Full Transcript
Sarah:
When somebody sees me, they just see this object with a white cane, they don’t see me as a person, and I am a person. There are so many, so many talented people with no sight that aren’t being seen. I always feel like this song is given to me and then I bear it like the child and nurture it, and then you sort of put it out into the world and it belongs to everybody else. That’s how I feel about songs. That’s kind of always been my mission statement really, is just to see me as a person. Just don’t even reference the blindness. There’s no need. It’s everybody else’s problem. It’s not mine. Digital platforms, absolutely not an equal playing field for blind and partially sighted musicians at all. The day that I got registered blind, I went home and sat down at the kitchen table. My grandma was there at the time and I just broke down and I said, I’m ending it all, what’s the point? I can’t do anything now. And my grandma, she grabbed my hands and she said, Sarah! She said, Don’t you be so stupid! She said, it’s only sight. It’s not your life.
Jeff:
Please welcome Sarah Caltieri.
Sarah:
This is my world. If you’d like to come and share it with me, that’s beautiful, and I hope you enjoy it.
Jeff:
Hope you enjoy. Welcome to Blind Abilities, I’m Jeff Thompson. Today in the studio, we have a singer, an actor, a creative, a fashionista, all rolled up into one, and her name is Sarah Caltieri. Sarah, how are you doing?
Sarah:
Hi, Jeff.
Jeff:
Oh, let me stop there. I don’t want to say how are you doing-
Sarah:
[laughs] Wow. I’ve never heard that said in a real life American voice before. That’s brilliant. I hear it in films. [American accent] How you doing?
Jeff:
How you doing? Yeah.
Sarah:
Yeah! Wow, that’s great.
Jeff:
And today in the studio, we have Sarah Caltieri. Sarah, welcome to the show.
Sarah:
Hi, Jeff. Hi, everybody.
Jeff:
Congratulations on your new single. Just released in September here.
Sarah:
Thank you. Thank you, Jeff.
Jeff:
And it’s “Yesterday,” dance version, right?
Sarah:
It’s two, actually. I double dropped. I double dropped the “Yesterday” single. So one is a soft rock version. One is a dance version.
Jeff:
I like them both. I heard the dance version and I had to go find the original one. And there it was. You can find it on Apple Music or wherever you listen to music. Plus, you have a website where they can go find all sorts of stuff about you.
Sarah:
Yeah. Yes, www.sarahcaltieri.com. Hopefully, everything is accessible. If anybody has any troubles, just send me an email and I’ll sort it out.
Jeff:
That’s great. I love the new single and I love your album that came out in 2017. All the music, a lot of good stuff, a lot of insightful stuff that you put out there, dug down deep and down and you can tell you were in the place when you wrote those songs. Great work.
Sarah:
Thank you, Jeff, thank you. Yes, it took quite a long time to record the album. My heart and soul went into that to hopefully give everybody something a bit timeless.
Jeff:
Is it fun that people who now see your new song come out and like it, and they venture back and see your other works? Is it neat that those are still relevant and people are listening?
Sarah:
Absolutely. As a songwriter, I don’t think about who might connect with this song, I just write it. I just allow the song to be born. And if people connect with it, that means so much to me, and especially older songs, which I think possibly they are at the moment, because when I wrote some of those songs, I was going through rebuilding my entire life after having sight loss.
Jeff:
Sarah 2.0.
Sarah:
I think a lot of people at the moment have lost a lot through the COVID situation. Possibly that’s why people are going back to these songs and listening to them, because they’re about striving and getting through it all and rebuilding it in a better way somehow. And I suppose some of the songs, it’s funny as a songwriter, isn’t it? Because we do write songs from a particular period in our life, but some of them do still resonate with me, and I do still enjoy singing them and then other ones I think, hmm, OK.
Voiceover:
Recording in progress.
Jeff:
I’m sorry. I just started that to make sure.
Sarah:
Hello.
Jeff:
So sorry, “Recording in progress.” Is that an English voice?
Sarah:
No, that’s American. American voice.
Jeff:
Oh, really? Someone from the UK telling me I have an accent, I thought that was funny.
Sarah:
I love American accents. I love them. And Canadian.
Jeff:
Really?
Sarah:
Yes, I do. Yeah. But what we get into trouble, don’t we, because other UK people can get them confused a bit sometimes. And then we get into trouble for confusing a Canadian accent with an American one. Sorry.
Jeff:
Yeah, I’ve been to the UK three times at two week stints and it seems like I can understand Birmingham, Teignmouth, down there on the channel. But some of them, it’s like I can move around England and I can’t understand it at all hardly.
Sarah:
Don’t worry, neither can we!
Jeff:
You mentioned like up by Leeds and stuff like that. It’s like the tail end with a high pitch, or you get to Birmingham or the Black Country, and it’s just like a big yawn and they keep on talking. Then I get down to the Devon area, deep Devon, and it’s like, hmm.
Sarah:
Yeah, it’s interesting discovering places like that still exist. I’m a genuine gluten-freer, so I’m an awkward eater because I’ve got an allergy.
Jeff:
Oh, really?
Sarah:
Yeah. Some places I visit still don’t sort of deal with gluten-freers and it’s, wow, OK, OK. No food for me here. Never mind.
Jeff:
I lost thirty five pounds when I went on gluten-free. I didn’t particularly- was strict on that, but it was part of it. I kind of went like towards vegetables and stuff. Plant-based. Weight just fell off me. I’m not a big guy, but I’m playing blind hockey now, so it was kind of a thing. But that gluten thing, twice in my life, I stopped all the wheats and all that stuff.Yeah.
Sarah:
Did you feel better for it?
Jeff:
Oh my god, yeah, I was thinking better, too.
Sarah:
It’s amazing, isn’t it? I mean, gosh, I was diagnosed mid-show. I was playing a main part in a Leeds stage play and I got diagnosed with this Celiac thing and told I couldn’t eat gluten and obviously because rehearsals were so extreme, I didn’t really have time to start reevaluating my whole diet, so I just came off the gluten and lived on kettle chips and vegetables, and the weight just fell off me==, and the director pulled me aside one day after rehearsals and sort of said to me, Sarah, I hope you don’t mind me saying, I’m a bit worried about you. You’ve lost a heck of a lot of weight in short space of time.
I said, I don’t know what to eat yet! Diagnosed with this celiac thing, I haven’t got time to sort of, you know, do a diet recce at the moment, but I will after the show. Don’t worry, I’m fine. I’ll be fine. Yeah, it was amazing.
Jeff:
Was that after or before the diabetes and the blindness?
Sarah:
After. Yeah, it was- I like a challenge. It was after. Yeah, because Celiac’s auto-immune so it can be linked to type one diabetes apparently. More interestingly, they informed me that I probably had it for the length of time that I’d had my diabetes, but it was undiagnosed for years.
Jeff:
It’s crazy. You know, the things we go to the store and you know, aisle one, two, three, four, whatever the aisles are, it’s all available. I mean, we just think it’s food, you know, we don’t grow it. We don’t know it. Like, people used to just eat from the garden or what they’ve- but today, with all the preservatives and all that stuff, like I remember in England, I did like the ale, a little bit, because in the United States, everything we get has a shelf life of weeks, months, but the stuff there came from the brewery like it’s going to be gone in two days or something. So they don’t add everything to it that gives it that preservative type of thing. And it’s more, I don’t know, it’s different. So now I drink stuff that comes from the UK from here. If I do. I don’t drink that much.
Sarah:
Interesting! Yeah, what is America like for a- because I’m hoping to get there one day, so I need to know about this food situation. What’s it like for gluten-free food, and diet, sort of?
Jeff:
They do have sections in the store. There’s some awareness about it. Some chains are better. Not like the chain on your sofa, but chain stores.
Sarah:
You saw that!
Jeff:
I saw the one where you’re talking about blindness, you want to explain to people, enlighten them a little bit. Grabbing, touching, and I forget what the other one was.
Sarah:
I actually can’t remember myself now.
Jeff:
I got the word. Was it objectify?
Sarah:
Oh, yes, yes, I remember that one. Yes!
Jeff:
That’s when you grabbed the chain. That’s how I knew the chain was there. Is that objectification? Objectification, that’s the word. I can’t say that word very well. Objectification.
