Disabled Legacies: Beyond Access and Inclusion (March) | Fourth Panel (Day 2)

[bell] >> Sorry to break up conversations, but we will have time to go back and continue. Um, because we do have um, one the last uh, talk for the day. Um, we've kept we've saved um, Kenny Fries um, for for the last uh, talk and I'm really excited to hear um, Kenny speak. He's one of our co-conveners um, and um, it's okay? Yeah. Uh, uh, K- yep, we see Kenny on the screen now. A- and I'm going to do a short intro because um, the number of prizes and fellowships and various other things kind of could fill a whole page. So, um, I'm going to do an intro that's sort of related to um, uh, the talk he's going to give today. So, Kenny Fries is uh, author of In the Province of the Gods, um, which uh, won a Creative Capital Literature Award, The History of My Shoes and The Evolution of Darwin's Theory, which won an Outstanding Book Award uh, and the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights from uh, from the center, and Body Remember, a Memoir. Um, I will uh, ask you to look at the website for kind of longer um, detail about Kenny's um, books and other exploits. Uh, um, but for now, over to Kenny. Hello. Can everybody hear me okay? Yeah. >> Um, okay. Unlike AK, where it was 4:00 a.m. here, it's 12:30, so um, bear with me in my in my uh, uh delirious state. Um I'm going to briefly give a recap of some things that I've done, and then I'm going to read a very short chapter from The History of My Shoes and The Evolution of Darwin's Theory. Um So, uh the next slide, please. This is just a uh a recap of my life in the art somewhat of it. Um my books and video series, my opera libretto, it's all in there. So, what you're seeing on the screen is basically um what I've produced up until now. Um uh reading left to right from the top is what happened here in the summer of 1940, which is a a video series based on the book I've been working on for 12 years, Stumbling Over History, Disability and the Holocaust. And then we have Into the Garden of the Gods, um the Gardens of Japan, a poem sequence which was made into a a song cycle um in Japan, uh The Memory Stone, which was a chamber opera done at Houston Grand Opera, The History of My Shoes and The Evolution of Darwin's Theory, uh my book of poems Desert Walking, my anthology Staring Back, which was the first multi-genre uh uh uh anthology of disabled writers in the US published by a commercial press back in 1997, um Body Remember, a memoir, which was my first memoir, Anesthesia, uh which was uh another book of poems, and The Healing Notebooks, which is a poem sequence which won the Gregory Kolovakos Award for AIDS writing back in 1991. Um since all this, I've I've also started to curate over the last, you know, uh 5 6 years, and I curated a an exhibit the crippling the queer at the Schwules Museum Berlin, which is extended twice. Um there's a wonderful website that's still up that you can find on it. So, it doesn't give justice to the whole uh the exhibit. Um and uh AK was part of it and a bunch of other people you've heard from over the past uh over the past uh days and months. Um and then I did an online exhibit uh called The Picture of Health: Joe Spence and the Politics of Disability and Illness. And there is the uh the the URL for it, but you can just put in Joe Spence and my name and it it will come up. Okay. Um so, I'm going to read from The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin's Theory, which was first published back in 2007. So, it's almost 20 years ago already. Um and I just thought it would be a really good uh a good capstone for what we've been talking about over the last uh you know, while. So, um you can put me back on the screen. So, uh I can read to uh I can put uh I I can read to people instead of that there being there. My There there I am. Okay. With air conditioner. This is a chapter called Radiance, Not Blinding Light, which is not my quote. It's a quote from Henri Matisse. And um the only thing you need to know is that um I've come back from rafting down the Grand Canyon um the Colorado River with a group of disabled people. In the past month, I've been having problems with my shoes that I've had for 20 years and I haven't been able to find somebody to make a new pair. Um and I traveled to Thailand before that and that will come into this, but I think everything else should be self-explanatory. The early morning sun reflects off the driveway through my bedroom window. Occasionally, I hear a car pass slowly down the street. It must be between 6:00 and 7:00 in the morning. I cannot tell whether I have been awake or asleep the past few hours. All I know is that I am