may not realize it, but the ring master was once in their seat.

Brian:
. Ladies and gentleman now.
Um, woof. My neighbors are probably like, What the heck is he doing?

I’ve been really learning about circus.

The ring masters used to use these booming voices because back in the day, there was no microphones.
There was a term called Barker.

Hurry, hurry, hurry, step right up, step right up. Hurry, hurry. Not sure if it was the same concept as the ringmaster. But it was kind of similar, but then the ringmaster wouldn’t have a mic neither. So they would have to project their voice and otherwise, you wouldn’t hear anything.

So that’s why there’s been a tradition of keeping the voice, they had to use those big, loud heavy duty. Voice commands.

TR:
That’s right, Brian has served as ring master during some of these events, which sometimes offer open audio description.

TR in Conversation with Brian:
So while you ring mastering Do you listen to it as well.

Brian:
Oh, my goodness, good question.
I was able to follow through with the audio description cues. That helped me a lot immensely when it came to, you know, okay. It’s time for me to say this, or Okay, I’m gonna do this now.

TR:
It’s always important to remind folks that access is not just about consumption. Disabled folks are not only participants, but we are makers of art, content, technology, accessibility and more. Removing this perspective of the conversation continues to leave us out of all sorts of spaces.

So what other access is available at Omnium?

Brian:
we have open ASL in the show. You’re gonna see everything that’s said in the show. What the ringmaster is saying everything. What the Ringmasters singing all that you you’ll be able to see it because there is live open ASL interpretation at the show.

sensory friendly, very important. For those who are neurodiverse who may be sensitive to sound or light. The house lights are not completely off. And the sound decibels
at a decibel where it’s suitable for everyone.

We have a common area with little activities you can do like markers or drawing
you’re gonna have your few people that may be a little overwhelmed that need a break. And that’s okay.

TR:
Of course that includes wheel chair access and closed captions wherever possible.
Brian
we want it to be as inclusive as possible for all, that’s why we are America’s first comprehensively inclusive circus.

TR:
Big shout out to Brian Velasquez, Lisa Lewis and Liz Bolick, you’re each official members of the Reid My Mind Radio Family.

I don’t care who you are, if you’re hearing or reading this episode, Omnium is for you. Take your children, grand children, students, athletes … you can always take me, I’m a forever five year old.

Honestly, I wanted to get out to see them when they were in New York this year but unfortunately scheduling didn’t workout. But I will get there and hope you do the same.

For the current schedule and links to social media visit OmniumCircus.org.

Another Public service announcement If you’re not registered to vote, please do so.
We’re in some serious times and I hope and encourage you all to get out there and vote. In person or absentee mail in, I really don’t care, just make it happen.

I appreciate you rocking with Reid My Mind Radio wherever you get podcasts. We have transcripts and more at ReidMyMind.com.

It’s come to my attention that some don’t think I spell it enough… seriously!
You got to spell it right, that’s R to the E I D!
— Sample (“D! And that’s me in the place to be.” Slick Rick)

Like my last name!
— Reid My Mind Radio outro
Peace!

Hide the transcript

Music begins
THOMAS: Welcome to the Blind-Centered Audio Description Chats. These are the edited recordings of the Blind-Centered Audio Description Live Chats!
CHERYL: The live is the most fun part! We get together, we start with a question, and then we invite up anybody from the audience who wants to come and chat with us, agree, disagree, shed light on something that we hadn’t thought about before, which is Nefertiti’s favorite. [electric whoosh]
NEFERTITI: I’m Nefertiti Matos Olivares, and I’m a bilingual professional voiceover artist who specializes in audio description narration! I’m also a fervent cultural access advocate and a community organizer.
CHERYL: I’m Cheryl Green, an access artist, audio describer and captioner.
THOMAS: And I’m Thomas Reid, host and producer Reid My Mind Radio, voice artist, audio description narrator, consultant, and advocate.
[smartphone selection beeps]
CHERYL: Recording now!

NEFERTITI: Well, hello. This is Nefertiti Matos Olivares, and this is our first time that we’re doing a bit of a hybrid session and the first time we are presenting some content, sort of cross-pollinating, some work that we do with the Blind-Centered Audio Description Chat series that Cheryl Green, Thomas Reid, and I have been collectively working on for a while now, and also, the work that we do by way of the Social Audio Description Collective, or SADC, where we actually create and carefully craft, from the writing to the blind QC, the narration, the sound design, all of it, some culturally competent audio description in English and Spanish and other languages. So, if you don’t know about SADC, check us out. We are the Social Audio Description Collective. And if you don’t know about our previous offerings at the Blind-Centered Audio Description Chat series, you can check that out too by way of Thomas Reid’s Reid My Mind Radio. That’s all R to the E I D, like his last name, y’all!
THOMAS: [chuckles]
NEFERTITI: On his podcast feed as well. Wow. I am here, and I am happy to be here. And we have Thomas with us. We have Cheryl with us. We have Oliver Baker, the writer of the audio description for the two films that we will be watching and listening to today. And we have Carmen, Carmen Papalia with us.
THOMAS: So, we’re gonna show two films, and then we’re gonna talk to Carmen about the films, talk a little bit about what led into creating the films, talk a little bit about the AD, and we wanna hear from y’all too. So if there’s questions about the films that you wanna ask Carmen, you’ll have an opportunity to do that, or if you wanna ask or make a comment on the audio description, you can do that too.

Editors Note:
THOMAS: Quick note, we’re not including the audio of the film in this episode, however, you can go on over to this episode’s blog post on ReidMyMind.com and I’ll link you there.
Then come back and enjoy the conversation with both film maker and AD production team.

Ok, here we go, back to the episode!!