Sarah:
Objectification, yes.
Jeff:
Yeah, and then you grab the chain.
Sarah:
Oh, I’m glad you like the chain! I must use more audible sounds in my sofa sessions.
Jeff:
Actually, the word “Patronize” came in and it was funny that he patted you and you were patronized. You know, it’s like, is that where that word comes from?
Sarah:
Oh, yeah, the guy, the random guy in the coffee shop just patting me like a dog. I’ve never actually had that before, and I was astounded because you sort of- this is the reason I set the sofa up, because I actually got, I was in London and I believe I caught COVID because somebody grabbed me in London. Well, three times, actually. I sort of left London on the train with a cough, and I was on the phone to my friend, saying, oh, I’m fine, I’ll be fine, just a bit of a cough. Seven days later, I was completely wiped out in bed, unable to breathe, and it took quite a few weeks for me to recover and my lungs didn’t recover for possibly, I’d say six months, to be honest. And so I felt, I thought, oh my gosh, how can we- like this has been going on for years. I’ve met so many other partially sighted and blind people, cane users, that have the same experience and complain and talk about how annoying it is. I just felt like I need to do something to try and raise awareness of it because this deadly virus is going around and it’s not safe to just grab somebody randomly on the street. It’s just not, so, yeah, I didn’t want to be sort of complain-y things, I tried to make it a fun thing because people really don’t know, do they? It’s just ignorance, but it’s a dangerous ignorance. So yeah, I try to make it fun.
Jeff:
You’re absolutely right. I mean, through my experience, it’s like when I first lost some sight, I asked them, where do they keep the blind? That was ignorance.
Sarah:
Really?
Jeff:
I didn’t know. Did you know blind people before you went blind?
Sarah:
No, actually, no. And I felt like I was the only one in the world. I still do, actually.
Jeff:
Oh yeah, I hear you, totally. I mean the lady, my counselor that came out to describe to me what the process is of getting, you know, education or training or anything like that, you know, when you get listed under the services and all that stuff. So she said, all your senses are going to be enhanced. It’s really interesting, then here’s a person doing that as a living, as a job, and telling me that she probably thinks my hearing gets better. No, you just pay attention to that white noise layer that you used to ignore unless it was, you know, survival.
Sarah:
Yes. It’s been a very, very interesting journey. I call myself, as you might have seen, bat, bat person journey, because I feel like a human bat, I use my other senses to sort of get around the world. What I find really interesting and I have found really interesting is other people’s attitudes with it and towards it, because when I lost my sight, I just saw myself as being Sarah. But I just happened to have less vision. Yet, as you probably know yourself, Jeff, it’s not like that for the outside world. They see somebody different. They see this person with a cane and then sort of have all these different ideas of something. And then you have to get used to all this yourself, and you’re thinking, but I’m just Sarah here, trying to get on with my daily life and business.
Jeff:
And all they see is the scarlet letter B on your chest.
Sarah:
Yeah, yeah!
Jeff:
Not the A like in Hawthorne’s book, but for some reason they just see a blind person.
Sarah:
Yes.
Jeff:
I use this analogy. I used to teach blind woodworking. I used to tell students this analogy. It’s like, you know, when five of you go hang out and you’re at the bus stop, you’ve got your canes with you and people drive by. It’s just like a ship going by an iceberg and they go, oh, look at the penguins. They don’t differentiate, they don’t see five separate people. They see a group. It’s blind people.
Sarah:
Yes. And actually, I’ve found it very difficult to deal with at times, because I have had negative attitudes in terms of my work. We could be here for a week, I think, with all the different things that have happened. But that’s what I found extremely difficult was being, you know, I went out with the cane, the white cane once, when I was first learning how to use it. And I remember walking down the path in my local park and two people walked past me, and I did actually just cry, because they were just staring, and I said to my social worker, I said, I can’t do this. This is too much for me. And eventually it was a case of building it up. But I still felt uncomfortable with the white cane because I felt that very thing, that when somebody sees me, they just see this object with a white cane. They don’t see me as a person, and I am a person. And so I started to pimp mine up, and decorate them and go out with like tiger print canes and all sorts. And the reaction from people was completely different.
Jeff:
I’m glad that’s the direction you went. As soon as you said that I went, whoa. It’s like you want to distract them from their natural, I don’t know if it’s ingrained in them, something along the path gave them the idea what they believe is a blind person, something, it’s the education they don’t have on people with disabilities. People who operate differently or do things differently, but get to the same results. They don’t see that. They see, oh, they’re doing it wrong, and they don’t even know what you’re doing. You’re investigating. You’re, sometimes you’re just mapping things out and sometimes you’re actually traveling when you’re going from point A to point B. But when you’re exploring, it might take a little bit, but it’ll- the third time, the fifth time, the seventh time you go there, then it’s travel.
Sarah:
Yeah, and we get there, don’t we? And that’s what I think a lot of people don’t understand. And I think you’re absolutely right, because somewhere along the line, it seems to have been embedded into people’s psyches that people with a cane can’t do anything. I don’t know where this is coming from. I did a history project a couple of years ago, and it involved thoroughly researching the history of blind and partially sighted people in Scotland. And interestingly, most people were independent. They were musicians, performers. There were cases of people who’d been, kind of been taken under the wing of certain religious groups and given opportunities in workhouses and things like this. And there was a case of a lady that- her case really touched my heart, and I actually wrote a theme tune around her story because she was a woman on her own and she’d lost her vision and she was having a really bad time in society and her neighbors were stealing from her, all sorts of things. And as a result of that, of course, she began to get depressed, and because she started to get depressed about it, and nobody was hearing her, they threw her into an asylum. And you’re thinking, but if that woman had been heard, you know, and it’s just things like this, I don’t know if it stems from this kind of history, I don’t know, but this is a
reason for my Secret Sofa, Jeff. How could I just tackle this in a fun way, you know, because people just don’t seem to have a clue. Even after all these years.
Jeff:
When I was listening to Sarah’s Secret Sofa, I really liked where you went with your monologue and thought, hey, I’m going to use some of this stuff. You’re talking about how many times you get questioned corrected, ignored, grabbed, touched, and you’re adding up the numbers 15, 30, 45, 60. And I thought, wow, she’s good at math.
Sarah:
I look like I do math.
Jeff:
But when you got into the year, when you got into two years, you know, you start thinking about that. But it’s true. It happens all the time and we take it. Either we use these experiences as educational moments, like I do 29 out of 30 times, but every once in a while, like when the cashier gives a person with me my receipt after I just handed him my credit card, what? I remember being in England and hearing a saying they use, do they need sugar?
Sarah:
Oh gosh.
Jeff:
Not talking to the BVI, but talking to the person with them. Crazy stuff. On another note, I read somewhere about your acting and you’ve actually turned down roles due to this script’s portrayal of a blind, visually impaired person.
Sarah:
Oh yes, yes, yes. Because what I found in my performing work is- I must have read so many hundreds of scripts in my time, because I do singing, recording, and the odd bit of acting. Acting I don’t do full time because it’s music that I focus on mostly, but I must have read so many hundreds of scripts in my time and I’ve refused to do the parts, because they do not reflect people properly. What I mean is that there will be kind of a tokenistic part for a blind person and it will be really, really cliched. I have chosen not to play these parts because I feel that it’s not a true representation. And I mean, I have friends who are
storming their way through the drag world doing aerial and all sorts of amazing things. People who are musical directors, lawyers, so many people doing- who are professionals, these scripts really are being written in a way that are so outdated that I’ve had debates with my agent about it and said, I’m sorry, but I don’t want to do this. I can’t, my conscience won’t allow it, Jeff, I think, you know, it gets me in the butt sometimes, and yes, I’ve lost work because of it, but morally, I’ve not wanted to put my face to that because I haven’t felt that it’s fair. So my thing has always been just to put the stick aside, just look at the person within the creative industries. Why put somebody in a role that’s just a tokenistic blind role? Why not just normalize it and put them in a role doing a job? And don’t even mention the blindness.
Why? Because we’re all just people. So this has been quite a slow, slow, slow process. I don’t know what it’s like in America, but in the UK it’s been so slow.
Jeff:
The streets are paved with cheese. According to 5-0.
Sarah:
Right!
