Image Description: A film still of my legs from the waist down mid-stride. In my left hand I am holding a grey and silver cane and I am wearing ripped jeans and black sneakers. I am outside on green grass, the sun behind me casts a long shadow of my body in front of my legs
No Longer Be A Secret
Single Channel Video 4’33”
As Beethoven was becoming deaf he revealed in The Heiligenstadt Testament (1802) his fear of social stigma, which led him to retreat into isolation.
”I must live like an exile if I approach near to people a hot terror seizes upon me, a fear that I may be subjected to the danger of letting my condition be observed.”
And by 1806 he wrote in the sketches of one of the Opus 59 string quartets: "Let your deafness no longer be a secret—even in art.”
The music he composed during this middle and heroic period, while coming to embrace his disability, revolutionized classical music.
Beethoven's fears and self-isolation are experiences I deeply connect with. When I first was diagnosed with having a mobility impairment (which I would later learn was due to a progressive autoimmune disease) I spent many years hiding my disability and internalizing shame for having a body that moved differently. This also drove me into isolation.
Over time and through art I learned to take pride in my uniqueness. The videos in this piece are from 2011 when I filmed my walking for 79 days (before and after) total hip replacement surgery.
In revisiting this video archive I was able to consider my body's movement as music, my mobility aids instruments, all my various ways of walking, and tempos as a symphony.
All my steps and intervals of movement throughout my life, make me who I am.
Thank you for watching.