THOMAS: So, I think it’s time to welcome Carmen Papalia to the Zoom room.
NEFERTITI: [imitates air horn]
CARMEN: [chuckles]
THOMAS: And maybe Carmen, if you wanna introduce yourself, tell folks who you are, tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
CARMEN: Yeah, for sure. It’s Carmen speaking. I’m calling in from the stolen land of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh people, colonially known as Vancouver. I’m in my room right now. I’m, yeah, I’m wearing maybe one of the same caps as in the film, a brown sort of wool cap, and a colorful button shirt with short sleeves today. I’m not sure which colors, unfortunately!
THOMAS: [chuckles]
CARMEN: Sorry. But know that they are vibrant and festive, I call myself a non-visual artist. I make mostly participatory projects. I do performance, installation. I do curating as well. And this project, Impaired, is a co-production and collaboration with my brother Antonio. And he’s not able to be here today ‘cause he’s sick, unfortunately. But yeah, it’s been a joy to work with him on this project. He’s also a macro photographer, too. So, I can talk a little bit about the work that we did with the Social Audio Description Collective around the macro photos as well. But this film series is something that we got some COVID-era grant funding for by the Canada Council. And the films were recently just in an exhibition in Zurich. It was an exhibition called Interdependencies about various forms of care. And these films were shown in a functional grow room that my brother designed and built. Well, he had help building it. The production team at the museum was amazing and was able to put everything together to our specs. It was like a replica of the grow room that we have here in Vancouver, but it was made to be wheelchair accessible for the exhibition. And it was like a presentation space for these videos and as well as my brother’s macro photos of the cannabis life cycle.
THOMAS: Very cool. Very cool. Could you talk a little bit about what led to the creation of this film?
CARMEN: Yeah, I think it was this kind of deep collaboration that me and my brother had developed just around my pain management and the growing of medicinal cannabis through Access to Cannabis Program through Health Canada. And I think it was just interesting as we were digging into this project of like, how do we set up a grow so my brother, who is low vision, can manage it? We were just doing this, I guess, problem solving, as you do when you just jump into something. How is this gonna work? And I think we wanted to show that process a bit.
But there was also this wonderful thing that happened when my brother started growing cannabis for me, too, is that we got to talk a lot more about disability and my brother’s vision loss, too. And as you saw in the film, he just recently sort of picked up a cane, and he’s still kind of like in that space of when to use it, if he should use it. And I just felt like this experience really brought us together. My family is very much involved, too, in the processing of the cannabis. So we have these trimming parties, and we’ll listen to some of the same tunes that you played today, [laughing] Thomas.
THOMAS: [laughs]
CARMEN: And order some pizza and trim cannabis together. And it just became this space for us to explore all these things that we were excited about and maybe wanted to explore, like tactility, like, how does that play into this process of growing cannabis, and yeah. My brother, he developed a photo series out of this process, too. And it was really a space for him to, you know, come back to his photo practice and make photos that he was really proud of that he could include in the show. I just think it’s just been a generative space for us that we wanted to show to others.
There was some reference to hallucinations in those videos. One of the longer-term goals is for my brother to actually breed a variety of cannabis that activates my visual hallucinations. So, I have quite vibrant and active hallucinations connected to my visual condition. Thomas hosted myself and a few artists on Reid My Mind talking about them With certain kinds of cannabis, these hallucinations are even more amplified, and they take on different characteristics! Through our research, my brother’s found there are a handful of cannabis varieties that are known hallucinogenic strains. And so, we’ve got our hands on a few of those, and we’ve grown a few. And we’ve made concentrates out of them, and I’ve kind of tested on myself. And they’re usually, you know, the ones that I really love are varieties that have a sort of psychedelic effect but also are good pain relievers.
I mentioned my pain condition. I have sickle cell anemia. So, yeah, I have a lot of pain that cannabis actually is really helpful for. And prior to transitioning onto cannabis, I was on Dilaudid. It was just a very different experience. My life was a lot different before I transitioned to cannabis. And, now for the most part, I mean, I still use Dilaudid, you know, when I’m having an intense crisis that might bring me to hospital or debilitating. But for the most part, I use cannabis and yeah, and some psilocybin as well, so, yeah.
THOMAS: Very good. You know, it’s interesting you mentioned the music at the beginning because I was looking for medicinal cannibal songs, cannabis songs. [laughs]
CARMEN: Mmhmm.
THOMAS: And I didn’t find any!
THOMAS and CARMEN: [delighted laughter]
CARMEN: I know. You don’t really hear people talking about getting medicated, do you?
THOMAS: No, you don’t!
THOMAS and CARMEN: [laugh again]
CARMEN: But yeah. I mean, there should be. Maybe there’s some awesome crip hip-hop artists that maybe can get into that.
THOMAS: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It’s a market.
NEFERTITI: Yeah, maybe a participant today might have something for us, maybe.
THOMAS: [chuckles] Yeah. I want you to go back a little bit because you mentioned the macro photography. Can you describe it? I have a feeling many people might not be familiar with what that is.
CARMEN: Yeah. Totally. And I’ll describe it as much as I know through the process. It’s a very technical way of capturing, well, an image. And so, what you’re doing is you’re using some lenses that give you a super zoomed-up view of what you’re taking a photo of, and it kind of turns into something else altogether at that such a zoomed-in sort of view. And so, my understanding is that you take hundreds of photos that kind of get pulled together on the computer into like a composite, basically, that is a super close view of the subject. And my brother was taking photos of the cannabis lifecycle from seed to flower.
And so, some of these, like, if you can imagine a cannabis bud, and you know that the medicinal part is the oil or resin on the bud, if you take a photo, a macro photo of that, these little blobs of oil or resin, you can see them. They’re called trichomes. And they kind of look like, and I think this was the magic of Oliver described them as like a mushroom kingdom or something. They just look like this world unto itself. So, I think my brother really wants to bring people into this subject matter, medicinal plants and mushrooms and the subjects that he’s drawn to. And he said he doesn’t want people to pressure people to see something in his images. Like, you know this pressure to see. I felt that, too, as my vision has changed over the years, especially when I’m in a medical setting. Like, “can you see this?” Like, we’re testing what you can see. My brother really wants people to have a space where they can see what they want and really make their own stories about what they’re seeing as well in his images.
THOMAS: Mm.
CARMEN: Which was, yeah, which was really lovely when we were able to collaborate with you all on the description. Because it was a very involved process where, which not involved in that it was too involved. I think it was appropriately involved because we got to have conversation, me and Antonio, about what he saw and how he would describe it. So, I’m using a screen reader. I heard Oliver’s note coming through.
THOMAS: Oh. [laughs]
CARMEN: Which was that Cheryl, it was Cheryl’s magic who, Cheryl described the trichomes as the mushrooms and the mushroom kingdom. So, just clarifying there.
THOMAS: Why did you come to SADC? Like, was there something specific? Yeah.
CARMEN: [delighted laugh] I mean, you are the superstars of audio description all in one place. So, I mean, it’s kind of hard to go anywhere else. [laughs]
NEFERTITI: High praise! Thank you.
CARMEN: I mean, I’ve known Cheryl since probably 2010 or 2011, too. And I’ve been a lover of Thomas’s work for a while. And yeah, I just thought for this production to really explore what that collaborating with you might turn into. And I thought we had a really great experience. So yeah. Thank you.
THOMAS: Cool. Cool. I didn’t mean that to sound like a softball pitch there, but.
THOMAS and CARMEN: [laugh]
NEFERTITI: No, but please take it, because it’s very true. It’s very true.
THOMAS: I will take it, but also just curious, because you and Cheryl, you all sort of met, if I’m correct, let me know, around audio description. Is that correct?
CHERYL: Carmen is the person who introduced me to audio description. One of my short films was playing. I was so proud of the captions. “Yay, I have a captioned film.” And I heard somebody whispering through my whole film. I’m very distractible, and I was like, oh, rude! What is going on here? And afterward I asked somebody who were the rude people talking through my whole film? Oh, I’m the center of the universe. Why are people whispering? That’s not the literal words I said.
CARMEN: [laughs]
CHERYL: But somebody explained to me that, well, the film didn’t have any audio description, and so somebody was whispering and describing the visuals to Carmen. And it was a face, face plant, face palm, whatever you call it. I planted my palm on my face. So that was my introduction to audio description. And then Carmen, I don’t know where you lived then, but we apparently lived on the same bus route.
CARMEN: Yeah.
CHERYL: And somebody encouraged me to walk with you to the bus stop ‘cause maybe you weren’t familiar with that neighborhood.
CARMEN: Oh, you were my way to get home. I wouldn’t know how to get home otherwise! [laughs]
CHERYL: Except that we got so lost! Even though I’d been riding that bus for ten years at that point. I get so confused sometimes. And anyway, we had a lot of laughs about getting lost. But you were so gentle and encouraging in talking about, you know, there’s a thousand points of entry to access. Pick one and start there. You were not judgmental. You enjoyed my film, I think, even though it wasn’t described.
CARMEN: Yeah, yeah. For sure.
CHERYL: So, that’s how I got started. And many years later when you started asking me to do audio description for your stuff, I was pretty blown away.
CARMEN: Aw.
THOMAS: I love that story. Cheryl, do you wanna talk a little bit about the process of describing images? The idea that Carmen and Antonio laid out about wanting folks to be able to see whatever it is they see, just real quick, I think that’s the way I think about our hallucinations as well, Carmen.
CARMEN: Mmhmm, mmhmm.
THOMAS: Just it’s really interesting. So, Cheryl, yeah. Talk about that.
CHERYL: Carmen has a wonderful technique that was developed in the Simon Fraser University Pandemic Is a Portal project, which is the phone call. So, the phone call came from this idea that, you know, if you’re trying to write an image description, imagine you’re on the phone with somebody and telling them what it is. And Carmen took that ten levels higher when we were working on that project and literally did a phone call [laughs] with, I think it was Heather.
CARMEN: Mmhmm.
CHERYL: And the two of you recorded your phone call, and you talked about not only literally what was in the picture, but your concepts and your feelings and your emotions. And you gave me that, and I transcribed it, and I used it to build the image description.
So, for the macro photo series, you and Antonio did the same thing. You recorded these calls for me, which was amazing because I didn’t know what a trichome was before. So, y’all used technical terms. And then very beautifully, you would ask Antonio a lot of questions. That’s one of the things that is so exciting to the collaboration. You would ask him to share some details, and then I did research online, learned a lot more about cannabis. And I used your phone call transcript as the basis for writing the description, so that I knew I was getting what was important to y’all, but that you let me build also whatever else I wanted to.
THOMAS: That’s pretty cool. When you think about describing an image, you would just see, oh, like the only context you have is the image. But no, you build off of other things as well. So, that’s cool. Oliver, what about you, sir? What kind of research did you have to do to get into describing cannabis? [laughs]
CHERYL: [chuckles]
OLIVER: Ah, research! I think it was just here and there. Sometimes it was just a question like, that hat that Carmen’s wearing, whether it was fleece or wool or whether I could call it a beanie or something else. And sometimes it was after the fact. Like, I guessed that in one of the opening scenes that a bud was being rolled, and the leaves were being pressed against it just to narrow it up. But it was really just some leaves and I guess some b-roll, in effect. And so, I had to change that. Not research beforehand. ‘Cause Carmen, you were doing a lot of traveling during that time, so I couldn’t be in real-time contact about any question I had necessarily.
CARMEN: Yeah, but it was that back-and-forth process that I think we fine-tuned a couple things. I really loved your all’s process, too, for getting the scripts to where they could, to narration, too.
OLIVER: Yeah, I think this was probably an unusual project in my experience in the amount of and the level of evolution that happened after I submitted my draft. One thing was that the animator, Heather Kai Smith, came into the discussion pretty late. And so, some important points that she made reached me late, and so I was making changes, I guess, mainly to the pre-show, but a little bit during the show based on that.
CARMEN: It’s not the ideal way to go about developing an audio described piece. Like, some, the footage was shot before we looped you in. The animation has to be done after the video is firmed up and complete. And, yeah, it’s just, it’s a wacky timeline, I guess, that we were working on. And we were also trying to meet the deadline of the exhibition opening and the delivery date for that exhibition in Zurich. I’m continuously apologizing ‘cause I feel like I, you need, like, double the amount of time to do this well. And I mean, it’s done amazingly, and super—
OLIVER: I think some applause is due, too, because we had a conversation with Eric that led to something that never happens, which was, he introduced a little bit of a gap. He changed the editing a little bit to accommodate just a very brief line of audio description that we wouldn’t have been able to include otherwise, to make sure that blind and low vision audience members would understand what was happening during the important scene down the steps. And if things had gone the way they usually do, and with another filmmaker, with other filmmakers, that adaptation wouldn’t have happened.
THOMAS: How much of a change was it actually, Oliver, in terms of time? Like, how much time did you actually need to make that difference?
OLIVER: I think I asked for less than a second [chuckles] in one place and a little bit more than a second in another place.
CARMEN: [laughs]