Jeff:
You get the same thing, you get the exact same thing here. It’s no different. Like I said, we may be oceans apart, but we have a lot of common ground. I Should put that on a T-shirt.
Sarah:
That’s such a beautiful saying.
Jeff:
But it is- there’s not much difference. Society looks upon the blind as the letter B. They see the cane. They don’t see you. Everything- it’s objectification.
Sarah:
Yes. Objectification, yes.
Jeff:
Objectification.
Sarah:
Quite long for me, that word.
Jeff:
I’m gonna get that one right. You had to come up with that one, didn’t you. But it’s true, it’s very true.
Sarah:
I’m dying to come to America and play some music over there and meet people. Absolute- and interestingly, my- we get all the analytics of all the platforms and everything, and the songs
do really well over there, on the radio stations.
Jeff:
Oh, really? That’s great.
Sarah:
Better than in the UK, I think, funnily enough.
[“Yesterday” plays]
Jeff:
All the world is a stage. You said that once.
Sarah:
I did. It was an accidental- not a protest song, but it was a song about oppression and it’s called “No More Tears.”
[“No More Tears” plays]
It did really well on the indie charts, actually.
[“No More Tears” keeps playing]
Jeff:
I love that line, “But when I look in the mirror, I believe in me.”
Sarah:
Thank you, Jeff.
Jeff:
That’s what we’re talking about. At the end of the day, you got to go home and still like yourself.
Sarah:
I feel- I don’t know how you feel about this, Jeff, but going from a fully sighted human, I was doing all my singing, I was singing in bars, collaborating with DJs, doing shows. I was kind of trying to break into the professional world of entertainment. When I did start to lose my sight, I just thought, OK, OK, I can do this, but I’ve got through a life-threatening eating disorder which nearly killed me off. I’ve got through diabetes which nearly killed me off. The doctors said to my parents I wouldn’t actually get through it, I’d die, but I didn’t. I came through it and I’m still here. And so I thought, right, I’ve lost my sight and I’m going to do everything I can to use the skills that I’ve got.
[“No More Tears” plays]
A voice doesn’t need eyes, and when you’re on stage acting or performing or you’re on a film set, you don’t need eyes, you just need to know where everything is and where the objects are, where the people are. And so I powered ahead, still with my vision in mind, I’m going to make a success of this entertainment thing! And what I found, Jeff, every single door that I banged on to get assistance to help me with it, it was closed. Nobody, nobody in any governmental offices, nobody in any charitable organization. Nobody could help me with the things I wanted to do, and it was probably because there was a set thing to people who lost their sight, you know, and I didn’t exactly fit into that box. I was determined to be an entertainer, you know, I wasn’t going to go from being worked so hard, being in a job that I knew one day I would leave because I wanted to be an entertainer, to going back, and nobody could help me. And so every single step of the way I was having to really bang on doors and fight and make people hear me, and try and find training just for things like using speech software and learning how to use a computer. You know, things like this, really, and hiring PAs and learning how to be a manager when you’re blind- well, I’m registered blind, but I’ve got a bit of vision. It was so hard, and you know, you kind of get through all that and then you’re making headway with your arts because I was doing a lot, I was getting a lot of roles and attention and TV attention and things. But that started to kind of get tainted a bit because of people’s attitudes towards me, and then dealing with the things that we do on the street. To be honest, it drove me to quite a low, a low place because you get to the point where you think all I want to do is be me. And it just seems like every single place I turn, nobody else does. It’s a fight. And that’s where “No More Tears” came from, because it’s really hard to keep your internal strength, isn’t it? Because you know, somewhere in you that this isn’t you. You’ve just got to stay strong. Forgive people, because they don’t know, they they’re just looking at it from what they’ve been taught. But internally, we have to stay strong and know that we are not what they perceive, that our soul and our being is not what the people perceive it to be. That’s their judgment, not mine. And so, yes, that’s where that song came from really.
Jeff:
When you look in the mirror.
Sarah:
Yeah.
Jeff:
You still like you.
Sarah:
Yes.
Jeff:
That kind of leads into “Just For The Day,” because you kind of- it’s like taking a break. Like, just give me a break from it. Give me that sunshine you mentioned in there. You know, the drinking herbal tea.
Sarah:
[laughs] I look at that lyric now and I go, oh, did I really write that?
Jeff:
I don’t want to, I don’t need to say goodbye to it all. I don’t know if that was like, you know, because there’s more, a higher- I don’t know all the words.
Sarah:
You are right, though, Jeff, it was that “Just For Today” is actually- I suppose, being a type one diabetic, you have to look after your body and everything affects it. So anything that’s emotionally out of kilter, physically, I have to stay fit and healthy to be able to do my job, and anger- I had to learn how to deal with my anger about what was happening to me in terms of the way that I was treated, because it affected me. So I did get therapy and I actually studied reiki and energy work and things and learned how to kind of channel the anger in a proactive way. And just even for one day, just take a break from it.
[“Just For Today” plays]
Just because you’re sort of dealing with all this external stuff doesn’t mean that you have to say goodbye to anything, to any of your own dreams. Yeah.
Jeff:
Yeah. Your style, you’re artistic. Wardrobe, sometimes, your makeup. It reminds me of, two people came to mind when I was like scrolling through. I have some peripheral vision, so if I blow things up, I can make out a little bit. And I was thinking of like, Marc Bolan from T. Rex or David Bowie from Ziggy Stardust. I don’t know if you remember both of them- you probably remember David Bowie. I don’t know if you remember T. Rex.
Sarah:
I do. And I actually- it was never intentional at all to look like David Bowie. I just go with ideas because I’ve grown up in a creative background and theatrical and musical world, and loved dressing up when I was younger and I’d always get teased by my family about weird clothing that I’d wear, and I get a certain feeling for a song or an image or look. And I literally find a way of getting it. In fact, one of the Bowie looks was actually on “No More Tears.” It’s got a heart as a- I don’t know if you saw the heart as a teardrop on my face.
Jeff:
Yeah, and the patch, you have a purple patch and…
Sarah:
I’ve got many a patch.
Jeff:
One looked like a slab of lamb, of skin. I don’t know. It was fuzzy and stuff. I was like, what is that? Oh, that’s her patch. Oh, she has multiple patches.
Sarah:
Well spotted, Jeff. Yes, I started to develop a stage look because I’ve got no vision in my right eye whatsoever. All my vision’s in my left eye. And if I’m on stage and the stage light’s shining on me, I can’t focus at all, and my right eye sort of moves all over the place, so I thought, right, this is not exactly looking rock and roll on stage. So how can I make this look more rock? And I started to wear different eye patches to make it a feature, you know, to be proud of it, but just in a weird and wonderful way, really. So I practice with eyepatches with studs on and all sorts of things.
Jeff:
Do you know the song “Born to Be Wild?”
Sarah:
Yes!
Jeff:
That’s John Kay. And he couldn’t handle the stage lights, so he wore the sunglasses. He’s legally blind.
Sarah:
That’s amazing you brought that up because I heard that podcast.
Jeff:
Oh my gosh.
Sarah:
And I was so inspired, I had no idea that he had anything with his sight. I couldn’t believe it. Unbelievable.
Jeff:
And I remember seeing videos of him back in like the late 60s, you know, wearing sunglasses onstage like, wow, he looks cool. I mean, rock rock’n’roll guy, you know? And then there he was, sat down for the hour and a half with me and it was like, wow, just a phenomenal guy. His legacy, where he is today.
Sarah:
I found it really inspiring, actually, just because it’s so- it is inspiring to me to hear about other artists that have had things with their sight. It’s not even mentioned. I mean, that’s kind of always been my mission statement really, is just to see me as a person. Just don’t even reference the blindness. There’s no need. It’s everybody else’s problem. It’s not mine. And it’s so refreshing to hear somebody like John Kay just talking about his career. And the blindness is not even mentioned. It’s just, I was thinking, what’s John Kay’s eye condition? What’s he got?
Jeff:
I thought it was some type of Stargardt’s, in a sense, but he’s, at night he can’t see at all, you know, basically. I just sat back listening, you know, like, oh, wait, I’m doing an interview. I was just listening to this guy. He’s unreal. Just like you with your journey that you overcame and you said how you forged through things, or just bulldozed your way through, plowed your way, and kept going and your hunger for it. That’s what I was wondering, Sarah, with all the challenges that you’ve overcome, how’s it going today?
