Sumo Kaplunk
Imagine that, from the age of six, someone in which both you and your family have invested an immeasurable amount of trust, forces you to forever view the world through a fragment of the frosted glass of your front door. This is how the world looks to me. I guess that if someone was to live inside my head they’d be constantly bombarded with a series of seemingly meaninglesss blurred shapes, ambiguous-colours and confusing-patterns.
However, to me, I make them make sense. Now for the science part (concentrate!) I have 1/60 vision in my right-eye only with a field of around 18-inches. This means that, at best, I can see the largest letter on the Optician’s chart from just over a metre + when looking straight ahead, I am only able to see about 18 inches in any given direction. I have seen the world this way for over 15+ years, due to medical neglegence, when the mismanagement of my hydrocephalus (bka water on the brain) caused 'bifocal optical atrophy' as an excessive build-up of fluid inside my skull led to a crushing of my optic-nerve fibres. As I hope you will appreciate, having, at such an early age, been forced to adapt to this different window out to the world also means that I have developed a different perspective of myself in that world and a number of alternative strategies for coping with the world and the people on it.
Ever since losing my sight, I have been determined to remain as independent as possible but I often suffer knocks to my pride when forced to realise that I must trust others and accept, or even ask, for their help. However, perhaps as a direct result of my experiences at the hands of doctors, I still Find it difficult to this day to accept the help of even my closest friends and even the trust of those who claim authority such as doctors, lawyers and anyone who labels themselves 'Specialists'. When physical disability is portrayed in hiphop say, by the likes of Ice Cube or Snoop Dogg who have spectacular stage-shows into which they incorporate grotesquely sentimental routines where they parade around on wheel-chairs, such performances are cynically used as some sort of pity ploy for what are ultimately, the self-inflicted injury for a 'Thug’s' stupidity.
Indeed, the archetypal male-fantasy is to have a 'nurse' give you a bed-bath but I’m not sure that these 'Thugs' would feel so big if fate flipped the script on them and these 'real' men had no other choice than to rely on the kindness of lil’ ole’ ladies to help them across the road. Disability is something typically associated almost exclusively with old-age and general deteriation and this does not take into account the hundreds of thousands disabled from birth, made disabled through accident, illness or other misfortune in later life. This can be upsetting because this sort of ignorant attitude means that there is a distinct lack of both practical provision and sympathetic insight or understanding within society for disabled yut’ dem. Furthermore, when you are black, or like me, caucasian but with parentage and roots outside this septic isle, you’re thrown upon a steap learning curve when you’re forced to realise how the establishment isn’t exactly bending over backwards to accommodate.
And if dedicated public servants are allowed to display a deplorable lack of sympathy and intrest for the needs of the disabled, in the way that social-workers treated my parents, why should anyone expect different from emcees or even national broadcasters. When I attended the ’97 Notting Hill carnival, and after Timmy had finished vilifying children, women and white-people, my mother came to the R1 area looking for me and was not particularly kindly informed by one of those shaved chimps (sorry, I mean professional security and crowd management) that I had no place at the radio 1 carnival because I was disabled. I don’t hear Westwood’s entourage complaining when they take their share of my licence fee to big up rapists, murderers and robbers 'on lockdown'.
What’s it like?
Many apparently credible 'specialists' in the area of disability studies have made the lazy connection between 'blind' and 'black' equating the experiences of exclusion and alienation of disabled (of all races and both genders) with Afro-American, Feminist and Queer politics but I’m especially weary of such comparisons as I feel it does a serious disservice to all these groups (which are not so convenient as to be mutually exclusive nor interchangeable). Like Lost Island says, some things are 'easy like picking pockets on handicapped men with no sight'; 'dis-abled' says exactly what it is, it is not a difference in ability, it is a defective or absent ability. If or when I attempt to celebrate my achievements, I do so in spite of my difference to society’s envirroning groups; not because of such 'difference'. Since I suffer from a significantly different kind of descrimination,unlike your Camp-queer, your girl power bitch or your thugged-out nigga,
disability does not afford me the opportunity to use stereotypes and (usually sexual) myths) to my own advantage. Indeed, the only myths surrounding disability to my knowledge are those of inadequacy and inferiority: the only 'Blind' myth is its alleged links to masturbation - hey! Blunket is a (allegedly) wanker so maybe it’s true? Having spent 10 years at The West of England School in Exeter in the company of blind and visually inpaired peers, I can say that like Blacks who call each other 'nigga', Indians who use the term 'Pakki' or those women who try to make 'Bitch' their own, blind people say the same sort of things to each other and play those same tricks on each other which you’d expect an able-bodied person to say or do. As Steven Hawkins or Helen Keller show by their example, being disabled does not automatically make someone thick or 'mental'. On 'Cobblestones' Braintax admonishes 'Rappers past twenty need to stop playing the retard', but then, as if to condone misconception, he proceeds
to LABEL the perceived mental defficiency Of his rivals as 'Joey Deacan style'. Blue Peter Case study Joey Deacon was, and is not a retard; he suffers from cerebral palsy (a condition which effects coordination and movement)
Traditionally, People instinctively group disability into the alternative categories 'physical' or 'mental' neglecting disabilities and conditions like Blindness, deafness or even dislexia - which are INFORMATIONAL disabilities which bridge the main two categories in cause and/or implication but do not directly mean any physical or mental disadvantages.