extremely tired. The coolness of the sheets on my feet reminds me I am back home in my bed. The past 2 months, I've been unable to put my left foot on the ground without pain. From my bed, I can look out at the empty driveway. I see the just-risen sun reflecting off the asphalt outside my bedroom window. I close my eyes, take a deep breath, then another, my usual way of trying to reduce my rapid heartbeat. I begin to count my breaths. One, breathe in, breathe out. Two, breathe in, breathe out. A simple meditation with which I am sometimes able to calm my body. Three, breathe in, breathe out. And when I open my eyes, am I dreaming? The orange-robed monks I watched each morning in Bangkok are making their procession up my driveway. Without looking, I know each monk, every one of them, is not wearing shoes. My driveway is Rama the Fourth, Silom, Yaowarat, all the streets of Bangkok, all the streets of Thailand, where every early morning over 100,000 orange-robed, barefoot monks walk on Bintabat through village and city streets, carrying only their bot, black alms bowls, alms bowls, in which families, young and old, place rice and curries for the monks to take to eat back at their monastery. This is their only source of food. This daily morning ritual is the same throughout Thailand, except at the Marble Temple in Bangkok. Here, the faithful bring the food to the monks who wait in the tree-shaded street in front of the temple before taking their food inside. For an hour later, I imagine they will eat their curried rice on the smooth, cool, gray marble that distinguishes this temple from all the thousands of others throughout Thailand. I get out of bed and put on the padded slippers, child-size, bought from Gap Kids, to wear on the house and minimize the pain in my foot when I'm cooking. I go to my bedroom closet, slide open the closet door. My LPs are still wrapped, bound together with newspaper, an easy way of transport devised when I moved to Northampton. On the top shelf, a white cardboard box. Instantly, I remember that last attempt at having new shoes made, now over 3 years ago. I take down the box and open it. In the hours between midnight and dawn, I put on what I thought then would be my new shoes. Slowly making sure my left foot doesn't hurt, I walk through each room of my house, putting on the light. When I reach the kitchen, every light in the house is glowing, refracting off the yellow bulb walls. Standing in the kitchen in my would-be new shoes, I am taller. I see corners of the kitchen counters I don't usually see. I open a cupboard and I reach up to a shelf I usually can't reach. eye to eye with the toaster oven. Beneath the lattice metal tray, I see the looped metal element. When I turn the toaster on, the element slowly turn a deep orange, and I realize that the appliance that I have taken for granted is not a given, but it is an adaptation to the way we live now. So is the refrigerator, the stove, even the table and chairs. All that evolutionary backache we avoid by not sitting on the ground in the middle of the room. Plates gold to match the color of the walls, ceramic bowls also gold, forks and knives. I'm opening all the drawers, cups, mugs, and glasses, water pitcher, empty recyclable bottles. I'm in my office, the computer, the fax machine, the bookshelves, the calendar, the books, the printed letters on the book's pages. The living room, the television, the carpet, the sofa. Evolutionary backache avoided again. The lamp, the candle. The bathroom, the towels, the soap, shampoo, the toilet, the sink, the shower, the plumbing invisible inside the walls. The sewage system, the electrical wiring. Everything in my entire house, the entire house itself. Everything as it is, but everything an adaptation. The bedroom, the phone, the newspapers and magazines, the windows, the double arc bed. Backache once again avoided by adaptation. But a sharp pain travels from my left foot up my leg. I know it's time to take off my shoes. Back to the closet. Again the LPs, for the past 10 years have very little use. This digital organ I put away the shoes. It is now past dawn and I am exhausted. Back in bed, I close my eyes and wonder if the orange robe monks are again tracing up my driveway. Bright orange changes to burnt orange and the old blind monk priest dressed in his burnt orange robe, I wonder if he is still alive. As if in answer, the old blind monk waves to an other elderly man, the aging artist Henri Matisse. Why Matisse? What's he doing in my bedroom? Darwin Each of us at some period of life, during some season of the year, has to struggle for life and to suffer great destruction. In 1941, Matisse was 72. Cancer surgery