Sarah:
It’s just been hard.
Jeff:
Is it still hard?
Sarah:
I think sometimes what can make it hard is the physical barriers, because there are some physical barriers, that’s the reality of it. I mean, even simple things like applying for festivals is, it just seems impossible, you know.
Jeff:
The website.
Sarah:
Yes. Yes. Digital platforms, absolutely not an equal playing field for blind and partially sighted musicians at all. Again, I don’t know what it’s like in America, but in the UK I’ve actually come to head to the few big organizations because of their systems being so inaccessible. And I’ve said to them, can I just ask you a question if Stevie Wonder called you up and you said, oh, sorry, we can’t do anything about that? What do you think his reaction would be? Or his management or his label? And they’ve sort of gone, oh yeah, so shouldn’t we all be being treated like we’re on that level because you can’t just cut people out? And it’s quite simple, isn’t it, for somebody to make a system accessible? It’s so easy for them to make a few adjustments, whereas somebody like me with no sight trying to find my way around and trying to deal with drag boxes, you know, just stuff that is just so complex, it really holds you back quite a lot sometimes. To be honest, I’ve had to hire quite a number of PAs to help deal with it all, because it’s impossible.
Jeff:
It gets expensive.
Sarah:
Yes, it does.
Jeff:
I’ve heard people say, you know, well, you don’t have to pay for a car, you don’t have to pay for insurance, use that money towards that, so it all washes out. I don’t own a camel, so I don’t have to buy camel food, so I shouldn’t complain, right? I mean, it’s still a burden. We all live to our means. And when there’s a burden, a cost that comes to something to access it, well, other people have that same accessibility readily at their fingertips.
Sarah:
Yes.
Jeff:
It just stops us and it gets- I tell you, the anxiety goes up when you’re on a website and you just can’t get to this box. You’ve got to get into the box and change your credit card number or do something and it won’t let you. So then you have to open it up to a sighted person to say, oh, you’re just, OK, it’s done. And it’s like, oh, you suck. Oh, thank you, but that sucks.
Sarah:
Again, people might say you don’t drive, but I have to get taxis, I have to get cabs because, you know, I have to get to places, get to gigs, pay for huge train fares, PA costs are in the hundreds. They’re not just a case of spending a few hundred quid on petrol every month, it can go into the thousands per year. Obviously within the entertainment industry, your work’s limited if your image is not up to speed. And I feel that is grossly unfair to people with no sight, because you’re expected to make amazing graphics, look amazing, have amazing videos, and unless you’ve got all that, you don’t get looked at. I feel really passionately about pointing out that there are so many, so many talented people with no sight that aren’t being seen because of these simple platform barriers. But again, I suppose it’s lack of awareness unless people mention it or bring it up or fight to have things made accessible. They don’t know, they’re not aware of it. I mean, I’ve had a number of companies- generally, the response of has is, oh, OK, we weren’t aware of this, right, OK, well, now you are, can you please change it!
Jeff:
But at what layer? You know, when these corporations get this word of stuff, you know, you meet the doorperson and they don’t know how to help you there. But the corporates out there in the world saying, we’re all about accessibility, we’re going to make everything, we got this that and the other thing and all that because we care. But the doorman, the person at the front desk, the person, the caterer, it has to be systemic, it has to go all the way from the front door to the top floor. Otherwise, it’s just like coming to the website and you can’t get past it.
Sarah:
Yes. The other thing I’ve noticed, it’s just a hunch, having spoken to a lot of the blind performers and photographers, all kinds of creatives, but if we look into the mainstream world of entertainment, who are the role models? There’s nobody. There’s millions of partially sighted and blind people on the planet. Yet where are they in the entertainment world, or the media world or the fashion industry, or, you know, where the role models? I mean, I’ve been pestering a number of clothing companies and people to make the point, you know, you’ll get a lot more millions of customers if you use somebody like me to be in your magazine or something, you know.
Jeff:
There you go. Have they seen Sarah’s Secret Sofa?
Sarah:
It’s funny you should mention about the whole being ignored. I’ve just written a blog, and this week’s Sofa Session is about conscious communication. I was with a friend the other week and we went into a shop and this lady said to my friend, does she need a chair?
Jeff:
And so it begins.
Sarah:
I actually felt sorry for her. I was just astounded. So I felt so passionately about it that I’ve dedicated this week’s Sofa Session to this very subject, and I’ve even written a song about this kind of thing, so.
Jeff:
I’ve got another song I was listening to today. Here’s some of the words: “Familiar faces come and go.
Some-“
Sarah:
“Some stay awhile and join the show.” Yeah.
Jeff:
“Some come around, it makes me wonder, was it me that closed the door?” You know, I mean, that could mean anything. I got out of- it was like with blindness a little bit. Sometimes you just, it turns your life upside down, and I’m not really too worried about the things that fell away. I would just appreciate the things that stayed.
Sarah:
Yes.
Jeff:
And so when you went to that part of the song, that’s where it took me. What was your intent for that part?
Sarah:
Wow, that was actually, it was a bit of a tragic love story.
[song plays]
But at the same time, a beautiful one. And again, it could mean anything to anybody, but I guess for me, it meant that in our life people do come and go. And actually, when you look back on that period, you realize, ah, OK, maybe that’s why that person came into my life at that time. Maybe I had to learn this. And then obviously we have regrets about certain decisions. I guess in a way that part of that song was a bit of both. It was a bit of OK, people come around in our life to help us learn, but also there’s a bit of regret. And perhaps my fear got in the way of something and I closed the door on a certain situation.
Jeff:
It’s neat when your words to your songs can- they’re not so laced into the thread that its only means this. That it’s a little broader. A lot of these songs like “No More Tears,” I want to hear “No More Tears” stripped down, just the acoustic, and that’d be cool.
Sarah:
Oh, I’m in the process of planning to do that, and I will let you know, Jeff, when I’ve done that and recorded it, and you can hear it.
Jeff:
It seems like you like to repurpose a song or that it can have that double meaning or that double genre, that groove.
Sarah:
I always feel like a song is given to me, and then I bear it like a child and nurture it. And then you sort of put it out into the world and it belongs to everybody else. That’s how I feel about songs. It’s for whoever needs to hear it at that time and who connects with it, really. And I think the lockdown period was, it was really, really, really challenging. But at the same time, it was great for reflection. And by the end of it, I just felt like doing something completely different. And I just thought, why don’t we release a dance version just to, you know, cheer the mood up a bit.
Jeff:
How did that come about? I mean, you had “Yesterdays.” I like, there’s a line in there, and I didn’t write it down to remember it, but it says something, I think it’s something like, don’t kill yourself for tomorrow when you’re-
Sarah:
That’s actually from “No More Tears, yeah, that’s “Can’t die for tomorrow whilst I’m living today.”
Jeff:
Is that fear?
Sarah:
It’s kind of more pushing so hard for something because you want to succeed at something and you have to work ten times harder. But at the same time, it’s killing you. And then you realize, why am I doing this? I want to see tomorrow, and I’m not prepared to kill myself in this way because I want to see tomorrow, basically.
Jeff:
You talked about having assistance here and there, but it costs money. But when you’re a solo singer, you have all the hats that are involved in getting a song out there. Yeah. How do you handle wearing multiple hats?
Sarah:
Meditate. I do a lot of meditation.
Jeff:
This too will pass, this too will pass.
Sarah:
I learned how to meditate when I was going through thousands of shots of laser surgery, when I was younger, because the pain was so unbearable that I needed a way of coping with it.
Jeff:
I’ve had that explosion of light inside your brain. It’s like, and it hits you like a thunderclap. And then they hit you again and again and again and again. Oh, I felt like a ragdoll at the end. Nothing against ragdolls. I mean, no ragdolls were harmed during this laser surgery.
Sarah:
Did you have a lot, Jeff? Did you have to have a lot?
Jeff:
Enough.
Sarah:
Yeah, it’s pretty much similar situation. After the point they’d given me tons of anesthetic, jabbed me twice anesthetic injections and I was still feeling it. They had to stop because I couldn’t actually bear it anymore.
Jeff:
Did they give you the shot in the eye?
Sarah:
Yeah, yes. Yeah.
