[245/365] The Private Life of Public Transport

[cosmolinguist]

This evening I had a phone call with an artist who's working on an installation,

a virtual reality experience constructed from sound and image.

In undulating bubbles around an abandoned bus, visitors discover the voices of blind and partially sighted "witnesses” who share their personal experiences and truths. This is the testimony of the missing passengers, and a platform for their voices to be heard.

So my voice was recorded to be part of this. I'm not an artist so I'm excited to be Participating in an Art!

Of course the thing will be in London. But I do have to go there a couple times in October so I'm hoping one of those will line up with this because I would like to see it (or, hear it; he told me the VR setup includes sound cues as well as visual cues to lead people to the points where the snippets of recordings will be).

He asked me three questions:

1. How would you describe the experience of being a blind or partially-sighted person? You may want to include descriptions of daily activities, or other senses, that bring your experiences to life for the listener.

2. What is the most important piece of information that you would like to communicate to sighted people about the challenges of living in a majority sighted world?

3. Have your dreams been affected by being a blind or partially-sighted person and, if so, in what ways? Please include any examples of dreams you remember. If you prefer, you could also talk about the way you, as a blind or partially-sighted person, imagine things.

I talked about how I'd gained sight rather than lost it, my optic nerves, what my nystagmus is like, my journey from a medical-model upbringing to discovering and embracing the social model in adulthood, and for the last question didn't talk much about how I literally dream because I don't have anything to say about that, but talked about a recurring anxiety dream I had for many years, because I think it's related to me being partially sighted.

In the dream, I'm a passenger in a car and I suddenly realize the driver has disappeared. The car is still zooming along though and I somehow manage to climb into the empty driver's seat without affecting that. Then I have to drive, or just steer really (it's definitely an automatic I'm "driving"!), speeding along freeways/motorways full of other cars. It's never a quiet road or a two-lane highway. Always a big speedy road, often in a city, often at night with the other cars just blobs of headlights and taillights.

My dream-self has knuckles that are white from how hard I'm gripping the steering wheel, and a stomach that's churning. I weave in and out around other cars in traffic, constantly certain I'm going to crash the car. But I never do.

The dream just goes on and on like this -- not getting easier but also not getting so difficult that I crash -- until I wake up.

I remember once being almost as frustrated as relieved that I was just about managing to keep the car going, because it was so stressful and scary and tiring and my only reward for "success" here was having to do more of the same terrifying task that was being somehow asked of me.

It all sounds like a really heavy-handed metaphor, but also I'm not surprised that driving a car is how my brain chose to illustrate this so many times because it does seem like a terrifying responsibility, and I'm constantly admiring of anyone who's willing to drive me anywhere.

This opportunity to contribute to the Arts had caught my eye because of the mention of public transport in the title; I always look out for stuff like that, since it can be relevant to my job at times. But here, there was no other mention of it. The questions weren't about that at all, as you can see, which I think is interesting. Fair enough that what is going on inside strangers' heads on a bus might have little or nothing to do with the bus at all.

Or anywhere: I remember distinctly having this revelation when I was a kid: in a car on a freeway as it happens, but this was being safely driven by my dad. I was in the backseat, and I cannot remember if we were going out or coming back home, but I was either excited about or basking in whatever we'd done on that particular trip (Twins game, Disney on Ice, something like that). I remember looking at other cars in the next lane, especially when traffic was slow enough that I could see inside them. Other kids, their strange blankets and toys cluttering up their own backseats, unknown adults driving, often I couldn't see anything inside the car and only knew if it was blue or red, big or little, going the same or opposite direction...

Suddenly I realized the people in all those cars didn't know we'd just been to Disney on Ice or were excited about the upcoming Twins game or whatever, and that meant I also didn't know where they were going or why. Were they on longer or shorter trips than us? Was it fun like this or scary like when I had to go to hospitals? I had no idea. It was dizzying, how little I knew. And I would never know. There was no way to know.

I spent a lot of car journeys after that making up stories about the people in the other cars we went past.

Anyway, back to tonight! The artist seemed happy with my answers, I have no idea what he'll make of them and I'm terribly interested to find out.

Comments

[otter]

I find such art projects exciting! Especially that you were invited to participate :)

[mst3kforall]

That art project sounds really interesting.

The driving dream, I am impressed in the matter-of-fact way in which you relate it.

I think it is neat the way you thought about the other people in the cars and made up stories.

[finding_helena]

That sounds like a really neat art project.

I have dreams occasionally where I'm trying to drive a car under suboptimal conditions (like, trying to reach over and drive from the passenger seat).