had left him with a prolapsed stomach, so he had to wear an iron belt, making it increasingly painful for him to stand for more than an hour at a time. Two years later, stones in Matisse's bile duct triggered jaundice that from time to time caused him to stay in bed for long periods of time. Many times he woke up in the middle of the night and awake in bed remembered the past. The cut-outs of 1943 are the first work that Matisse confined to his bed worked on at night. How could he paste his gouache colored cut-outs on the paper so high on the studio wall? Unlike the photograph record of FDR, there are many photographs of Matisse in his wheelchair. There are also photographs of Matisse's assistants helping him with his work. Darwin Each man would soon learn that if he aided his fellow men, he would commonly receive aid in return. Always interested in the border between drawing and color, Matisse began to draw and color, replacing the brush and pencil with scissors during the last decade of his life. His experience with the cut-out spiritually rejuvenated him. He saw the advantages having had both his illness and the surgery, saying it made him feel young again. He didn't want to take for granted his new lease on life. To Matisse, this was a second life, and the work he did before his illness and surgery masked of too much effort. In his new work, he felt he represented himself as free, detached. Matisse likened this second life to flying, as a plane trip or helped both to forget and to find peace of mind, which makes everything possible. He was surprised by the feeling of motionless and great securi- security. It seemed impossible to fall. What mattered to him was to find joy in the sky. This is the radiant but not blinding light with which he longed to infuse his work. His bodily impairment gave him the impression that he was indeed floating in this radiant light throughout the remainder of his life. Somewhere in these hours, I know that I, like Matisse, can adapt to the circumstances in which my body places me. Like Matisse, I can learn from my disability experience. Darwin, no one supposes that all the individuals of the same species are cast in the the same mold. These individual differences are highly important for us as they afford material for natural selection to accumulate. As the world's various cultures continue to evolve, who knows what will help us survive. So, um Yeah, go. There's There's two more. And go one or two, three more. And another one. And one more. There you go. Um So, that we We we call this uh this this these events dis- disabled legacies uh beyond access and inclusion. Um which was actually a title that I came up with. I've been very um obsessed with the idea of legacy um over the past few years as I age um uh as I have uh had a heart attack last year and I just um decided I was going to do something I've always wanted to do, which was have an award given in my name um to a younger disabled writer. So, I started last year in honor of my 65th birthday, the Kenny Fries Disabled Writer Literary Award. Its inaugural recipient was Suraiya Terrell Johnson, the the the poet. Um You can find out more about this whole thing um at my website www.kennyfries.com/award. Um upcoming, um I'm at I guess I'm at the stage of my life where I have a I have a book coming out in June, um Returns, Poems uh Selected and New. Um when you get to that point, you know you're you're getting old. Um And there is just um my contact, my website, my YouTube channel where you can find my um you can find my my video series now has close to 115,000 views which is really surprising because I did absolutely nothing to do that. My email is Kenny at Kennycrease.com. You can always write to me. I usually will write back. Um and that's pretty much it. I wanted to thank Oca and Sri and to making this event and PMC for making these these events the past few months happen. It's been a a a sheer pleasure to to work on this project. Thank you very much. >> [applause] >> Thank you so much, Kenny. Um >> [clears throat] >> Oh. Uh This is something I'm always too shy to say to you when we're in person, but you're a legend. >> [laughter] >> You are a legend in the game. And I guess we we can open up for questions, but also Sri and I may have questions of our own for you if that's all right. I might have one to start with if that's okay. Um we can't good. We can see you again, Kenny. Yes. Uh the legend. Um sorry. Um I did have a question that was a bit broader. Um and it was about your practice and kind of multi-faceted practice because I think I first knew of your work as a writer and then met you and then kind of the more obvious work as a