Jeff:
OK. You know when- here’s the thing, you grow up, just don’t look at it, just don’t look at it.
Sarah:
Nothing can prepare you for that kind of-
Jeff:
Now they come straight at you. I can still remember that.
Sarah:
Yeah, yeah. I recently had to have a minor eye operation, and the most thing I was worried about was they were going to stick that needle in my eyeball again, so I couldn’t handle it then and I couldn’t handle it now. Got through it then, but.
Jeff:
Someone said, what was that like? I said, you ever stick a toothpick into a grape?
Sarah:
Yeah!
Jeff:
Yeah, it’s a sensation I had never dreamt of living and I never would again.
Sarah:
Absolutely. Yeah, I’m in total agreement with that. Yeah, there’s nothing like that feeling. And actually, that’s a good analogy. A grape. Yeah. I guess in a way, you’re going through that amount of pain. I think my body left me actually at one point. So if I were still on the Earth, I had to find a way of coping with it. And meditation was a huge factor in that for me, and I continue to meditate every day of my life since then.
Jeff:
When did you accept blindness?
Sarah:
It sounds bonkers when I say this, but it was probably on the day because as a diabetic, we’re warned of all the complications that can happen to our body if we don’t look after diabetes, and as a diabetic with an eating disorder in my teens, which is linked in with omitting insulin, which helps to lose weight, which is extremely dangerous because it damages all the internal organs, which is why I nearly died. But in the back of your mind, when you’re going through all that, you’re thinking somewhere in your psyche, you are thinking, I don’t know if I’m going to get away with this, but you are so ill that you can’t get yourself out of this eating disorder. And I think I had always thought somewhere in my psyche, I don’t think I’m entirely going to get away with what I’ve done to my body. I’ve done so much damage with this eating disorder. I can’t see that something’s not going to pop. And so I think mentally, I must have known that something was going to happen. And the day that I got registered blind, I went home and sat down at the kitchen table. My grandma was there at the time and I just broke down and I said, I’m ending it all. What’s the point, I can’t do anything now. And my grandma, she grabbed my hands and she said, Sarah, she said, don’t you be so stupid! She said, it’s only sight, it’s not your life, it’s not your world, it’s just your sight. You can do this, now pull yourself together. And I thought, OK. Something sort of shocked me, you know? And I thought, OK, I don’t know how I’m going to do this, but I’ll do it. And the first thing I’m going to do is call all my friends because I can’t cope with all the sympathy and all the tragic this and the other, because I’m just not built that way.
Jeff:
The pity.
Sarah:
So- yeah, yeah, I’ve never been about that, and I just called them all up, and I says right people, you might be a bit shocked when you next see me, because I’m not gonna see your face. Sorry, but you’ll have to deal with me being, you know-
Jeff:
You’ll always look 21. To me.
Sarah:
It’s so true, isn’t it? I mean, our world is amazing because, you know, I’ve had people coming
up to me saying, I’m young and dark and handsome, and I’m like, whoa, I’m really sorry, but not from where I’m standing, you know?
Jeff:
It changes the perspective of a lot of things, like when I hear a sigh, I see an eye roll, when I hear certain sounds, when I hear their voices, I pick up, you know, I’m an editor too, so I pick up a lot of things. But from the visual aspect, there’s still beauty there.
Sarah:
Oh, absolutely.
Jeff:
So much deeper.
Sarah:
Oh, that’s so beautiful. I’m in complete agreement because I have a bit of sight left. But the way I see it is, it’s absolutely helped my art because it’s helped me be more expressive and it’s helped me appreciate things more and there’s things that I can see that other people can’t. I’ll ask a friend to, oh, is that a something? And they’ll say, no, it’s just a piece of wood, Sarah. And I’m like, oh, but it looks so pretty.
Jeff:
Shadows.
Sarah:
Yeah, when I moved to Scotland, I moved to Edinburgh and lived there for a while, and I’ve always been interested in photography, but just on an amateur level, not on a professional level or anything. But I love taking photographs and I became part of a group that was led by a completely blind photographer, and the people within that, we all had some sort of eye condition and it was absolutely fascinating because we all obviously took completely different photographs and they actually ended up in a couple of exhibitions, but everybody’s photographs were completely different because of how their sight was. Everybody had a completely different take on everything. It was so beautiful, and a lot of fully sighted people found it very interesting to go and look at the exhibition and look at all the different ways that we see the world. So, very interesting.
Jeff:
Yeah, there’s a video that I saw that you were in some city. There was a church, there was a thing, and you kind of just did a panoramic view of the city, right? In the beginning you said hello, and you had it on your face, and I paused that right there. I wanted to snap a screenshot of that and use that for the podcast, but it’s just kind of neat. These little snippets that you have, a lot of your stuff are short, little things-
Sarah:
Thank you!
Jeff:
Segments of songs. It’s really artistic, I gotta admit.
Sarah:
Thank you. It’s actually, ironically, I like to give the world a picture of my world, and actually it’s not what they perceive it to be. It’s all completely different. And this is my world, if you’d like to come and share it with me, that’s beautiful, and I hope you enjoy it because I do do a lot of travelling around when not being locked up and things turned chaotic. Be quite interesting to just film bits of places where I go and try and describe it to people who don’t have full vision. I try to audio describe everything, so I’m not leaving anybody out.
Jeff:
Yeah, and one of the places you go to is Sarah’s couch. And you know, that’s why I picked up when you wanted to really dig in and enlighten people about blindness and stuff, and that was really good, because that’s where the objectification- I got it right. Grabbing and touching came in, patronizing, all that stuff. And I think that’s the thing. No matter how good you get at travel or no matter how good you get at Braille or technology and stuff, you go out into the public sphere and automatically you just become, what, an invalid or it feels that way. It just feels-
Sarah:
An object.
Jeff:
It just takes you off of your, you know, when you’re in the mirror and you said, I like me, you know, then you go outside. And that, I think, is what keeps people sometimes from not exploring, not grabbing the cane and going because society’s low expectations and all that stuff. It’s haunting sometimes.
Sarah:
It’s very damaging, actually, and having studied energy healing, this experiment, actually I talk about this on this week’s Sofa, there’s an experiment that scientists did. It’s water and the effects of words on the molecular structure of the water. And what you could see under the microscope is that if the water had been subjected to abusive, aggressive, angry words, the molecular structure became deformed. And if the water had been exposed to beautiful language and beautiful words, the molecular structure turned into these beautiful patterns. And what this scientist was actually trying to show was the effect of a few words on the people and how important it is, how we speak to people and the effect it has on a deep level. And I mean, in all honesty, I have had to have counseling because of the way that I’ve been treated in the world, because in my own mind, I’ve always been Sarah, the singer, actor, vivacious character. And on a subconscious level, I was thinking about this during lockdown because I started to recall a day in the life, diaries of accounts that if ever anything happened to me, I’d keep a diary of it. And I went back to some of these diaries and literally every other day, there’s something, and I’m thinking, no wonder you feel exhausted sometimes with the world, because it is exhausting having to combat that internally, I find, all the time. But then again, you don’t want to sort of start thinking about that before you go out and sort of, you know, focus in on that and bringing that in. But it’s a really difficult balance. And I think a lot of people don’t realize if they do speak to you as if you’re not there or you’re stupid or, you know, it’s so damaging. I found it so damaging and I have had to have counseling for it. In fact, I was involved in a very bad accident, which severely knocked my confidence about a year and a half ago. I can’t say too much about it, but I was being guided incorrectly and I got smashed headfirst into a pillar. It was absolutely horrendous, ended up in hospital twice and brain scans and everything. However, I developed really bad anxiety from it, and it affected my work on stage, affected me getting on stage and performing, and it affected me walking around in everyday life. And I was being grabbed, the usual kind of being approached and grabbed, and I couldn’t go out. I just couldn’t go out the house. So I can’t cope. I don’t want to face the world. I don’t want to have to deal with everybody. And I had to have therapy. I had to have compulsive behavior therapy to try and get me out of this way of thinking, which has never happened to me like that, never, never. I’ve always been kind of like gung-ho and right, nothing’s going to stop me, and people just have to accept me. But that accident really, really kind of affected me on a deep level, and it’s taken a long time to sort of get out of that mindset, to be honest. This is another reason that I thought, right, I feel I need to- there’s just such lack of education. How can we get education to the mainstream if nobody’s putting people on television programs and normalizing it or nobody’s normalizing it in the fashion world or nobody’s normalizing it anywhere in the media? People aren’t going to get an image of somebody just doing normal things. I mean, blind people can even drive, Jeff! I’ve reversed a 4×4 with no sight, and I couldn’t do that when I could see!
