Creating a Disability Aesthetic in the Arts

Disability Art. Identity. In a nutshell: who are you? Fill in the blanks between the privilege of Ted Kennedy, Jr. and the poverty of a baby thrown into a garbage heap who survives by living off the shit of the privileged. We, the disabled, the handicapped, the people of differing abilities and liabilities, the gimpy, the hobbled, the e.i. e.i. o'd. The folks of wilted muscles and milky eyes. The bodies that shake, rattle and roll; the bodies that lie there and moan. The girl on the poster. The boy in the bubble. Five parts warm flesh, two parts heavy metal. The Big Kahuna of Pain. The Queen Mother of Gnarly. Hand talkers.

Fingertip lovers. Celebrating. Just barely hanging on. Pissed off. The man with the white cane wearing a "Proud Queer" T-shirt. The old woman with the creaky walker and the whiskey laugh. Authentic. The real McCoy. Cripple. A name that rings true. Bone true, way in, beyond the reach of the cliché. A name that breaks your heart. A name that gives you Juice.

Cripple. So it ain't always a love song. Sometimes it plays like a dirge. The old, here we go again, time to turn shit into sunshine. Nah. Shit is shit. Sometimes with a lot of work, you grow a rose. Maybe even a garden. Sometimes you just shed light on the shit, revealing it to be much deeper than previously assumed. This often gets called "isn't it nice disabled people can express themselves" or "you people are so bitter (angry, self-indulgent, whiny, ungrateful . . .)." Once in awhile this gets called art.

Disability cultural art. Identity. Art that tells who we are, where we come from, where we're going, how we got here. Art that expresses the dreams and realities of a people. Of Survivors. We the disabled, the descendents of every holocaust. Inhabitants of communities built by word of mouth. Identity. The consciousness of saying: This is me. Not the way you dream it, not the way you want it, maybe not even the way I want it, but the way it is. Not the cheap emotion of me. Not the sentimental journey of the tragic but brave 8 by 10 glossy victim/hero of me. The real me.

Disability Art. The tragedy of Cripple played for all it's worth. But real, not the safe, comfortable tragedy of Jerry's slobber. All the things THEY pray not to be: in your face. Taking 'em to the back ward. Making sure they smell the pissy sheets we've been lying on 'cause the "nurse" ain't in the mood this week. Throwing the spotlight on that festering bedsore health care reform don't cover. Showing 'em that swastika the nice boy down the street carved into our front door with his Boy Scout knife.

Disability Art. The celebration of Cripple for all it's worth. The jazz. The sass. The triumph over. The movement. The revolution. The making it, big time. Disability Cool. Disability hot. The red hot power of Different with a capital D. Flaunting it. The bodies electric. Sequins on the scars. Get ready for the close-up Mr. De Mille. The celebration of me. Deeply me. Me in all my Cripple wholeness. Coming at you from the inside out.

Disability Art. Revelation. Cripple, in the spotlight. The quadriplegic dancer on one with his body, the chair, the light flowing along the line of elongated quad muscle. The line of that arm, elemental, essential, bone, sinew, energy, and the movement condensed, the line pure. The beauty of human presence, clarified through movement that reveals essence. Each moment of movement expressing wholeness and loss in a way that if you open yourself to it may live in your body forever. Authentic Cripple movement in the spotlight. And in that movement is every Cripple. The grace of the woman as she ins and outs, ins and outs the breath of the respirator, rhythm, life. The blind woman, cane as percussion, tap click slide, click click tap slide. The guy on crutches with that kerchunk kerchunking braced gait. The kid with Cerebral Palsy, muscles tightening, tightening, tightening, loosening. All of us.

And then again, it is just one quad dancer, Bruce Curtis, in the spotlight, doing his thing.

Disability Art. The invisible made visible. Our bodies. Our stories. The silenced insisting on Voice. In our own words. Twelve Cripple women sitting in a semi-circle calling themselves Wry Crips. Fat women, skinny women, tall women, short women.