OLIVER: We had an interesting kind of negotiation about where they’d be inserted because Eric sort of cherished a particular pause for the suspense, and for him, the AD voice coming in there would’ve interfered with that. So, he put the pause somewhere else, but it worked out fine. But the interesting conversation, which kind of gets into, I don’t know, an unusual amount of gray area of audio description was everybody had a different opinion about it. The filmmaker, Eric, who wasn’t used to watching films with audio description, felt the narration was a distraction. Thomas, I think you were not distracted, and you appreciated the extra information that would’ve been provided there. And then Antonio, who is losing vision and using a cane, but not so, still new to using a cane, for him, he actually appreciated the silent pause that Eric wanted to have in there because it was not old hat to him in the same way it might’ve been to you, Thomas, as more of an expert cane user.
THOMAS: Yeah.
OLIVER: That affected where we put the narration.
THOMAS: Mm, which goes into our approach in terms of audio description and that blind-centered approach, right? Why would we tailor the AD to someone who’s not going to use AD? But it’s so funny how often that’s a big part of what we do when working with filmmakers, right? Just kind of explaining that and explaining what we mean by a blind-centered approach. And that’s a perfect example of it right there, so. Very good.
CARMEN: There was something really interesting in the making of the installation at the museum in Zurich, too. Because these films were audio described, we could watch them outside of the grow room, because even when we were outside of the installation, we could still hear the AD and watch the film, which was really nice.
THOMAS: [happy laugh] That’s access!
CARMEN: Mmhmm, mmhmm.
THOMAS: Very nice.
CARMEN: I’d be happy to answer any questions about the art stuff, but also cannabis stuff, too, and my, like, yeah, whatever you wanna know!
THOMAS: Did you go back to retraining for O&M? [laughing] Did you get any more training?
CARMEN: No. I mean, I feel like my brother can give me some pointers, but I’m pretty stuck in my ways of using the cane like I like to. [chuckles]
THOMAS: Yes. And you use a black cane. Your cane is black? Is that the one you always use?
CARMEN: I do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just order them without the tape on them, and they’re graphite canes from Ambutech in Winnipeg. They have these silvery kind of joints that, yeah, hold the segments together, yeah.
THOMAS: Mmhmm. The collapsible parts there? Yeah.
CARMEN: Yeah, yes. Yeah. And a wooden handle. Yeah.
THOMAS: Gotcha. Oh, and a wooden handle. Okay. Very cool, very cool.
OLIVER: I wanna know finally, and for all time, is that cap fleece or pashmina?
THOMAS: [laughs]
OLIVER: It’s not a coarse weave wool.
CARMEN: I think it is wool. I mean, I have two of the same. This one looks more, see, this is more brushed. See, this is the alternative. I have a green hat, the same as I’m wearing right now, but green, in my hand. And it’s more soft. I think this is, yeah, more of like, finer woven than the one I’m wearing right now. But, yeah, I don’t know. [happy laugh]
OLIVER: Well, the mystery will have to be prolonged.
CARMEN: [laughs]
OLIVER: We’ll meet sometime.
CARMEN: Yes, and you could read the tag for me, or I could get someone to read the tag for me and send you!
NEFERTITI: Carmen, I value very much friendship and family and all of this, and I just really enjoyed witnessing that communication between your brother and you, navigating with your canes and talking about how you’re using little body parts to detect and to keep safe and to gather information and all of. I just think there’s something so, so beauteous about that. Whereas, people can think, oh, how sad or what have you. And I just, I was really moved by that, this idea that it’s a difficult time and yet you have your brother, your flesh and blood, right there to share in it with you and to share of yourself with him. And that’s captured through the growing that you do. And I heard you here say today that it’s become sort of a family endeavor. So, I just really wanna congratulate you and really appreciate that you chose to share that with the world.
CARMEN: Thank you. Aw, that’s really nice. My experience with the cannabis grow with my brother growing for me has been a really positive experience where I feel like I’ve really been able to claim some agency with regard to my pain management. And it’s very different than conversations that I might have in the medical setting. It’s based in our relationship. And even, you know, when we, for whatever reason, have friction, we still have the grow that we have to talk about. And too, you know, that kind of anchors us.
NEFERTITI: [chuckles] Yes!
CARMEN: I have to say, too, that, with my condition, So I have retinitis pigmentosa and then sickle cell anemia, and my brother shares the visual condition with me. My sister shares the blood condition with me. So, we have different, I have different relationships with both of my siblings. I carry both of those conditions. They each have, one of my parents who we got these from are not symptomatic. So, we really kind of have banded together in certain ways around our conditions and in really deep ways. And for years and years, until I would say 2020, my sister was the only person I really could talk to about sickle cell. I didn’t really know anybody else. And it wasn’t until I met someone through disability art that also has sickle cell and is like, “This is who I am. And this has this is my experience,” that I was really able to even explore that part of my experience. And my brother gets very, too, like, my brother gets very specific about what he’s growing for me, how it’s working for me, what kinds of things we need to change. Like, it’s a dialogue about my pain management in a very kind of this exchange that I might not have in another setting, yeah.
NEFERTITI: Yeah, it sounds very personal and literal cultivation of care. Literally, you have—
THOMAS: Nice! [laughs]
NEFERTITI: Yeah, right? I got some bars. [laughs]
THOMAS: Nice!
CARMEN: [happy laugh]
NEFERTITI: But yeah, you’re literally cultivating the care, and the cannabis is the tangible proof of that connection.
CARMEN: Right.
NEFERTITI: And it’s just beautiful. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
THOMAS: Yeah.
CARMEN: I should say, there are a lot of people who serve this role in their communities, like as a caregiver-grower for people who are pain patients or who have other chronic illnesses. And it is such an interesting relationship with others in your community. You know, you have this passion for growing and maybe even supporting them in the ways that you can through the grow. But like, you get to know them so personally because, I mean, there’s a lot of, yeah, growers grow for, say, a handful of patients, like 15, sometimes 30. But they’re getting to know these people and what they need and what works for them too. So, it really is a lovely kind of experience. Some cultivators, too, grow strains specifically for people who need what they provide. I just think that’s really wonderful. Yeah.
NEFERTITI: Yes.
THOMAS: Carmen, is that the term, “caregiver-growers”? Is that the name?
CARMEN: Yeah, yeah.
THOMAS: Okay, okay. ‘Cause I know someone who might be interested in doing something like that. Yeah, that’s very cool. Very cool.
NEFERTITI: Yeah. I’m learning so much. I don’t know about these things, so quite an education for me and I think for others. And I also think we had a hand raised, if I caught that. Susannah Mars?
SUSANNAH: Yeah. Hi, this is Susannah.
NEFERTITI: Hi!
SUSANNAH: I just felt I enjoyed it so much. And I love the juicy language that you used. I love the marshmallow tip cane. And similarly to Nefertiti, I felt that nurturance of the plants and the caring among living things is so beautiful because it really crosses between the relationships and the care and the really caring for all living things in that generous and loving way. And the relationships, I appreciated, again, like Nefertiti mentioned, the joy of your relationships and that connection that just suffuses the whole work. It’s very beautiful. I appreciated it, and Thomas, I thought your voice was just lovely mixed in, in the mix. You know, it was all just—
NEFERTITI: Always!
SUSANNAH: —beautiful.
THOMAS: Thank you, Susannah. Thank you. Appreciate it.
SUSANNAH: Thank you. Mmhmm.
NEFERTITI: Always, always. Thomas Reid elevates anything Thomas Reid touches, I just wanna say!
CARMEN: Mmhmm.
THOMAS: Aw, thank you, Nef.
NEFERTITI: Yes! Oh, this is wonderful.
THOMAS: I do wanna ask you a little bit about the ear cleansing. Can you talk about, a little bit about, you know, the way you look at sound and just think about in terms of non-visual and what the ear cleansing thing was really all about?