Jeff:
There you go. That’s all the proof we need right there. We’ll just tell the world, look what
she did.
Sarah:
I don’t know if I’m allowed to say that.
Jeff:
And they’ll say, amazing. I think the thing is, no matter how long or how hard we try to educate as ambassadors to this understanding, this awareness that we’re trying to bring, we’ve got words of inclusiveness now, we’ve got words-
Sarah:
Yeah.
Jeff:
I’ve seen the words come, I don’t want to say come and go, but that’s not the new word anymore. Now, sports, they’re adaptive sports, they’re not disabled sports, they’re, it’s these little tweaks or little changes that are coming along. But we’re living our life every day and to us, it’s like, don’t hold your breath, don’t sit inside and wait for this change to happen because you getting out there in the public is going to be part of the change because every person you go past, that you show up to work, everybody in the studio, everybody on the stage, around the stage, behind the cameras see this, and that changes their perception of someone who has a white cane.
Sarah:
Yes, I completely agree because I don’t think it’s one thing. I think it’s a group effort because it does take the individual. I mean, there’s that saying, that the evolution starts from within. And as soon as we start to change ourselves and believe in ourselves and our own capabilities, not what somebody else tells us we’re capable of because they’re making a presumption and projecting that onto us, but our own capabilities and then going for it, it can be exhausting. I do believe that as well. I believe the more people that see people with canes just doing things, living life, living dreams, then it’s normalizing it. And hopefully that then takes away the fear that people in mainstream have of people with canes because unfortunately, I’ve heard stories about people being fired from jobs because their bosses don’t believe they can do the job even after they got the job. It’s just, I don’t really have the words for that, but-
Jeff:
It goes back in your song, that open mind. You know, you said all the doors were closed when you went to go knock on them, like the Wicked Witch of the West. Dorothy knocking on that door and, go get us the broom. They send them out for this stupid thing, task, to do, which makes the show. But why do we have to do that? How do you prove you’re blind? What do you need? What do you, you know, all this stuff. You know, it’s nothing new.
Sarah:
No, it’s not at all.
Jeff:
And we have these words, we have these understandings from these corporations and stuff. But what we don’t have is in our daily life, when we knock on that door, we get a different picture.
Sarah:
Yeah.
Jeff:
It’s a little blurry compared to the openness that we are inclusive. It’s not just on the websites, it’s in the corporations, it’s on the streets, it’s in any business you go to, any job you want to be part of, and even within the team that you may be working in, there may be some members that are like, huh? They think, good luck with that. Amazing, you know.
Sarah:
I was thinking, gosh, because this all has been extremely difficult for me to take, really, over the years. I remember auditioning, I was chatting with somebody about bands, I loved this band, I’d heard the music and I thought, that is absolutely based on soul music. Loved it. I speaking to somebody who was part of the band and he said, oh, I tell you what, I’ll give you this email address because they’re looking for a singer. Just get in touch with them. And I’m sure they’ll be open to meeting you. I thought, really? OK. So we’re having this email conversation and mid-conversation the conversation stopped and I thought, OK, what’s happened here then? This was all flowing nicely, and now it’s just stopped and I heard nothing back from them. And then maybe it was probably two or three weeks later I bumped into this same guy that I’d communicated about it. And I said to him, you know, I’ve been in touch with the band and I don’t know what’s happened, but they’ve just stopped communicating with me. And his response was, oh, they didn’t think you’d be able to do the dance moves. And in the back of my mind, I’m thinking, your loss, because I’ve been in stage shows with 80 people on a stage doing choreographed dancing.
Jeff:
You can dance if you want to.
Sarah:
And ironically, I can dance a lot better now that I’ve got no vision because I can’t- for some reason my rhythm seems to improve. I could not dance for toffee when I had full sight, it was all over the place. Yeah, doing these stage shows, I had extra training, you know, I had extra choreography training because I had to memorize every single move, every single dance beat, every single word because I couldn’t look at the other 80 dancers, obviously. So I just had to know it inside and out. So I’d have to work extra hours to get the dance moves and make sure that I nailed them completely. This is how it worked, and we did it and it was fine. And in actual fact, in one particular show, we were mid-dance, and I saw a load of performers stepping out onto the stage and doing this dance move that involved a few steps and thought, oh, I’ve done it wrong. Oh my gosh, I’ve messed up. Oh my gosh, I’ve done it wrong, oh help! And then they came back and sort of got back into place. And after the show, I said to one of the cast, I said, I can’t believe I got that dance move wrong. And he said, Sarah, you got it right.
It was the other people that got it wrong.
Jeff:
Oh, wow.
Sarah:
I thought, oh wow. That’s quite ironic.
Jeff:
You bring up a great point. It’s some things that we do try to achieve. And with the obstacles, the barricades and brick walls we got to go through and stuff like that makes us try a little harder, and it’s the type of determination that you’ve probably had before you lost your sight that you were using anyways. But now you brought that along with you. You just have to go different routes of doing it, and it’s a lot more work than it used to be. But it’s the only way you’re going to access it and do it anyways. I mean, I think we get to a point where we don’t look at how much more time it takes to do something on a daily basis, but like you said, after a couple of years, sometimes it just catches up with you and you just go, [sighs], you know-
Sarah:
Bit of a burnout. I do have the odd burnout phase, but I know how to handle it now. I’ve sort of learned how to make sure that I’m not exerting myself too much and if I do feel like I’m starting to burn a bit, I’ll just accept, okay, we just need to slow down. You know, health first.
Jeff:
Have that herbal tea?
Sarah:
Yeah.
Jeff:
The sunset.
Sarah:
Absolutely.
Jeff:
What advice would you give to someone else who may be going through the same thing you went through of losing some sight and even diabetes?
Sarah:
Take each day as it comes. Put no pressure on yourself. It’s a long journey, but the way I saw it was, OK, I’m going back to being a toddler. I need to learn everything step by step in a different way. And eventually, one day, you’ll be at the top of the mountain because you’ll have made all the steps without realizing it. There’s so much to learn when you’ve been thrown into the darkness, so much to learn. But I just did simple things. So, for example, because I was quite down and all, I’d set myself little goal for the day. So I’d think, OK, today I’m going to deal with the buzzy thing, which I call the bond buzzer for a cup of tea. You know, that thing that you stick in- what’s the correct terminology for that thing you stick in your tea and it buzzes?
Jeff:
Oh, a liquid alert thing. Yeah.
Sarah:
That’s it. Yes.
Jeff:
So the cup does runneth over.
Sarah:
Yeah. I mean, I just use my finger now.
Jeff:
Does that tell you if your cup is half full or half empty? Hmm.
Sarah:
Well, it’s half full for me. I’ve always tried to be a half full person unless I’m being grabbed on the street 50 million times a day.
Jeff:
When you say that, it means it’s half full, that it needs more work and let’s build it up and it’s a positive thing, right?
Sarah:
Yeah, half full. Yeah, half empty is you running on empty, so what’s the point, whereas half full, you know, you’re full, you’ve got somewhere to go, but-
Jeff:
You can fill it up.
Sarah:
Yeah, yeah.
Jeff:
Moving forward.
Sarah:
Yeah. And I mean, it was just things like that. I mean, for example, trying to do cane training was excruciating. I hated it, hated it because I didn’t want to be seen on the street with this white long thing that just labeled me.
Jeff:
I tried the hula hoop in public, but until I got it, until I got it, I looked really silly. And yeah, I hear you about the cane training.
Sarah:
Yeah. So I’d say, OK, let’s walk to the end of the drive tomorrow. All I need to do tomorrow is just walk to the end of the drive. That’s my goal. Nothing else, nothing more. If I achieve that, it’s going to make me feel really good at the end of it. And that’s what I did, I walked to the end of the drive with it, and I’d go back in. And then if I felt like it the day after, I’d walk to the end of the road or I’d just take however long it took me to build myself up. And that’s how I got to the point where I am now just being independent, and being a crazy person. Recording music, and doing all sorts of things.