So, to what extent do your other senses compansate for your sight?
95% of the information humans process in daily life is non-verble and mostly visual.
Subsequently, I do have to rely on my other senses, chiefly hearing, a lot more than my sighted counterparts. The development of enhanced senses is an enduring, and regrettably popular
Fallacy, (especially when given an example like myself who lost his sight during childhood and thus long after the maturation of the central nervous system), so, it’s less a matter of senses having to compensate and more a case of my mind having to work over-time to make sense of the world by filling in all the information gaps. This is disrupted by something as trivial as putting Cheese & Onion in blue packets OR, something as potentially fatal as the council digging up a pavement without clear warning. I, Like hundreds of thousands of others in Britain, suffer from what is, on the whole, a hidden disability. I did not lose my sight until early childhood so, since I am able to use the same body-language and facial expressions as a sighted person, I do not look blind from outward appearance. This can cause problems when people don’t know I’m blind. There might be times when I may appear to be looking into the distance or, trying to make eye-contact with someone when in fact, I am actually trying to make sense of something relatively close to me. This can be frustrating and profoundly upsetting for me, and no doubt inconceivable for others in a social context. Unfortunately, once another person finds out/realises that I am blind, it appears to be the hottest topic of discussion as they often use the “so….if you don’t mind me asking..” conversational-lever for starting demeaning conversations that bore me to death. Imagine someone of the opposite sex coming up to you at a party and saying, in a very patronising tone “so, I suppose you have a hard time finding trousers that big for your fat-ass” or “I think it’s great that a woman with such small breasts as you is confident enough to wear that top" and then imagine that the only thing you can say back is “yeah, you’re right” because if you give crap back, chances are, in future they’ll feel their prejudices to be justified when they are in the presence of another disabled person who might need some assistence. No one can politely overt their ears
nor blink their lug-holes shut when things get unpleasant and since it is difficult for me to catch someone-else’s eye or search out someone else in the crowd, I have little choice than to rely on my addresser for the meantime; I think the worst thing that can happen to me in a social situation is when, if someone I’m standing next to doesn’t like me or something, they’ll whisper it to their mate – I’m blind, not fucking deaf you idiots! Sometimes I find the oppressive atmosphere of polite prejudice and apathy towards me too much to deal with and so I seek refuge in the anonymous world of the internet. I try to get involved in as many hiphop-orientated e-lists and message board discussions as possible but while anonymity is a short-term releif from the prejudices of the real world, it is a constant reminder that I am supressing part of my own identity and personality for the sake of others.
So are there any Advantages to being blind?
Interesting….On Rakim’s unreleased attempt at a solo debut LP, there was a track called “I get visual” and I’ve got to say that I really relate to this as I tend to experience music in a sort of Cenesthesic way. I don’t think it’s exactly this because I do not experience music as a specific vocabulary of colours and shapes BUT I guess the easiest comparison to draw would be with what happens when you put an audio CD into your playstation
it is interesting because things like a rappers image has no
baring on you...
Yeh, but I can still see that Puff Daddy is a dreadful dancer and that Big Pun (RIP) might have still been here today if someone had informed him that Slim-fast is only effective when you take only one drink per meal (RIP) – but then he’d probably have had to change his name to Skinny-Pun or “Stretch-mark Pun” and they don’t carry the same weight. Seriously though, I guess that I am less vulnerable to the cynical decentering tactics employed by those promoting “artists” like DMX, Jay-Z, No Limit, et al, which try and enmphesise an artist’s apparel or dancing ability in the hope that no one will notice that they can’t rap. I find it difficult to accept how some people continue to listen to and support “artists” just because they are pictured standing by expensive cars, having exhausted their account with the local escort service whilst parading around in garish stage-jewelry. If the music is genuinely good, even “if you fail to see, read it in braille, it’ll still be funky “ (Ice Cube).
how long have you been into Hip-Hop?