CARMEN: Yeah, yeah. So, when I was in my undergrad at Simon Fraser University, I took some acoustic communications classes. It’s like the university where that whole practice and field of soundscape studies emerged. In the late ‘60s, there was this thing called the World Soundscape Project, and it was a initiated by R. Murray Schafer, who I talk about in that piece. But they basically got together a handful of researchers who went out into the environment and just started recording sound and listening and developing terminology for what they were noticing. And this whole field of study kind of like, you know, we have the word “soundscape”. We have various ways of even protecting the acoustic environment from noise and sound pollution, noise pollution, sorry. And I just heard about this practice of, like, okay, let’s, it’s sort of like the focus you get when you shut your eyes and are trying to focus your non-visual senses. You just kind of plug your ears for a time, and then you unplug them. And then you are acutely aware of what sounds are where.
And I don’t know. For me, it was a process of learning how sound was spatialized. At the beginning of my vision loss, like, starting to use a cane, I would have to spend time in a room. And you know, I used to run this reading series, poetry event at this bar here called the Railway Club. And I remember just like, it was so acoustically cluttered in that space. And I would sit there, and I was like, I can’t make sense of any of this. But eventually, I just started active listening in that space, and I could, you know, voices, you know. I kind of recognized who was talking, where they were, like, what the dimensions of the space were. I kind of adopted this active listening practice through acoustic communications and these practices that whole crew around the World Soundscape Project. But I think, you know, without that tool, I would find my own way, and I, you know, I know. Sorry, I have to mention that a friend, Andy Slater, who is a blind artist, he really, he dislikes R. Murray Schafer. He’s like, oh, he should not get the spotlight. We should get the spotlight because we’ve been learning how to listen before there was a term for it.
THOMAS: When Antonio said that once he took the earplugs out, and he, it was about 30 seconds that he was looking for something new. He wanted to hear something different. And I was just like, oh, wow. That’s really interesting because there’s sort of like a rule of thumb when creating audio pieces that says, yeah, things should change every 30 seconds because folks’ interests change.
CARMEN: Hmm.
THOMAS: And so, I was like, oh, wow! Look at that. I don’t know if they’re related, [laughs] but he just so happened to be looking for something after 30 seconds, which jumped out at me. Yeah. Very cool. Anyone else have anything?
CHERYL: Go ahead, Susan!
SUE: I was very touched by the scene where your brother was describing what made the plant happy and how you could tell the plant was happy by the angle of the leaves. I have a green thumb, and I raise a lot of plants. And I once went into a car dealer to wait for my car, and the plant that was in the waiting room was very miserable and unhappy. And I went over to the receptionist, and I said, “Please help this plant. It’s very unhappy.” And she just looked at me. So, when the car was returned to me, I took the plant home and took care of it.
CARMEN: Mm!
SUE: And that one scene reminded me of all the times that I notice when plants are happy, but I never thought of touching the plant to see if it was happy.
CARMEN: Mmhmm.
SUE: I notice it by looking at it, so I’m gonna touch my plants more now.
CARMEN: That’s really nice. I love that. He is so attuned to their needs, and he spends time with them so much. And when you’re in the grow room too, you feel like you are…. They have a presence to them.
SUE: Yes.
CARMEN: And yeah, I really like that. And you were attuned to the needs of that plant when you walked into that car dealership. Which, yeah, I think it is a relationship that you have with these living things that you are growing. It’s quite amazing to, you know, like the whole process to like, you know, from seed to, like, when— They’re so fragile, too, as well. When we had our outdoor grow that there was, that was shown in the films, it was on this patio outdoors. There’s about ten plants out there. They got to over six feet tall, maybe seven feet tall eventually. And in Vancouver, you know, you plant them in April, and then they’re ready in maybe October. We had a lot of wind and rain by then, so it’s not a great place for outdoor growing. And I remember getting, because my parents were also keeping their eye on the plants sometimes, they were like, oh. I mean, I remember getting this call that it sounded like they were on a ship or something. They were like, “Oh no! These plants are gonna tip over, and we’re gonna lose them!” And so, it was, I really think it’s like damage control.
The challenge is just protecting them so they can cross the finish line by the end, ‘cause they just grow so tall. And with the weather conditions here, it’s just not ideal. But those kinds of things, I mean, of course, it really just, my brother was so affected by that! And of course, you know, you put months of care into these plants, and you want them to make it to the end. And then each of them holds like 100, sometimes more, 100 grams or more of cannabis. And yeah, if it’s not ready yet, there’s only so much you can do to make it usable. Yeah, it doesn’t get its full growth cycle.
SUE: You sound like, what you were just saying is a metaphor for raising children.
CARMEN: [chuckles]
NEFERTITI: Yeah, and I was going to say life in general, right?
SUE: Yeah.
NEFERTITI: We invest in things, and sometimes they fruit, and sometimes they rot. And you know, it’s like, yeah. I think it’s a beautiful metaphor for these things.
THOMAS: Just don’t smoke your children.
CARMEN, NEFERTITI, and THOMAS: [huge laughs]
THOMAS: Sorry, I couldn’t resist that one.
NEFERTITI: That’s a good one, Thomas. Good advice. Life hack. [laughs]
THOMAS: No, hopefully that’s not good advice!
CARMEN, NEFERTITI, and THOMAS: [still laughing]
NEFERTITI: Earlier you did say “cannibal”. I’m just saying. [laughs]
THOMAS: I know I did say that. Cool, cool. Very good.
OLIVER: I just wanna be sure to thank Carmen and Antonio in absentia for letting us, you know, SADC and with the Blind Audio Chat to premiere these cool movies. Thank you.
CARMEN: Yeah, thank you.
THOMAS: 100%. Yeah.
NEFERTITI: Can people watch these films anywhere? Are you showing them in any film festivals? Do you have plans for the future?
CARMEN: Yeah, we have a longer, we’re gonna launch our Impaired website ‘cause it’s just gonna show our progress. But they’re first gonna be available through SADC’s site, I believe.
OLIVER: Premiering and then living, for at least a while, as streamables on our website.
CARMEN: Yeah, yeah. So, super happy about that. And yeah, we’re continuing to work on, we have a show coming up, another exhibition me and my brother are in, in 2026 at the Mackenzie Art Gallery in Saskatchewan. We have all sorts of plans to do…. Well, we’re still in this long-term process of developing a hallucinogenic pain reliever, a strain of cannabis. My brother’s proposed a name for that strain, Tripping Hazard, which I kind of, I like, yeah.
NEFERTITI: Love it!
CARMEN: [laughs]
NEFERTITI: Oh, my God! I love that!
CARMEN: Yes, yeah.
NEFERTITI: Oh, I’m a sucker for a play on words. I love it.
CARMEN: If anyone shows up in Vancouver, you know, we are legal for recreational use here, and I do have some homemade concentrates that I’d love to share, especially for folks who are, who do have visual hallucinations. ‘Cause I, one of the things I’ve been loving is talking to people like Thomas and Andy and our friend Collin and others about their visual hallucinations and also how cannabis might affect them. Yeah.
THOMAS: Absolutely. Absolutely! Let me just. Hold on. I was just on Flights.com. Vancouver.
CARMEN, NEFERTITI, and THOMAS: [big laughs]
NEFERTITI: I was thinking when I was in Vancouver last year, damn it, I wish I would’ve known of you, at least, because I would’ve definitely made an effort to try and connect. But I know you now, and I work for a Vancouver company, so.
CARMEN: Cool, cool.
NEFERTITI: Yeah, I might come through.
CARMEN: For sure.
NEFERTITI: Thank you so much.
THOMAS: Bring me something back, Nef. [laughs]
NEFERTITI: You bet, Thomas. Absolutely. Well, thank you, again, Carmen, for your time, for your talent, for your knowledge. And thank you, Oliver, for being here as part of the process, Cheryl and Thomas as co-hosts and co-members of the BCAD and SADC. We have a monopoly on all these letters, y’all.
THOMAS and CARMEN: [laugh]
NEFERTITI: And yeah, do we have any final thoughts as we shut this baby down? Okay. I think that answers that.
THOMAS: Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.
CARMEN: Thank you so much, everybody. I hope you all enjoy today, and yeah, imbibe or partake in whatever ways you feel comfortable. I do love rolling a joint, actually. Like, that’s like, I love the tactile experience of, I use these raw, they’re called raw cone wraps or something, king-size cone wraps. And I just love filling them and twisting them and yeah, just. Yeah, I guess it’s like a nice pairing to our dreary weather here, sitting on the patio in the rain [laughs] with a joint.
THOMAS: Yeah. Sounds good.
CARMEN: Yeah.
NEFERTITI: Heck yeah. That’s artistry in and of itself.
CARMEN: [laughs] Yeah.
NEFERTITI: Yeah, definitely.
OLIVER: And this has been a joint production.
THOMAS and NEFERTITI: [laugh]
NEFERTITI: Nice, Oliver! Nice. All right, everybody, thank you so much. Till next time!

