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About the Flaneur
I walk through my blindness the way I wander down streets in Paris: unfettered and alive, alert to the raw material of the senses. I am a flaneur. Come along with me. Just don’t try to take my arm, unless I ask. What’s a flaneur? Read the first post, Return of the Flaneur to Galerie Vivienne. After that, try Foot Rage and the Blind Flaneur. Then stay tuned.Letting Go of Sight
I’ve canoed on Lake Superior for almost as many years as I’ve been losing eyesight. I return year after year like a migrating loon to learn the other side of a slow, uncertain process that we could call “going blind.” After 35 years with the lake as my teacher, I know what lies on the other side. I call it letting go of sight. Read Big Water. See more about the Great Lakes.Not This Pig
If there is an emerging genetic underclass, I could run for class president or class clown. Read more in Not This Pig (2003).Media in Transition @ MiT
Disabled Americans today have to negotiate for the kinds of accommodations made for FDR, and the caveat “reasonable accommodation” is built into the law. President Franklin Roosevelt did not have to negotiate. He could summon vast resources of the federal government – money as well as brains – to accomplish the work of disability. And it was accomplished with such thoroughness and efficiency that its scale could be called the Accessibility-Industrial Complex had it been directed toward public accommodations and not solely the needs of a single man. Read FDR and the Hidden Work of Disability [MiT8 2013]
Shepard Fairey claimed that his posterization of a copyrighted AP news photo of Barack Obama was a transformative work protected by the fair use doctrine. In other words, it was a shape-shifter. I claim fair use, too, when I reproduce and transform copyrighted works into media formats that are accessible to me as a blind reader. Read Shape-Shifters in the Fair Use Lab [MiT6 2009]
The social engineers who created a system for licensing beggars in New York never imagined that a blind woman had culture or could make culture. She herself may not have imagined it, either. In the moment when Paul Strand photographed her surreptitiously on the street in 1916, he could not have expected that one day blind photographers would reverse the camera’s gaze. Read Curiosity & The Blind Photographer. [MiT5 2007]
Tag Archives: Playing by Ear
Café Mouffe: Zoë Keating
I heard an interview with cellist Zoë Keating on Studio 360, a frank discussion of her dispute with YouTube about the availability of her music on that platform. Read her blog post for a deeper explanation of the online music business viewed from a composer’s perspective. There you can also listen to a stream of her last album, Into the Trees, which is available for purchase on Bandcamp. You can sample her music here at Café Mouffe, but you better be quick about it. If she can’t negotiate a compromise, YouTube will pull the plug on her channel. Continue reading →
Café Mouffe: Astha Tamang-Maskey
Astha writes: “This new song is dedicated to the beautiful children of CWIN Balika Peace Home. I fell in love with these girls when I visited them for the first time in 2012. I am so happy to have finished this song for them this year. These young women have been through unimaginable struggles and seeing their positivity always inspires me to become a better person.”
Café Mouffe: Bernadette Peters Sings Sondheim
In a flight of fancy I suggested to Ms. M that, if our love could be translated into musical theater, Bernadette Peters could play her part. She was dubious, reluctant to accept any simulacrum. Not even for Broadway? So here are three clips to persuade her to change her mind. All are songs by Stephen Sondheim, recorded at Royal Festival Hall in London in 1998.
Avett Brothers - “the love that let us share our name”
As the holidays approached I kept thinking of a line from a song I heard on Pandora. Didn’t know who sang it. Didn’t know the name of the song. Wanted to post the song as a Christmas greeting for my family. Googling a scrap of lyric (“the love that let us share our name”), I figured out that the song was called “Murder in the City” – not exactly the title I expected for such a lovely refrain. So I didn’t post the video for Christmas. Here it is now.
Café Mouffe: Iris DeMent with Emmylou Harris & John Prine
Our Town - Iris DeMent (H.Q.) - YouTube Iris Dement - vocals & guitar | Emmylou Harris - harmony vocals | Aly Bain - fiddle | Jerry Douglas - dobro | Molly Mason - bass Iris DeMent - Leaning On … Continue reading →