I first got into UK hiphop with classic albums like Hijack’s “Horns of Jerico” and London Posse’s legendary “Gangster Chronicle” But I’ve been into hiphop, chiefly the fourth pillar, With increasing dedication since the mid-to-late ‘80s. I remember first getting into hiphop shortly after losing my sight, when Run-DMC and the Beasties first got into the UK charts and rap was the flava of the moment. I remember making well-cheesy old-skool-esq rhymes on the school-bus with a friend and later catching ‘nuff flack for playing NWA and 2 Live crew on school grounds – or Gang Starr and Dre during a French class. From experience, although I do know some decent hiphop heads, I’ve found that metal heads are probably the least anti-social or otherwise the least unwilling to associate with someone with a disability. Unfortunately, scenes like the house crowd and “urban” music heads (that’s everything from speed-garage through to hardcore rap) seem overly concerned with style” over content as they manuvour through scenes preoccupied with image. The first gig I ever went to was Body Count back when I was 15. Since I was disabled, the box-office wouldn’t sell me a ticket unless I was escorted by a parent… It’s not the only reason why I tend not to go to them anymore BUT I’ve had trouble getting into loads of nightclubs too where the doormen have taken it upon themselves to decide whether I am able to attend their club and whether I am a risk to their….reputation. Personally, if I were them, I would be a lot more concerned by those who have made themselves temporarily disfunctional through drink, weed and sondry pharmasuticals than by someone who has lived and coped with their disadvantages most of their life. Sure, now I can succinctly Slam these people like the ass-holes they show themselves to be, BUT, at the times when this happens, it’s incredibly humiliating to be treated like mentally retarded scum by doormen (read “mentally ertarded scum”) in full view of friends and onlookers. I live outside London which makes it difficult enough to obtain hiphop but then again, Record-store “assistents” are notoriously unhelpful and, in this country anyway, the bigger the store is, the more household the shop-name is, the less helpful the store workers are toward me. This also means that I am unable to hunt out bargains down the local 2nd-hand shop
You say you’ve got an “informational” disability” so, is it hard to do things like read e-mail/write etc?
Yeah, when I first went blind, it was strongly suggested that I should learn Braille (the most common form of tactile communication used by the Blind all over the world)
Like emcees, British Braille users had faught a valient campaign of resistence against complying to the Americanised standard… In any case, being as independent and strong-minded as I am I felt that having to learn a totally new language like braille would hold me back as I was making good headway in most subjects but particularly English. Consequently, in order that I may be able to access information in this predominantly visual culture, I am 100% reliant upon technology which tends to let me down when I most need it. My main problem Is accessing information in the first place. Most heads can just read sign-posts, time-tables, skim book shelves, flick through a mag on the news-stand BUT I have to first enlist the help of others to locate and obtain the book/leaflet/etc and then conduct the time-consuming action of scanning the document page-by-page into my computer in order that I may read it. In order to access, process and output information, I rely upon screen-reading software (JAWS 3.31) which, as the term suggests, takes the digital data which is also produced on my monitor, and then passes that screen-information onto a speech-synthersis output device (DecTalk Express). Unlike visual processing which can take in many items and events simaltaniously, my relience upon the speech-feedback of a computer system makes my information-processing ability a highly serialised and thus laborious one – not least when I’m drudging through the latest instalment of “media assassin” hehehehhe. Unfortunately, a lot of information is not produced in an easily scanned text-format so it is both incredibly embarassing and a hazardous leap of faith when relying on the kindness of friends and family to read medical documents, bank-statements and other highly personal correspondence. Given my greivence with high-street retail record stores, I rely heavily upon internet and mail-order and here, all the worries about privacy and security are doubled for me.. Also, unlike magazines and other publications which need to be certain of their sources and their facts before going to print, these days, every internet-Thug and their shroom-munching-mut has a site putting out hiphop news and rumours…. Nevertheless, it is also true that if it wasn’t for the internet and the good work done by some enthusiastic hiphop fanatics out there, I would find it even harder to keep in touch with what’s going on with some of my all-time favourites like: KRS-ONE, Brother J, Ice-T, Bahamadia etc. Furthermore, I would have never heard of most of my favourite artists of the last few years: Styles of Beyond Thirstin Howl III, Pharoah Monch, Aspects, Mindbomb, Numskullz, The Coup, Common, Phoenix Orion, Braille and Ma$e (hehehe)
What was your favourite album of 1999?