THOMAS: Cool. Well, that concludes this week’s conversation. Why don’t y’all keep the conversation going on social media.
CHERYL: Use #ADFUBU, for us by us, #DescribeEverything, and #AudioDescription.
NEFERTITI: And hey, you know we’re out here, right? Mmhmm! Gathered and galvanized y’all. If you haven’t joined us yet, what are you waiting for?! You can find us in the LinkedIn Audio Description group and the AD Twitter community. We know that your participation will only make these spaces better.
Music fades out!

Hide the transcript

“Good Evening!”
Music begins: A funky break beat loop.

TR:
Tribe and trust!

Tribe and trust.

These were the two themes in the last episode with film maker Andres Jay Molina.
Well, for me at least, it was apparent that they play a big roll in the adjustment process. Not just for Jay, but in some way for us all.

When I refer to tribe, I’m talking about a community of people you identify with. Typically this includes support, encouragement and collaboration. It’s not about the number of people but rather the quality of the relationships.

Then there’s trust. First in yourself. As in having the courage and strength to live, speak and move through life in your truth. Whatever that is!

Then, trusting in others.

Even if their not a part of the tribe, which can test a person’s ability to trust.

For this final self portrait, I decided to sit with these things. Ask myself, “how do these things fit into my life today?”

Going into this episode reminds me of how I used to feel when my girls were younger and they’d sit with me in the kitchen as I prepare a dinner every now and then.

“Baby girls”, I’d say to them, ” I don’t know how this is going to turn out, but I guess we’ll see!”

And then one of my girls would say, “Daddy, you’re Blind, you can’t see! And then we’d laugh.

— TR & daughters in conversation laughing.

Take a listen to the episode featuring my girls earlier this season and you’ll definitely get an understanding of our humor and communication style.

I’m Thomas Reid and you are now rocking with Reid My Mind Radio!
— Reid My Mind Radio Intro
Andres “Jay” Molina:
When I first got to the nursing home I didn’t know anybody of course, So I was just hanging out by myself. And then one of the nurses told me, go outside, there’s people just like you, young like you, and you can talk to them.

But when I saw these guys actually, one of them looked Dominican, I’m Dominican.
And that attracted me more.
And as soon as I approached them, they just looked at me and saidcome on man you with us.
and I started hanging out with them.
And that’s when we became friends.

TR:
I wasn’t in any way alone during my early days of blindness. I had my family and some close friends. I even found another brother who I could speak with about this new experience we shared.

Yet, when I heard Jay talk about meeting the other brothers outside the nursing home, it reminded me how I wanted more of that in my early days of blindness.

Today, I believe what I wanted was acceptance and brotherhood. People in my life who really understood what I was now experiencing.
My family and others were sympathetic but sometimes you just want to be around those who you know just get it.

Details matter in relationships.

When I asked Jay for example, what was it about the group of guys hanging outside of the nursing home, that made him feel their words,

Andre Jay Molina:
Come on you’re with us.

TR:
… were true?

He was quick to say, they looked like him. They weren’t dopple gangers.
They just shared a culture and background. A Style of dress, haircuts or the way you wear your hat. It’s recognizable.

— Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, PCB Convention!

TR:
I used to serve as the Conference Coordinator for the Pennsylvania Council of the Blind.
During this one conference in Johnstown PA, a hotel employee, asks me, “Where you from? You’re not from out here.”, he says. “Are you from New York?”

That’s all she wrote. He and I started talking and as he noted, living out there in Johnstown, he was really home sick and didn’t really ever get the chance to kick it with someone in that way. It’s in the vibe. The way you say something as in more than the words. It’s understood. No explanations necessary.

For the rest of that weekend and even the next time we were in that hotel, if he saw me, he was going to stop and try to resume our conversation. I felt bad because I was busy and often couldn’t chat as much as I would have liked to. I too was missing that familiarity. I just wasn’t in the position to kick it. But I appreciated him.

There’s something funny about being away from home and finding someone else from your town that makes you immediately bond with them. I’m sure this applies to others, but I can tell you there’s definitely a New York thing that happens when we’re out of town.

I’ve been all sorts of places, thousands of miles away from home and all of a sudden, you make eye contact with someone and one of you immediately knows.. “You from New York bro?” I’ve met people who I believe if something broke out where ever we were at the time, they’d have my back just on some we’re both from NYC type of thing. But if we were in NYC, chances are we wouldn’t speak to one another.

That’s so funny! And yet awful and real.

Wehn you’re new to disability, you can feel as if you’re in a foreign land right in your own neighborhood.

The idea of recognizing home in someone is probably relateable to us all.

In that space with the Pennsylvania Council of the Blind, it took some time to feel like a part of the group. But if I’m being honest, something was missing for me that could have made that feel more like my tribe.

From the moment I attended my first conference, there were those in the group who weren’t welcoming.
That’s to be expected. I don’t think they liked me, my style or my ideas.
The fact that I was rolling with a crew of people who were either new to blindness or new to the organized blind environment.

We were also interested in having a good time and hyping ourselves up. Ok, I probably did a lot of the hyping up.
Most of the people seemed to enjoy and appreciate that but there were definitely those who turned their noses up to that sort of thing.

Even years later, after all of the work put into the organization it just wasn’t feeling like home. i chalked it up to not being from PA.

Truth is, even though I lived here for over twenty years now, I just can’t seem to claim it like that. I’m not PA.
I’m always NYC.

Don’t get me wrong, I truly love and deeply appreciate the people in PCB and what I was able to learn both from them directly and through all of the interactions and experiences.

Today, I’m older and still sort of feel a desire to find my tribe, but I now believe that there’s not one for me. Rather, there are multiple communities that fulfill me in different ways and at different times.

A disability centered space is something I find myself wanting to be around.
Not all the time, but that free flowing accesible environment like we used to create with the PCB in person conference is a great space to explore and feel what the world can be with a bit of access.

Access is just part of the story.
If you’re a person with multiple identities, inclusion means you’re able to comfortably express your full self.
You shouldn’t have to deny some aspect of who you are in order to be accepted.

For so long, there weren’t many places outside of my home and among my family, where I felt I can be my full self.

That’s not on anyone but me.

There are people I’m around today where I feel much more comfortable being myself.
Some of that is because they are accepting, but a bigger part is me.
I just care less today about what other people think.

Maybe I’m just more comfortable with who I am as a person?

This is definitely about blindness.

By the time I became Blind, I was quite secure with myself as a Black man. But sometimes I still feel as though I’m in search of my tribe. The place I can bring my full self. My Black,which includes my Puerto Rican, my Blind, Bronx, my very silly and nerdy self.

I’ve been promising my family that this is the year I grow up since forever! Forget that, I’m staying five for as long as I’m alive!

Is there a place that would welcome all of me?

Unfortunately, organizations may think they’re welcoming of everyone, but individuals that make up the organization don’t necessarily subscribe to that same idea. Even if they think they do, their actions aren’t always inline with that philosophy.

Everything is fine when it’s obvious you’re all headed to the same destination.
You’re on cruise control. Things seem to change though, when you hit an intersection. And when that is at the corner of let’s say Blind and Black for example, well the degree of openness and brother and sisterhood get’s tested. Welcoming, inclusion, diversity, all that stuff you said you are actually get’s tested.

If you’re a part of such an organization, look around and if those who you met at the intersection are gone, well, you probably failed.
Perhaps it’s time to stop saying you’re welcoming and actually become that.

As disabled people, so much of our lives are impacted by access.

The spaces we visit, the content and information we consume, the types of services we use. It all boils down to physical, digital or some other form of accessibility.

If I’m interested in participating in an event or getting involved with a non blindness organization, I have to think about and plan around accessibility. I need to be prepared to spend time working through a website or app.
Ready to take a picture of a hand out circulated during an event in order to have my phone read it.
Ask for some sort of direction in a new physical space.

Truth is most organizations like people, never consider accessibility. They never had to think about it.

Similarly,organizations with very low or no participation from Black people and others of color, may not recognize the exclusion. Or should I say non-inclusion? (Laughs)

The problem is when any of these organizations say they are inclusive but don’t take any meaningful steps to actually change.
Therefore, my Black and or my Blind are not really welcomed.

Is it really a community if my access needs aren’t being met but culturally I’m included? Can I consider myself a part of a community when all of my access needs are met, but I have to leave my culture at the door.

So it shouldn’t be a surprise that this affects my participation.

Or is that what they wanted all along?

Then they were never about community.

— DJ Scratch transition

TR:
I could imagine that some people found it strange when Jay mentioned that he and the other fellas didn’t immediately trust Jennilee Brewster.