curator. Um and so it should have been obvious in the sense that I work in an arts organization and so on. So I think that um kind of going between being a writer, being a poet, being a being a curator, working, you know, editing, um works with other disabled artists. Um Can you talk to us a little bit about the fact Yeah, just how each informs the other or, you know, how it grows out of Yeah. >> [laughter] >> Um Yeah, I've had a varied a varied career. Um I mean, the history of it is basically I started out as a playwright. My graduate degree is in the theater. And I had a play done at La MaMa in New York when I was quite young. Um but the whole business of so much collaboration just didn't work at that time in my life. And I was always writing poetry. Um and uh was very lucky early on my career to meet Adrienne Rich and who I actually outed as disabled in Staring Back. Um she's in the book and nobody really thought of her at the time as a disabled person, but she had a rheumatoid arthritis and was severely disabled. And um And I I won this award for The Healing Notebooks in 19 '91. And I gave an acceptance speech and then got a an uh letter cuz email didn't exist. Um from an agent who was happened to be in the in the in the audience. And which he tried to sell this book of poems, which turned out to be Anesthesia. Um and he couldn't. But in doing so, he an editor decided an editor asked if I would want to write a memoir. And I thought, "Silly me. Oh, I'll try anything to make money." And so, that's when that's when I started to write nonfiction. Um So Uh and uh Yeah, I mean, that's basically they do inform each other. I mean, uh language comes first. Um and because I write about what I write about, usually the discussions are about what I write about, not how I write um, something. Which is somewhat of a frustration. Um, So, but uh, poetry is really the link to it all because my attention to language in all the things that I do is even texts for, you know, for for for exhibits. I I'm very very very, you know, it's it's they're all poetry to me. Um, I hear language first before I hear anything else. So, that I think that's the real connector. Thank you. >> Um, thank you. Can I uh, I have a question as well about legacy. Um, it's really really wonderful what you've done uh, with the award. And I was wondering, is there something about the legacy of all your work, all your books, all your community making, everything, um, that you wish people asked about more? >> [laughter] >> Um, it depends what mood I'm in. Um, I'm not a very optimistic person. Um, somebody I just I gave a talk um, so I I I just recently spent 3 months in Taiwan. And um, then came to Japan for a month and um, I mean, Japan has been a very important place for me. I I I first came to here on a on a grant in 2002 and then came back in 2005. I met my husband in Japan. Um, he's not Japanese, he's Canadian. He was teaching English. Um, and um, So, I was in I I went to Taiwan for 3 months um, and I gave a a talk there. And uh, I was quite moved by the response. I mean, people came from all over this small island um, and at the end of the the talk, people a young woman came over to me. I think she was going to 17 and she was literally shaking. And I didn't know whether that was because she had social anxiety and her head was down. She couldn't look at me. And um she she she said, "I'm frightened." I didn't know why, you know, I'm not I'm pretty approachable. Um and she looked she was looking down and she said, "Uh how can I do what you do?" And um I mean, in another mood, I would have said, "Don't." Because I've been at this for 40 years um and I'm ready to pass the torch. I mean, it's just it's gotten too much to do. Um but I didn't I wasn't I was in a better mood. So, I didn't say that to her. I basically said, "Um do what you what your heart tells you to do. And don't listen to the people that say you should do something." And she she said, "Oh, so I should listen to my parents?" And I said, "Definitely don't listen to your parents." And uh it turns out her aunt is a was a is a professor in Broward for this event. I don't know what prompted that. Um I don't know if this answers your question. It's really late. Um and I I also think that associatively I don't really think literally. So, um uh I don't know. I've had a life where I've been a life I've I think it's funny that I've gone last cuz I I've had a career in the life of Earth. I was the first person in in in after Judy Heumann to be uh to be uh in the mainstream school in in Brooklyn, New York in the '60s. Um I was the first person to write a commercial memoir about being gay, disabled, and Jewish. Um I was the