Jeff:
You like Apple devices?
Sarah:
Oh, Apple has been an absolute godsend to me. I love- my apartment’s like an Apple shop.
Jeff:
You got the whole orchard.
Sarah:
I do, yeah. Everything, like one gadget rings and you’re like, OK, which one’s that?
Jeff:
Oh yeah, I’m turning left, right, um…
Sarah:
Where is it? Which one?
Jeff:
Yeah, that’s nice. I like the accessibility and the way they keep going with it. You know, things break once in a while a little bit, but for the most part, you can do almost everything on it, almost.
Sarah:
Yeah. And the thing that I find most interesting about Apple as well is that Steve Jobs was obviously dyslexic, because I’ve studied Steve Jobs, and because I think, wow, he made a product that everybody could use. Why? Why has he done it and made billions and other companies don’t follow suit? Obviously, I discovered he was dyslexic. That’s why he made sure that everything easy to use. What a business brain, eh? Because he’s the one that’s got the monopoly on everything. Well, obviously Apple has now, Steve has passed on.
Jeff:
It used to be Microsoft, and they’ve tried to break that up a little bit. But now Apple’s been able to do it, and they don’t really complain about it.
Sarah:
No! Why would they, they’re getting millions more customers, which from a business point of view, I sort of think to myself with companies who can’t be bothered to make things accessible, my brain goes that’s bit of a daft business move because you could actually get so many more customers if you made it accessible. Never mind equality, from a business point of view, you’d make hundreds more pounds.
Jeff:
That’s part of that awareness, and all that other stuff. It does get taxing when you think that you’ve got to go out there and do it yourself for all that and hopefully other people do it. You know, I feel like we should have a million cane march all the way to D.C. or to London or something, you know, just to show people.
Sarah:
That would be phenomenal. Yeah, that would be absolutely-
Jeff:
It’s the advocacy. It’s going out there and fighting for someone that, you know, none of us chose to be blind. I mean, we just happened, OK, that’s what we’re hit with and the amount of information that you have to go forward, to move forward. You have to start from scratch. Like you said, those baby steps, it’s starting over, and like, my question was where do they keep the blind? Well, I think that was a bigger question of like, now what? Where am I going to be sent to? Like you mentioned, confined to an institution for that one lady, her neighborhood sent her there, basically.
Yeah, because they wouldn’t help her or listen to her. And they just threw her into an asylum because she was depressed and she’s been stolen from and she, you know, everything affecting a cycle. And she was a very intelligent woman as well. And that’s what happened, the way society molded her.
Jeff:
When I first sat down and realized, OK, I’m a visually impaired, blind person. I remember back then I said to myself, single white male, illiterate, can’t drive, no driver’s license. But I do like walks on the beaches. You know, I was like, it pulls you down. You’re like, you’re trying to find something positive in it. But I think that’s what comes with the acceptance at some point, at some point you start to like you and you don’t care that people are ignorant or they don’t even realize how ignorant they are, and they’re unaccepting of changing their ignorance, and learn about people with disabilities and the positives and everything. There has to be some more positive cast out there, like you said about actors, portrayals, examples that our kids today can take in instead of Mr. Magoo show, or some other blind, stereotypical type of thing. The seeds are planted.
Sarah:
I do feel, I don’t know what you feel about this, but I’ve noticed it over the years and I don’t, again, I don’t know what it’s like in America, but in the UK there are some adverts that go out and I just cringe because I think, oh great, we’re being taken back 20 years because they’re putting an advert out for a really incapable, vulnerable, blind person who needs charity-
Jeff:
Hero. Hero app.
Sarah:
Oh Jeff. Oh Jeff. The catalyst for me contacting you!
Jeff:
You’ve got a contagious laugh.
Sarah:
Oh, thank you. I was just going to say, Jeff, in terms of Apple, thank you so much, I honestly enjoy your podcast so much because oh boy, have I struggled getting to grips with accessible technology. I’m still not like a degree level bat person technologically-wise. So I really appreciate your podcasts.
Jeff:
Well, thank you, Sarah. It’s nice to get feedback. I’m glad you’re getting use out of the Quick Bites and the iPhone 101 series, little tips and tricks and tidbits to help navigate the accessibility built right into the iPhones. Thanks for the feedback. So when’s your next Sarah’s Secret Sofa?
Sarah:
So, pretty deep one this time, yeah, it’s about a lot of the things we talked about. The whole “Does she need a chair?” thing really got to me, especially. I think being in lockdown has really helped to evaluate a lot of things. And I just thought to myself, I don’t want to go back into the world and face all this. I want to do something about it before I step back out there. And when I got, you know, literally a
few weeks back into the world of the living, I’m already hitting these things where I’m being grabbed and I’m being ignored, and I’m thinking, no, no, I’m not allowing this into my psyche. No. So this week’s Sofa Session sort of goes into a bit of that. And also the whole thing of- I don’t know if anyone else experiences this, I have a lot, because I like to dress up and look glam and things and not saying other people don’t, but I think people find it hard to believe somebody has got a cane, you know, if they’ve got certain clothing on or something, and I get, oh, she’s blind, and most of the time I can just ignore it, but the other week I got it, and I said, I thought, You know what? So I turned round, and I said, do you realize I’ve actually got ears? Silence. And I said, and also, do you realize I’m a human, and do you realize that’s extremely rude to talk about someone as if they’re not there or even acknowledge their existence? Silence. Then I thought they were probably quite shocked that I spoke, I don’t know, but I didn’t get a response back.
Jeff:
Hey, 29 times out of 30, you’re perfect, right? The way society expects it, like you said, when people walk up to you and say, how are you doing? Do they really want to know-
Sarah:
There’s so many subjects on the whole thing, though, so, so many subjects. That’s why I thought, OK, this week, let’s talk about conscious communication and unconscious, communication and so I do talk a bit about the fact that I have, I’m not just speaking from inexperience, I’ve learned about these things and how harmful words can be and things that can have psychological effects. And I’ve worked with actually one of the most amazing hypnotherapists in the world. I mean, people like Diana and all kinds of megastars went to her for help, and I trained with her as well to help with my own problem,
my own psychological problems that I’ve developed from having negativity thrown at me all the time.
Jeff:
That’s what I like about Sarah’s Secret Sofa. Three S’s. There you go.
Sarah:
Oh, yeah!
Jeff:
Sarah’s Secret Sofa. That’s what I like about it, because it’s a discussion. You do such a good job at it because it’s not a discussion between six people. It’s not a roundtable. It’s you, Sarah, on the secret sofa. You do a good job at it. I really enjoyed it. I listen to it, and your songs. Sometimes when I find someone that you know, OK, they’re a musician. I listen, I skip through, but on your songs, the ones that I listen to, I listen through them. It was really neat to think that something I couldn’t say, I think there were three or four or five of them, and one’s a real, it has the ukulele sound to it.
Sarah:
Yeah.
Jeff:
“If I Said.”
Sarah:
Yes, yeah, that has a ukulele on it, it’s got what’s called the guitalele as well. I don’t know if you’ve heard of a guitalele.
Jeff:
I have now. About three seconds ago.
Sarah:
I hadn’t heard of one of these either until I worked in the studio and I immediately wanted to know what one was because it sounded cute. It’s actually a guitar, it’s a six-string tiny guitar that’s the size of a ukulele, and it sounds like one, but it’s got six strings on it.
Jeff:
A little more bass to it, maybe. There’s a good mix in that album, and it seems like a timely album because it seems like you’re dealing with a lot of stuff on there. So I really enjoyed it, and that’s what I was listening for. Even in that one song where it says do something silly, like take a stranger’s arm-
Sarah:
“Take a stranger’s hands and go dancing.” Yeah, yeah, that’s in “Just For Today.” But yeah, that lyric was- I actually, when I first moved to Scotland, my friend said to me, I want to take you to a ceilidh, a proper ceilidh, not a pretend one, but a proper one. And I said, OK, how am I going to do that in a massive dark hall? And I don’t even know how to ceilidh dance. And she said, I think you’ll be fine. So we went to this
Huge ballroom in the middle of Edinburgh, and there was literally hundreds of people there in kilts and beautiful dresses and everything. And I just took one look, I went, there’s no way I’m going to be able to do this. Jeff, they threw me in, literally, they threw me into this ceilidh, and my hand got grabbed and I just got flung around that room like you would not believe. I didn’t even know what I was doing.