If you recall, the group of brothers would gather outside the nursing home. Smoke a little weed. You know, just chillin’. And yes, at the time, weed wasn’t legal in New York.

Andres “Jay” Molina:
And then we had this white woman coming around asking questions. She was being really persistent.

TR:
I won’t beat around the bush here, these brothers most likely were concerned that Ms. Brewster could be a Karen.

A white lady asserting her privilege and budding into the lives and business of others, especially people of color.

You can find lots of examples of Karen’s at work on YouTube today thanks to smart phones and the ease of recording.

I’m in no way suggesting you go down that rabbit hole. It leads to all sorts of racists encounters that has an under current of possible violence. Plus watching mentally unstable people shouldn’t be entertainment.

For those who are actually named Karen, I feel for you.
But you have nothing to worry about if you’re not the type of person to racially profile people. There’s no need to be offended if you’re not the type of person to call the police on little Black children selling lemonade outside their own homes.

For Black people and others of color, these experiences aren’t knew at all. They’re just documented now.

Whether in corporate environments, schools, social settings, just about everywhere we exist, we learn to bob and weave avoiding micro agressions like a boxer dodging jabs, upper cuts and knockout blows.

No, actually, every where we exist!

— Clip of MTG attacking Rep. Jasmine Crokett in Congress.

TR:
So when jay explained that he and the rest of the brothers who would become the reality poets were leery about letting Miss Brewster into their circle, well some of us can relate.

Yet, we need each other. Jay’s story reminds us of that.

It’s an example of how opportunity often doesn’t present itself like we imagine it in our minds. It’s not as defined. It’s not flashy. The messenger rarely looks like the person we imagine or hope for.

Trust is essential.

Jay and the rest of the brothers eventually did put their trst in Ms. Brewster. It paid off. They became the Reality Poets. That not only made an impact on them personally but they’re art is doing the same for others.

What if they didn’t trust? What if they waited for an opportunity to present itself in a way that made them more comfortable?

Did Jay’s past make you uncomfortable?

I’m talking about his former occupation; drug dealer. He spent time in prison. I never asked about that part of his life. It’s in his past.

I do think about how many Black and brown people today are behind bars for selling weed. Meanwhile, now legal in many states, the Cannabis industry, overwhelmingly run by white men, has taken off. And like every other industry that forms, will be run by a few large corporations.

I think about these Black and brown men and women who when released from prison struggle to support themselves. This world doesn’t really seem to hand out second chances very equitably.

I don’t want all of these micro aggressions, systemic problems, the attacks on humanity, to change me for the worse. I want to believe in people, while still being aware. I want to be conscious and still able to trust in others.

That takes serious work!

— Break beat Transition

TR:
When should we trust ourselves?

We all have ideas that at some given time, we believe are correct and defend.

When something forces us to re-examine our perspective, we either realize our ignorance and change or become even more convinced we’re right.

When Jay talked about his reaction to seeing a wheel chair user at the bus stop knowing it was going to make him late for work, I’m sure he felt justified and would defend his position at that time. It’s a common reaction in a busy town where everyone is rushing somewhere. We want to hold someone responsible.

You ever notice how no one gets mad at the bus designers? Why the heck didn’t the bus manufacturers make it easier for those using wheelchairs to get on the bus like everyone else?

We don’t get madat ourselves for not leaving earlier and building in time for unexpected delays.

I give Jay a lot of credit for sharing that story. Any time someone shares an ableist thought or action from their past, I want to highlight it and recognize them for their honesty. I know it’s not easy.
I also think it’s something we should uplift for the sake of making space for us all to grow. I want that space for me too.
I’ve said and done things back in the day I wouldn’t do today.

I recognize and appreciate that Jay had to have a certain level of trust for me to share that story. In fact, I’ll say that about all of those who share their stories with me on the podcast.

I actually take that pretty seriously. Trust in general, is a core value of mine. I don’t do well with those who break it.

Trust needs to be earned.

Yet, we really do trust in things that can’t actually earn our trust. Wheelchairs, computers, access technology, a white cane.
All of these things can’t earn our trust. We’re believing in those who make the equipment, those who teach us how to use them and mainly ourselves and our ability.

When I once trained those new to blindness on technology, it was pretty obvious after a while who was going to adapt to the new way of getting things done.
Some would focus on how they used to do it.

“I used to just click the mouse and drag this file over to the other window”, they’d say. Yes, I know, I’d say.
I did that too, but now let me show you how you can do this today.

I hated my screen reader in the early days. I tried to convince myself that I couldn’t understand what it was saying. But it was clear that the more I complained to myself, the less I was actually getting done.

I didn’t have an alternative. My eyes were gone but my ears and ability to learn were all in tact. So either I was going to quit and do nothing or figure it out. In my mind, the pain of quitting and doing nothing feels worse than trying and not getting it. At least you can keep trying.

Then again, thinking about this now, of course I’d adapt to the technology. I’ve always been comfortable with tech.
I’m confident in my abilities, I trust myself.

In other areas of my life, I don’t feel as confident and may not be as quick to adapt.

Dang! I have to keep it real. There are times when it feels like I can’t trust or believe in others, but perhaps I’m really not trusting in myself.

My ego is telling me to strike this from the episode, wwe’ll see who wins.

— DJ Scratch Transition

TR:
There was a lot of trust involved in this Art of Adjustment season. I had no idea how I would produce the self-portrait episodes. I relied on inspiration and faith that something would come out of the conversations. That part is a given, it’s more about the trust in being able to make it work.

Whether or not it works is subjective. That’s up to you the listeneror transcript reader.

My hope is that some concept or idea discussed in one of these AOA episodes got you thinking. Perhaps encouraging you to consider how art or some form of expression can be a vehicle to assist you in your own adjustment.

The focus here on R double M Radio is adjustment to disability, but it applies to life in general.

Ah, y’all know that.
You all make connections and don’t experience things in a vacuum. That’s why I enjoy hanging with y’all!

Hey! This is my tribe! The R double M Radio family.

This podcast has helped me meet and establish relationships with people I’d otherwise never really get the chance to interact with. We share similar perspectives on a variety of topics. At least, we share the idea of being open. For me that means, open to other points of view, but not when they come at the expense of others or threaten a group’s existence. I’ll remain closed to hate, lies and deception. That’s some corny sucker stuff!

Even though this is a podcast and the communication seems like it only flows in one direction, you know it doesn’t have to always be like that.You can hit me up, ReidMyMindRadio@gmail.com. Give it a try.
REIDMYMINDRADIO@GMAIL.
COM (spelled out).

How is art or some other form of expression a part of your adjustment?
Have you been delaying the pursuit of that interest?
Did any particular story resonate with you in a special way?

Let a brother know.

— DJ Scratch Transition

If you didn’t really dig these series of episodes, like it wasn’t your thing, you can blame that on me. Well, you’re probably not listening right now so I’ll move on.

If you enjoyed these episodes well give the credit to the artists themselves: Krystle, Andrew, Kiana and Jay.

It’s all their fault!

They not only shared their stories and perspectives but they inspired the thoughts and ideas that came to be the self portrait episodes. That inspiration is a result of our actual conversations, they’re work, interests and experiences.

I hope it proved to do the same for you.

The process of producing it alone in my mind is the win for me. Like I said earlier… ” I don’t know how this is going to turn out, but I guess we’ll see!”

I’m off to continue working on the next season. That means you won’t hear from me until July. Or August, there’s a lot going on.

We do have a Blind Centered Audio Description Chat episode dropping in June. So stay tuned for that.

Also, if you’re interested in some free audio described content head on over to ReidMyMind.com. I’ll link you to a YouTube playlist of the
2024 Easterseals Disability Film Challenge Finalists. Audio description provided by Social Audio Description Collective!

— Airhorn

The best way to stay informed,is to follow or subscribe to Reid My Mind Radio wherever you get podcasts. Transcripts and more are at ReidMyMind.com.

There’s lots of ways to get there:
Maybe you open your favorite browser and type, some of y’all like to dictate…
however you do it, you got to spell it right

Say it with me; that’s R to the E, I D.
— Sample: “D… and that’s me in the place to be! Slick Rick

Like my last name.

–Reid My Mind Radio Outro

Peace!

Hide the transcript

TR
When it comes to adjusting to disability, do the specifics of a person’s disability really matter?
I’m talking about when it comes to living your life? Finding meaning and your purpose?
Personally, I think these are things we all desire.
Not based on our so called race, economic status or abilities but rather our humanity.

My final guest In this second to last episode of The Art of Adjustment, where we continue to highlight the role art plays in that process, is film maker, Andres Molina.

Andres “Jay” Molina:
But everybody calls me Jay .

Forty six year old Spanish man, light skin wearing a Vegas Raiders hoodie and hat. My pronouns are He/Him.