Wall-to-wall Cripple women. Gay women, straight women, bisexual women and women who think it ain't any of your damn business. In the spotlight. A magnificent sight. Blatantly political. Blatantly sexual. Women saying no to making "nice nice" with the oppressor's foot on their neck. Rowdy. Fists in the air. Hands caressing thighs. Reader's Theater. Wry Crips Disabled Women's Theater Group. In our own words.

It's a feeling of tribe. The lights come up; the chant begins. Twelve voices: "I am a disabled woman." A young woman sitting in a power wheelchair: "I am strong." A woman in her forties with no visible disability: "I am paralyzed." The chant continues through a series of simple, direct statements made by each of the women in the group, ending with a fierce shout in unison: "I am, and I am disabled." ("I Am," 1983, Diane Hugs) A woman with CP is in the spotlight. Her words throughout the show are translated for the audience by a speech interpreter, but now she sits alone, no interpreter. Voices begin their barrage, assaulting: "She's small for her age" "Moon faced" "Almost no breast development." Her eyes begin to dart from side to side. As the assault mounts, her body movements become agitated, her head thrashing from side to side, her hands swatting at the words as if they are stinging insects. "Cut off the nodule" "Realign the hip joints" "Cut, scrape, saw." She begins to fight back with grunts as well as body movements. As the voices tirade: "Deformity small deformity small deformity . . ." the woman digs deep and lets loose with a howl. A long, piercing, gutteral howl. Then: silence. ("Hospital Litany," 1987, C.M. Wade). A young woman, her voice reaching for control: "My father had a stroke in October. I bought my father a book, but he could no longer read. People ask me, How is your father? I say: Fine. They think I mean he's able-bodied. No one calls my father disabled...He eats his dinner on a lap board with a napkin tucked under his chin, Like me. He needs his food cut up, Like me. He needs help tieing his shoes, Like me. But no one calls my father disabled . . ." ("No One Calls My Father Disabled," 1986, Jan Levine). A butchy woman in a well-used manual wheelchair pushes herself forward with her powerful hands. All the women behind her shout: "Supercrip Girl." The woman flings a red satin cape from around her back, pulls open her shirt to reveal a blue T-shirt with a big red S on it and responds: "Flies through the air, lifting up cars that block curb cuts, dropping them into lots marked 'stupid A.B.'s." The chorus of women: "Supercrip Girl." Supercrip Girl: "Blocks the rush hour buses"; Chorus: "With four hundred of her crip friends"; Supercrip Girl: "The city comes to a halt, the city gets the clue, conditions for crip transportation improve. . . ." ("Supercrip Girl," 1986, Patty Overland). A large African American woman with a cane leans forward in her chair. Her voice is full and deep, rich with music. She lets each word slip silkily from her lips: ". . . I find my way around your nipples, I suckle warm, I suckle gentle, I suckle strong . . . and smooth my fingers through the shadows of your skin . . ." ("For Jude," 1990, Pandoura Carpenter). Disabled women telling stories as if our lives depend on it. Our lives depend on it. No apologies. Twelve Cripple women in the spotlight coming at ya, coming at ya, coming at ya.

Disability Art. An invitation to see me, really see me, wounds and all, sans repartee. The shame I struggle with. The pride I fight for. My world and welcome to it. Deeply, moment by moment me. The me that's locked away. The me that's been hidden and hiding. The dream, fantasy and real me. The me I love. The me I fear. The me I hope to become. It's just me. See me.