I just kept getting passed, getting passed to all these different people and flung into circles, and I ended up at the other side of the ballroom, and I thought, that was so much fun, but I have no idea where I am anymore, and even if my friends know where I am! Thank god, luckily, they came to find me, but it’s that, you know, getting over it, again, just going stuff it! Just leave the fear and trust what’s going to happen, and when that happens sometimes most magical moments happen, like being flung across a ballroom by hundreds of people in dresses and kilts!
Jeff:
I don’t get that opportunity around here too much. The kilts…
Sarah:
Are there not many kilts where you are?
Jeff:
Not too many. It’s a mystery to me. Maybe at the Renaissance Festival, maybe here or there once in a while.
Sarah:
I don’t know if anybody has the question, there’s a big myth, there’s always been a big myth, do Scottish people wear anything underneath kilts, and it is true, they don’t, just a useless little bit of information for everybody there, in case anybody was wondering. It’s true.
Jeff:
We’ll pause for five seconds for everyone to take that in for a little bit.
Sarah:
I was told by the way, I didn’t, you know, I didn’t…
Jeff:
Yeah. If you ever get a chance to look up Marc Bolan, that’s b-o-l-a-n. He was the, and I think it’s m-a-r-c. He’s the leader of T. Rex. He did the song “Bang a Gong.” Remember “Bang a gong, get it on?”
Sarah:
I remember T. Rex because of learning about them, but I don’t know that song, so I’ll have to look it up.
Jeff:
He did “Children of the Revolution.”
Sarah:
Oh! That song? Yeah, I remember the children of the revolution one. That’s a great song.
Jeff:
Yeah, him and David Bowie hung out together, and they would go around to all the tapestry shops and grab scraps out the back because they didn’t have any money at the time. And they would use all the scraps and make their outfits like Ziggy Stardust and all that, the early days of David Bowie.
Sarah:
Is that really how they made their outfits, that’s amazing. I didn’t know that.
Jeff:
Yeah, they wore all of the glitter, you know, that type-
Sarah:
Yeah, yeah, I do get called David Bowie a lot, actually. I think I’m the female version and I’ve even got- the recent operation I had, I’ve been told my eye went blue. I just though, brilliant. I’m literally, possibly, maybe not as great a guitarist, the female version.
Jeff:
I was really nervous about this conversation because, you know, I listen to your works and I think of you in 2017 when you sang those songs. And here you are today. People get locked in like, you hear Elvis. Well, he’s been gone forever, but they still think of him, that’s Elvis, you know, that’s, you know, but it’s still you.
Sarah:
It’s actually the greatest compliment, to be honest, because as an artist, I mean, it’s been so important to me to leave the legacy that I want to leave, not that somebody else tells me that I have to leave and not that somebody else writes, because that can happen, can’t it? Other people can write what they think about you. And unfortunately, Jeff, when I first started dealing with the media, I was really adamant that I was going to tell my story in the way that I wanted to tell it, not anybody else. And when I did the documentary, one of the provisions I did the documentary was that they told it in the way that I wanted it to be told, not making it into a tragedy or dramatizing it. Because that’s not my story, because I’m still here to live, you know, I’ve lived to tell the tale, and so its songs come from that experience. So for you to say that is actually a really big compliment because it’s sort of my, you know, what I’m leaving for the world, really, when I’m gone, when the physical Sarah’s gone, hopefully, you know, they can inspire somebody that’s still here and going through things.
Jeff:
Yeah, but someone told me one time, you live two deaths. One is when you die and one is the last time someone says your name, in memory, you know, so you have a legacy of songs going on.
I mean, “Higher Than Before,” which was on the album, I don’t know if you came across it. I decided to release “Higher Than Before” as a single last year because of what I was just hearing about so much devastation. And I suppose when you’ve lost everything, as you’re probably aware yourself, like losing my sight was my worst fear and I lost everything. I lost my driving license, my- everything, obviously. I just thought, how do you even begin to think about dreams when you’re in this situation? How? But you do, we do as humans, and that song “Higher Than Before” was about coming through that experience and the experience being a catalyst to rebuild in a different way but stronger. And so that’s why I released it as a single. In fact, I don’t know if there was any audio- hopefully, there was audio.
[“Higher Than Before” plays]
The costume that I wore for that was actually an RAF flight suit because, to be symbolic of the fact that we are our own captain, our life is nothing to do with what anybody tells us we can or can’t be. It’s what we tell ourselves.
Jeff:
There’s some common threads that run through some of them. And maybe just a line here and there, I can tell that you’ve actually embattled society and your blindness and how they perceive you and how the world perceives you. But you have regained how you perceive yourself, and that’s the most important part.
Sarah:
Yeah. Yes, absolutely.
Jeff:
Well, Sarah, you talked about how you’re rebuilding yourself. I think you’ve done a great job of tackling, through your work, your art, your music, your words, capturing- I think a lot of people will be able to relate to your words of what it was like to go through sight loss and even the pandemic coming on, you know, and the reflection, you got a song “Reflection,” right?
Sarah:
I did, yes. Yeah, yeah, I’d forgotten about that nearly. Yeah, I went and released that this year as well.
Jeff:
That’s a good song. That’s an emotional-based song.
Sarah:
Yes. Actually, it was a friend inspired me to write that song, he was having a very difficult time himself, certain things, and I was inspired to write that. Again, I suppose it comes from the same message, you know, believing in ourselves.
Jeff:
Mm-hm. I think the one thing about the pandemic, that time of reflection, the time, you know, we all went through it. But the thing is, some opportunities did come about for us to really stop and take a look at ourselves, a retrospect. You know, there was a period of time, of change, that we couldn’t control and we all adjusted to it. Everyone had to do it, and I think you did a good job with your work, adjusting and everything you’ve been talking to us about, especially when you’re bringing awareness through Sarah’s Secret Sofa talks, so people, pay attention to those, where can they find that?
Sarah:
They can find that, I stream it live on Instagram and YouTube. So the next one is being streamed on YouTube, possibly at the end of this week. So we’re just setting a date for it. So I will let you know, Jeff, when that’s streaming, and give you the date.
Jeff:
And this won’t be the first one, this ain’t the first time you rode the sofa.
Sarah:
Caused trouble on the sofa! It’s the sofa of rude awakenings, I call it, the sofa of rude awakenings because it’s a sofa of truth and craziness that might happen.
Jeff:
And it’s all Sarah. It’s all, boom. Yeah, that’s a tough thing to do, to go 25 minutes or whatever you do and keep the conversation, but there’s never a break, it’s just go. You do a great job. I highly recommend it to anybody out there.
Sarah:
Thank you, Jeff.
Jeff:
Well, thank you for coming onto Blind Abilities, sharing everything, and you’re such an inspiration and you talked about we need role models, I think you are a role model when people hear this, because I’m sure- I don’t like to use the word inspire, but there’s not too many other words that’ll make people believe that they too can achieve goals and break through those barricades and brick walls that you’ve been up against and you’ve succeeded, and you can reflect on how you’ve done it and admit some areas where you struggled through, but you came through it, so thank you very much.
Sarah:
Oh, thank you, Jeff. That means a lot. Thank you.
[“Yesterday” plays]
And for more podcasts with a blindness perspective, check us out on the web at www.blindabilities.com, on Twitter @BlindAbilities, and download the free Blind Abilities app from the App Store and Google Play Store. That’s two words, blind abilities. And if you want to leave some feedback, give us some suggestions, give us a call at 612-367-6093. We’d love to hear from you. And from all of us here at Blind Abilities, through these challenging times, stay well, stay informed, and stay strong. I want to thank you for listening, and until next time, bye-bye.
[Music] [Transition noise] -When we share
-What we see
-Through each other’s eyes…
[Multiple voices overlapping, in unison, to form a single sentence]
…We can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations, and the realities of Blind Abilities.
Contact Your State Services
If you reside in Minnesota, and you would like to know more about Transition Services from State Services contact Transition Coordinator Sheila Koenig by email or contact her via phone at 651-539-2361.
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