TR
Welcome to Reid My Mind Radio! I’m Thomas Reid your host and producer.
This may be your first time here, so let me explain the rules.
We don’t officially begin until the drum drops! I’m talking about…

— “Theme music. Every good hero should have some!”, Keenan Ivory Wayans, “I’m Gonna Git You Sucka”

— Reid My Mind Radio Intro
Andres “Jay” Molina:
I was living in the hood. In New York, in the lower east side of Manhattan. I used to be a truck driver. At some point there, I decided that I didn’t want to work as a driver anymore.

I started selling drugs. A few years after that, I got arrested, and I did some time in jail.

TR
After prison, Jay had to do some time in a drug program where he contracted a rare form of Pneumonia.
It put him in the hospital for a couple of years.

Andres “Jay” Molina:
Being so long in bed, I lost a lot of muscle mass. I lost my motor functions. I don’t walk today, I became disabled. All this happen in 2014.
— Sounds of busy city streets….

I used to be the type that didn’t really care much about disabled people. When I used to take the bus to go to work, usually there would be a couple of disabled guys, people around the route that I take. And as soon as the bus used to stop to pick them up, I used to be the first one in the bus, “Fuck, these fucking disabled guys. It’s gonna make me late now.”

TR
Hard to hear?
I’m in no way condoning this way of thinking.
Yet, as someone who grew up in New York and traveled to and from school and work on buses and trains, this is not an uncommon attitude.

I remember being on the train headed to class and someone got sick or passed out.
The conductor in these situations isn’t allowed to move the train.
The person even if they are conscious has to remain on the train until the EMT’s arrive.

Even the little old lady clutching her rosary beads is like, “Get them off the bleep bleep bleep train!”

— “Stand clear of the closing doors please!”, Vintage recording of NY transit Subway Announcement
— “New York, New York! (Voice pitched to an ominous deep voice)

Andres “Jay” Molina:
And then it hit me like a smack in the face because now I am one of those people.

Music begins A menacing synth loops and launches into a gritty, slow dark, Hip Hop beat.

TR
Following those years in the hospital, Jay needed physical rehab. He was sent to the Coler Nursing Home on Roosevelt Island. Just off the eastern coast of Midtown Manhattan.

Andres “Jay” Molina:
When I first got to the nursing home I didn’t know anybody of course, So I was just hanging out by myself. And then one of the nurses told me, go outside, there’s people just like you, young like you, and you can talk to them.

TR
Different groups of people congregated Outside the home. It’s a nursing home so the majority are seniors.

Andres “Jay” Molina:
But when I saw these guys actually, one of them looked Dominican, I’m Dominican. And that attracted me more. And as soon as I approached them, they just looked at me and said, “Come on man you with us”. and I started hanging out with them. And that’s when we became friends.

Andres “Jay” Molina:
I identified with them. They all looked like they came from the same background that I did. The way they talk. The way they joked around with each other.
It looked more like disabled people from the hood. That’s why I went to them right away.

TR in Conversation with Andres “Jay” Molina:
How important was that for you to have this group of other Black and Brown Brothers Who were in a similar situation?

Andres “Jay” Molina:
I felt really comfortable. They started taking care of me.

TR
they did more than congregate outside the nursing home. They broke bread together.
At the time, Jay was fresh out of the hospital. he didn’t have any money. So they all chipped in to cover Jay.

They helped each other.

Andres “Jay” Molina:
Even though I don’t walk I am what is consider independent, I can move my hands. I could move around. Most of my friends are gun violence survivors.
They are paraplegic’s and quadplegic’s, they don’t really have movement in their hands and bodies. So I started helping them.

So for example, I used to roll the blunts for them.

TR
It goes beyond rolling’ the weed, putting the blunt in their mouths and lighting it. Jay would feed his brothers as well.

Andres “Jay” Molina:
So we became close because of that. We got like a family like, I take care of you, you take care of me.

— Nino Brown A toast! (Clinking Champagne glasses)
Am I my brother’s keeper?
CMB Yes I am.

Nino Brown Am I my brother’s keeper?
CMB Yes I am.”, “New Jack City”

TR
While Jay and the other brothers continued to grow their friendship outside the nursing home, they didn’t realize they were being watched.

Andres “Jay” Molina:
A white lady called Jennilie Brewster was doing volunteer work here in the nursing home. She noticed that they didn’t have programs or projects for younger people. Usually, it was about the older crowd. She wanted to do something for us. And she started a writing workshop.

She used to come around to ask us to go to these writing workshops.
But at first we were leery, we were like white people probably police, because we were out there smoking weed.

— Whoop Whoop, Sound of the Police! KRS One

Weed wasn’t legal in New York yet.

Now we’re doing something that we’re not supposed to be doing. And then we had this white woman coming around asking questions.

She was being really persistent. She kept coming. And then one day, we decided to go to one of the workshops just to see what she was talking about.

And she started encouraging us to write about our lived experiences. To write about things that we wanted to write about.

TR
J’s first poem tapped into his memory of living on the lower east side of Manhattan in 2001.

Andres “Jay” Molina:
About how I felt about being part of 9 11

— News clip featuring Brian Gumble after the first tower was hit and before any information was known.

Andres “Jay” Molina:
Every piece of poetry that we do is about reality. It’s about what we went through.

TR
The group worked with poetry coaches during the workshops. The next thing you know, the crew was hype, excited about poetry.

Music ends!

Andres “Jay” Molina:
And that’s when we formed the Reality Poets.

TR
The Reality Poets which includes the crew of brothers Jay was invited to join and some others, are a part of what became known as Open Doors NYC.

According to OpenDoorsNYC.org, the group produces artistic collaborations, programs and mobilizing campaigns focused on community building, disability justice and gun violence prevention.

“Hit in the neck I ain’t even feel the burn.
Paralyzed instantly.
Praying to God, please don’t take me now
I got a little girl to look after and
I’m not trying to look after her from the sky”, Reality poet

OPEN DOORS is a project of the Center for Transformative Action-a 501 (c) 3 affiliated with Cornell University.

TR in Conversation with Andres “Jay” Molina:
What was your experience with poetry prior to disability?

Andres “Jay” Molina:
no experience at all. I never wrote a poem in my life ever. Didn’t even know how to write a poem.

Music begins, “Hooray for Hollywood”
— Explainer video about the film making process.

Andres “Jay” Molina:
I started thinking about how are movies made? What are the steps that go about making them? And that always intrigued me.
And that was always what I was after, making a film, documentary, feature film, a fiction film. Just something I think that would be fire.

TR in Conversation with Andres “Jay” Molina:
So was that an interest before disability?

Andres “Jay” Molina:
After.

I actually taught myself how to work with Premiere Pro. And I also taught myself how to work with After Effects. Taught myself Photoshop too. So I basically became a motion graphics artist.

TR
I can’t help but think about the importance of access.
To people, information, technology all based on our personal abilities.
But still, it begins with That desire to pursue our interest. Which comes down to trust in ourselves.

— Fire Through Dry Grass Trailer

Andres “Jay” Molina:
I wanted to make a documentary about the reality Poets. About everything that we went through and all our accomplishments.

And then in the middle of that, COVID hits.

a hospital called Elmhurst Hospital . in Queens, New York, was the epicenter of the pandemic. And they brought a patient from this hospital, into my room, put him in the bed right next to me. This patient had COVID. He was coughing the whole time he was there, gasping for air.

I have a lot of underlying conditions.

I felt betrayed. All these freaking people don’t care about me. They don’t care if I die or not.

TR
Feeling powerless, Jay reached out to someone he could trust.
Someone he believed cared about him.

Andres “Jay” Molina:
I call the director of open doors, Jennilie Brewster. I told her about the situation.

And she said, Jay, you are an aspiring filmmaker. why don’t we just make a film about this?

— ” A nursing home is ground zero. But it just takes one person with a virus and then it is fire through dry grass”, NY Gov. Anrew Cuomo

TR
Prior to the pandemic, Jay was working with an experienced filmmaker after receiving a grant from the New York City Mayor’s Office.

Andres “Jay” Molina:
Alexis Neophytides was my mentor. We were working together for a few years before COVID.
I call Alexis right away. And I told her about what I wanted to do. And she said, let’s make this documentary together.

TR
The film, Fire Through Dry Grass, captures the early days of the Covid 19 Pandemic from the perspective of Jay and some of the other Reality Poets. Literally, it’s from their perspective.

Andres “Jay” Molina:
We got like about four GoPro’s and I started clamping them myself to the chairs.

the GoPro shot is like a camera. They have a really big memory card like 60 gigabytes.

TR
Jay and the crew traveled throughout the nursing home documenting what was actually taking place.

Andres “Jay” Molina:
going to different offices within the facility and just recording everything.

TR
We’re talking about two Terabytes of video.