first person to write about AIDS in the in in the early in the AIDS epidemic from a witness perspective. Um and uh and it's just been one after the other. The anthology was a first. I mean, everything seems to be a first. The exhibit that we did in Berlin was a first. Um and so uh I don't know. I mean, I don't know if I want people to think I don't know what I want people to think anymore. Um I try not to think about that. It's funny that you use the word legend cuz um there's a young a young man in um in Greece who came to one of my online events during the pandemic and finally he said he got the nerve to write me. And he started to translate some of my poems into Greek. And so I applied for a grant and got a small grant to go work with him uh a year ago in northern Greece. And um he was he's he's basically translating my first book of poems. The poems were written before he was born. And so um and he he kept calling me legend when I was there. Um and this is someone in Greece cuz I was the queer cuz I we did the first queer clip event he said on the island I I I I had on I'm in Greece. I mean, it was quite an interesting thing. Um so um yeah, I don't know if this answers your question, but that's where that's where I'm at. It does. It does. Thank you. Um would anyone in the audience like to take this opportunity to ask a question to Kenny online or in person? Oh, there's one here. Yep. Thank you. I don't really know how to say this as a question, but how is your style of writing kind of developed throughout the years and has your kind of passions changed about what you write about and whatnot? I don't know if that makes sense. It's a It's a good question. Could you just ask it one more time so I'm clear? Cuz I'm a little bit foggy in my in my little brain. >> I asked how how has your writing changed throughout the years in terms of like what topics you write, what kind of themes you focus on? Yeah, it's it's interesting. Um the topics have not changed very much. Um if you go back to my first you know, non-fiction, you go back to Body Remember, you can see these long looping sentences. Um but then I went to Japan and everything everything became simplified. Um in my lang- in the in the way I compose a sentence. And um so much so that when I was asked when they when Body Remember was brought back into print they asked me to write a a pro- a preface. Which they didn't want to do cuz I wanted people to, you know, experience the book, you know, as it was, not to my my words about the book first, but I did it. And I got back when my editor had literally just come back from Japan. And um then he said, uh you should um he said you can't write one sen- one sentence paragraph the whole time. Cuz I I I really pared down things um then. And so I think that that has that that has changed over time. What's interesting to me is what's changed is not my my what I write about, but what uh people how people categorize me. When I started out, I was known as a gay writer. I was known as a as a gay writer. That's what I did. And now I'm I think I'm more thought of as a disabled writer. Um my work hasn't changed. I haven't changed. I think the world has changed in in in some way. Um so that's that's my answer there. Thank you. And well, I was just going to say I feel like that's such a a poignant moment to sort of close with as well. Um, and say really big thank you to Kenny on the screen, not just for your talk, but for all the fun we've had um, over the last half year or a bit longer even um, trying to bring all of this together and brainstorming and and all the kind of in interstitial conversations. Thank you Kenny. Thank you so much. Thank you. >> [applause] >> Um, and with that also thank you to all of you for being here. I know some of you in the room and probably some of you online have been very sort of loyal um, participants of the Disabled Legacies Beyond Access and Inclusion series. You've come to the gathering in February, you've come to the Paul Mellon Centre for the research lunches, and you're here, I'm looking at you Freddy. Um, and so uh, thanks for kind of coming with us on this journey and I really do think from the perspective of the Paul Mellon Centre anyway, where this is just the beginning of conversations and thoughts. Thank [laughter] you. Um, and uh, a kind of practical plug is that the exhibition Misfits is on in the Paul Mellon Centre until the 9th of April, so come by anytime, just not on the weekends um, to to have a look. Um, so okay, thank you. Thank you all so much. Thank you Shreya, thank you Kenny, thank you Femi, Kathleen, Ella, and the team. And the wonderful interpreters, thank you so much. Woo! >> [applause]