The attendant wheels the pale, blond man to the microphone. The man is delicate, his small body reclined, a respirator tube twines from mouth to pump beneath his tiny feet. The audience move their chairs forward to be closer, fearing that even with a microphone his words won't carry. They are here to learn about disability through poetry: An Evening of Disabled Poets. The attendant turns the pages as the poet reads. Words come in gushes between gusts of air (air) sucked through the tube: Breathing (air)/ Grasping for straws is easier;/ You can see the straws./ (air) "This most excellent canopy, the air, look you," (air) /Presses down upon me/ (air) At fifteen pounds per square inch, (air)/A dense, (air) heavy, (air) blue-glowing ocean, (air) /Supporting the weight of condors/ That swim its churning currents./ (air) All I get is a thin stream of it, (air)/ A finger's width of the rope that ties me to life (air)/ As I labor like a stevedore (air) to keep the connection. (air)/ Water wouldn't be so circumspect;/ Water would crash in (air) like a drunken sailor, (air)/ But air is prissy and genteel,/ Teasing me with its nearness (air) and pervading immensity. (air)/ The vast, circumambient (air) atmosphere (air)/ Allows me but ninety cubic centimeters (air)/ Of its billions of gallons (air) and miles of sky. (air)/ I inhale it anyway, (air)/ Knowing that it will hurt/ In the weary ends (air) of my crumpled (air) paper bag lungs. (air)// The audience applauds and sends approval to the poet with heartfelt "umhs." This is bravery. This is courage. This is damned hard work. The poet sucks in deep gusts of air (air) (air) (air) (air) and continues: a slow process/ dreary, difficult (air)/ suffocating me in suspense (air)/ black cups embrace my non-existing breasts (air)/ black lace presses (air) my imaginary vulva/ still, i am not yet her (air)/ breathing hard from exhaustion, (air) excitement, fear/ still i must wait (air)/ i brave the pencil point near my eyes/ mascara, (air) powder, rouge/ the lipstick is nice (air)/ but i'm still not her (air) until/ the black ferocious wig/ digs her claws (air) through the bobby pins and/ a push here, (air)/ a twist there (air)/ i feel her becoming me,/ (air) i becoming her (air)/ the wig is firmly placed and (air)/ i smile (air) her magic smile (air)/ my red, red lips proclaim/ (air) she's here. (air)// The audience is silent, uneasy. Tension hangs over the room like a thick layer of gauze. The poet sucks in huge gulps of air (AIR) (AIR) (AIR), clears his throat and moves on to the next poem. This is bravery. This is courage. This is a Cripple poet, Mark O'Brien, doing his job.

Disability Art. Celebrating the body electric. Flesh and machine. Moving beyond assumptions. The pushpull of collaboration. Reaching toward common ground. Two women in wheelchairs glide effortlessly to center stage. One moves by controlling the power of her chair, the other by pushing her wheels. They meet and extend their elegant quad arms to each other. In the glow of amber light they bend and stretch, leaning into each other and away and in and in and away. They move their chairs in a gentle circle, then faster and faster and faster. A lone wheelchair wheel rolls across the stage, metal spokes glistening in the spotlight. A man rollerskates out from the wings holding a wheelchair over his head like a sculptural hat. A woman in a power chair zigzags across the stage, dragging a woman who is wriggling and twisting. A man with powerful upper body and small, floppy legs raises himself up and spins his legs fiercely under him. A trapeze hangs center stage. Perched over the bar of the trapeze is a wheelchair. A woman with thin legs in plastic braces limps to the trapeze, grabs hold of the ropes and jumps up into the wheelchair, swinging like a child in a schoolyard. A woman in a wheelchair and a woman standing face off against each other, a duel of martial artists. They pace and challenge to the beat of a drum, steady, insistent. Two women in power wheelchairs charge each other, zipping away in wide arcs at just the last moment, their heads thrown back in wild laughter. A wheelchair lies on its side in the spotlight, the wheel spinning, a man lies curled on the wheel, spinning, his strong, muscular arms wrapped around his soft, small legs, spinning . . . Axis Dance Troupe, in the spotlight. Electric.

Disability Art. Identity. Art that expresses our connection to and our differentness from. Art that defines us in our own words and our own images to others. Art that reveals us to ourselves. Art that entertains, enlightens, educates. Art that takes us out of isolation. Art that transforms lives. Art that embraces every complex part of who we are, alone and together, in this horrifying and exquisite journey.

The artists spotlighted in this article are just a few of many who are working to create art that expresses our identity as disabled people. I'll be bringing you others in future issues. [Editor’s note: Contact details for the artists, printed in 1994, are left out here.]