Andres “Jay” Molina:
We also have a lot of footage from outside of the facility. My collaborator, Alexis’ husband, were the ones coming and recording everything from the outside.

Every two or three days, I will just collect the GoPro, download myself into my computer And then upload into our Google Drive.

Andres “Jay” Molina:
As we started talking more and more about the film. We pitched the idea to ITVS public television, PBS channel. They liked it and they actually gave us the funding for it. So we started hiring people to work with us. The job was to watch the footage, and highlight and put aside anything that seemed important.

TR
In addition to zoom footage from the members of Open Doors in conversation as they continued to meet, there’s also arial shots taken from a drone.

Fire Through Dry Grass not only helped tell the story of the dangerous conditions being faced by both
residents and staff during the pandemic, but
it also raises the issue of disabled access to community housing.

Andres “Jay” Molina:
All of us have different agendas.
Most of the guys do want to move out. They always in the hunt for apartments.
Some of them are just here because they haven’t found one yet.

TR
Jay himself was offered multiple apartments. But they were often located in housing projects throughout the city. He didn’t feel safe and they were located far from his family in downtown Manhattan.
That was years ago, before chronic kidney disease.

Andres “Jay” Molina:
Which means I am on dialysis.
Even though I could live in the community and just go to the dialysis center, it’s much easier for me to live here.
All I got to do is get on my chair and go to the third floor and do the dialysis session.

TR
Community housing for disabled people is not just about access to shelter.
It’s about having the agency to control your own life and make your own choices.

— “Leave me alone, I want to be free from being told how to live my life
By rules, regulations, laws, bylaws, loop holes, pot holes and assholes
Let me be free to make the decisions that best serve me”, Peter Yearwood, Reality Poet

TR
Ultimately, the message that Fire Through Dry Grass makes clear is Nursing Home Lives Matter.

Andres “Jay” Molina:
During COVID Our now director of open borders, Vincent Pierce , wrote up a petition to get the CEO at that point of Coler, Robert Hughes, removed from his post.

We felt , he wasn’t advocating for us.

He was letting the Department of Health and CMS run all over us, take our freedom away. We felt that we were basically having our human rights violated.
And he wrote that petition to get the CEO removed from his posts, and other organizations saw this, and started supporting us.

That was around the time of Black Lives Matter. they formed Nursing Home Lives Matter.

TR
Robert Hughes, the CEO of Kohl at the time wasn’t fired, but I can imagine, the pressure got to him.

Andres “Jay” Molina:
The CEO retired in 2022.

TR in Conversation with Andres “Jay” Molina:
What can people do if they want to be of help? How can people support?

Music begins Bright, upbeat, ambient music that sounds like lights bubbling to the surface.

Andres “Jay” Molina:
Go to OpenDoorsNYC.org, that’s our home page. There’s a Nursing Home Lives Matter link. When you hit it you go to the Nursing Home Live Matter page. You can join in, leave your comments, leave your ideas on how you think is the best way to change nursing homes. In the country Not just here in New York.

TR
Today, despite the convenience and ease of access to dialysis treatments, Jays opened to living in the community.

Andres “Jay” Molina:
If I find myself in a situation in which I get an apartment, close to my family, my friends, my mother, my sister. I probably think about it again to move

TR in Conversation with Andres “Jay” Molina:
Do you think that would impact the reality poet’s if y’all are all, not in the nursing home together?

Andres “Jay” Molina:
No, because we also have two members that don’t live here.
Even though we do get together in person, we usually do everything virtually. Most of our meetings and events are usually through zoom calls. But every once in a while we do have in person meeting or event or project. And we just take an Uber, Access Ride to the location and get together.

TR
Since the making of this film, two of the Reality Poets have moved back into the community.

TR in Conversation with Andres “Jay” Molina:
Are there any things you learned about disability from making this film?

Andres “Jay” Molina:
Disabled people been living in what we call a system of oppression for over 100 years, in which we are treated differently, we are treated like second hand citizens
we are not being respected, we are not given the tools or help that we need to advance ourselves in life. And that’s what we are trying to break with this nursing home lives matter movement, that we matter , we are human beings too.

You still have a mind, you have a purpose, you have a say in your life, and the way you want to live your life, and that should be respected . And that should be enhanced, embellish by the people in power.

TR in Conversation with Andres “Jay” Molina:
Do you think there’s a power in film to do any of that as a filmmaker yourself?

Andres “Jay” Molina:
Of course!

We have advocated a lot for disabled people through the years of us being together.

We have done this movement Nursing Home Lives Matter. We are putting disabled people on the map.

Even though it has gotten better in Hollywood, a lot of disabled artist have been hired now, we think there’s room for more.
Not just actors and directors and screen writers, artists, poets, graphic designers all different type of arts.

I was talking to the group about making the documentary that I wanted to make originally before COVID about the Reality Poets, to show people if you try you could do it you can make it.

Music comes to an end.

TR in Conversation with Andres “Jay” Molina:
One of the things that you said is that when you became disabled, it sort of helped you discover yourself. And I’m curious to know, how do you feel about that man today?

Andres “Jay” Molina:
Well, I feel like I’m a better person now. Somebody that looks out for his people, people in pain, disabled people, People who need help.
Even though I’m in a wheelchair, whenever I see somebody, you know, like they can’t do it, I tie the shoes, I fix the pants, or fix the shirts, I fix the hats.
if they need me to feed them I will feed them. I’m more in touch with humanity now, which I wasn’t really before.

I didn’t really have a purpose. I found my calling.
, I became a poet. I became a filmmaker, motion graphics artist, Photoshop.

I tell people that I don’t regret me being disabled. And people are like “what you crazy” and I’m like I don’t regret it.

I found myself after I became disabled.

Music begins A very bright, inspirational piano loop that opens to a lively bright up tempo beat.

TR
Salutes to Film Maker, Poet and the newest addition to the Reid My Mind Radio Family, Andre Jay Molina. (Name extended like sports announcer)

— Airhorn

Shout out to all of the Reality Poets and everyone involved in the making of this film.

Fire Through Dry Grass goes beyond the experience of disabled people in nursing homes.
It’s about brotherhood, community, trusting in others and finding your purpose.

You can watch Fire Through Dry Grass on PBS online or the app.

I’m looking forward to more films from Jay on the big screen or other streaming platforms.

Andres “Jay” Molina:
I have ideas.
We wrote a play a few years ago called Fade about disabled men, that co own a barbershop.

— Scene from the play

So the play we had it in a theater for like a weekend, and it was received really, really good. So I’m thinking about making that into an animation stop film.

TR in Conversation with Andres “Jay” Molina:
I like it. And if you need some extra voice talent, let a brother know.

TR
Look don’t shame me. My clock is ticking, if I’m gonna put some points on the board, I have to take the shot!

— Basketball shot clock expiring and swoosh of the ball through the hoop.

TR
Listening to Jay talk about meeting the brothers outside of the nursing home, their camaraderie and their opportunity to collaborate really makes me think I’m still in search of my tribe.
I’ll talk about some of that in my final self-portrait in the next and final episode of this season. The Art of Adjustment.

As I said in the opening of the episode, the details don’t matter as much as we think when it comes to the experience of adjusting

Can you relate to Jay’s story?

Some people focus on differences. I don’t necessarily think that’s bad. Unless you’re judging or viewing through a narrow lens closed to any sort of empathy.

When I hear Jay’s story, I think about the importance of access to explore and pursue our interests.
I’m reminded that , unfortunately, these opportunities aren’t afforded to everyone equally.
Some neighborhoods and schools have programs that encourage young people to explore their creativity.
Some families have the ability and knowledge to make opportunities for their children.

Adjusting to disability can feel like time has stopped.
It’s like being in the middle of a game and the coach pulls you out.
You were just warming up and now you’re riding the bench to no where.

However, time, is access.

For Jay, disability gave him the time to learn a craft. This put him in the position to tell the story of what was taking place in the nursing home during the pandemic. He was prepared and equipped for what became an opportunity.

The older I get, the more I realize how time is limited and therefore quite valuable.

If you’re someone new to disability and feel stagnant, consider this your chance to prepare for an opportunity waiting to present itself to you in the not so distant future.
Hopefully it won’t be during a life threatening pandemic.
But whatever it is, I hope you recognize it and like Jay, light it up!

— Sound of a lighter and an increasing burning fire.

TR:
By the way, you know what else is hot?
Reid My Mind Radio baby.

— “Fire!”

Let’s continue to spread it!

Tell your friends, enemies and perfect strangers that they can get it wherever they listen to podcasts.

There’s transcripts and more at ReidMyMind.com.

The only way to get there I promise you, is by spelling it right…
that’s R to the E, I D!
— Sample “D…, and that’s me in the place to be!”, Slick Rick

Like my last name!

— Reid My Mind Radio Outro

Peace!

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