’99 was a great Year for Rap, especially UK hiphop with top-notch releases including: Mindbomb, Krispy and Roots Manuva. However, My favourite album of last year would have to be “Lifefirst: half the battle” by this kid called Braille from New Jersy. I read a couple reviews of his album on some fan-based hiphop sites over in the states, got the album, conversed with the artist himself, and now I’m a happy chappy.
how are things set out in this country for disabled people? like
what are the most frequent complaints/frustrations that arise from
being blind and living in the UK?
If you live in this country, NONE OF YOU have ANY civil rights. What you might have access to are the “civil remedies” provided (at a price) by common and statute law; the disabled don’t even have this. The people I hate the most are the arse-holes who say “disability doesn’t bother me; I treat everyone equally.” This pisses me off because to “treat everyone equally” is not the same as giving everyone equal opportunity. For instance, treating someone with spinabifita just the same as someone else means not providing a wheel-chair for them to get about on and subsequently no provision of ramps etc. Likewise, a telephone-based banking service is as accessible for the hard-of-hearing as an ATM machine is to a blind person. Evidently, the needs of different folk with differing disabilities are in fact in conflict with each other and the state does all it can to keep the disabled fighting among themselves. For instance, “Disability friendly” councils and institutions have taken to removing curbs and steps in order that places are more accessible for the physically disabled. However, this is not in the blinds’ best interests because how am I to know where the pavement ends and a busy main-road begins?
In that case, what can be improved?
Legislation like the Disability Discrimination Act (1996) or the more recent Disability Rights Commission Act (1999) should be a step in the right direction and not, as I fear, another bureaucratic avalanche falling in the path of real progress.
However, from experience, greater legislation and formalised procedure tends to give employers, businesses etc, an unofficial licence to the least possible in order to be seen complying with legislation, rather than actually doing the right thing. I am a unique human being who is eager to contribute to society: I am not a simple statistical problem for a clerk to push from one pile of forms to another. In terms of more tangible and concrete change, the UK is in desperate need of
better, CHEAPER, more reliable public-transport - ESPECIALLY BETWEEN RURAL AND URBAN REGIONS. I think something needs to be done to cultivate better general awareness and just simple common-sense courtesy to one another irrespective of ability/disability. Given a lyric like “a man who fails to listen is blind” I see how it’s not only Ice-T who rquires a little tuition on the topic. Change comes from the oppressed upward, it is strange to see how conservative and reactionary a so-called alternative culture like hiphop can be. For instance, it’s amused and bemused me to see “The youth” come out in their thousands to protest against ammendments to the criminal justice bill just because it threatened the “civil rights” of a bunch of anemic middle-class kids ruffing it to stand in a field in Hampshire and take drugs whilst no one from hiphop has made a stand against the closure of mental-health facilities – Very interesting when it has been observed how there has been a trend toward a disproportionate number of diagnoses of schizophrenia being from an Afro-Caribbean background. It is about time that hiphop artists stopped winging about infringements of their “freedom of speech” and started using their privileged platform to propound some positive polemic which might benefit someone other than themselves and their egos. After all, some constituents of the “mainstream” can now be seen to be making tentitive, yet still genuine, steps in the right direction. Many theatres have introduced audio-describe services when the visually inpaired attend live performances. Likewise, pop acts have been known to incorporate live signing into their stage performances which may be actually preferable to listenning to the likes of steps or the spice girls. Seriously though, why don’t the concert venues and promoters invest some of their profits so that Pete rock can really “transmit def styles in sign-language and braille”
What does the future hold?
In my personal future, There is a strong chance that within the next 5-10 years I could go totally blind. I’m always interested in medical advances and would not hesitate for one moment if there was a way my sight could be restored. Unfortunately, since it is not my eyes, but my optic-nerves (which are actually part of the brain), dreams of nerve-regeneraqtion will remain just so for a good 10 years or more. In the meantime, every new day that I have I’m trying to be more than just a fledgling hiphop journalist and so I’m determined to get my work and my name put about in as much press as is possible…
I am certainly not your typical hiphop head; but then again, neither are you.
You can email me.
