Minnow

"No Voices in the Dance"

Tim Barrus/ They Call Him Minnow

He will break your heart.

I have been besieged by a twelve-year-old. People call him Minnow. He emails me day and night. Alright, already.

One of the reasons people use the nickname, Minnow, is because he’s diminutive and minnows don’t talk.

Minnow hears voices. But he does not articulate anything. He’s unsure as to which voice would come out.

Minnow and I have been round and round on this. Minnow claims the voices are his life.

Baloney.

I ignore the voices issue. I have the feeling that Minnow can become so focused on the voices that he loses Minnow.

But he doesn’t hear the voices when there’s music and he’s dancing.

Minnow is not crazy.

This condition has a neurological basis where the inner ear IS hearing voices. His auditory nerve, which is the nerve that causes us to hear and which sends those signals to the brain, is damaged. He’s not making it up.

The whole idea of combing choreography with music is based on coordinated movement. Minnow’s neurology and his inner ear (which is where our balance comes from) are focused on the kid moving. He only hears the voices when he is not in motion and there is no rhythmic music.

“What do you do not to hear the voices.”

“I dance.”

I thought minnow meant he danced around his room. He’s in a professional dance company. He’s twelve. He takes dance very seriously.

Tim to Minnow: I would rather see video of dance than have you so focused on the voices. You are not the voices. But I would bet you are the dance.

I used to work with deaf four-year-olds at San Francisco Hearing and Speech on Divisidero. I get the whole not speaking gig.

Minnow both filmed and danced for his video.

Things You Cannot Plan For

Minnow has been dancing in the dance company he dances with. He does not hear the voices when he is dancing. The music tends to drown the voices out as well.

But something has happened.

As Minnow has been so involved in the filming and the photography of his dancing and the choreography of the company he dances with, I have, again, inquired about the voices.

1.) If he’s dancing, he’s immersed in the choreography and movement. No voices.

2.) Now that he has a camera, and he’s able to record and reflect — and reflect on — that dancing, no voices.

3.) This is huge for Minnow. For the first time in his life, there are interludes where he is filming (not dancing) yet the voices that haunt him are not present. Why is this.

4.) Creating video can be far more physical than people initially realize or understand. There is a choreography happening here, too. There is an audio component as well. Especially when you are at the stage where you are integrating the sound into the visual images.

5.) So now there are two parts of his day where he is able to escape the voices. One is dancing. The other is creating video of the same dancing.

6.) And yet the school Minnow attends has him sitting at his desk with his pencil and his paper and his hands folded. The voices return, and Minnow’s focus becomes the struggle between listening to his teacher versus listening to the voices. There is virtually no carry-over from the dance activity and/or the video activity into the school environment. This is why Minnow is at-risk. He is at-risk for school failure because the school has essentially set him up to fail by failing to provide him with the kind of environment for him to succeed. The paradigm of the child at the desk with his hands folded is not simply ineffective, it’s child abuse.

This went on all last year. School is set to begin again soon enough. I am hoping he will not be set back by the intransigence of the school.

Minnow and I are almost done with his first video. He has deliberately set himself at the edges of the video during the dance sequence. He has done this so you, the audience, do not really notice him. You will though if you look hard enough. Dancing is one thing. Being noticed is another. What he’s been learning is that you can still express yourself even if you are on the side of the camera that takes the shot. For the first time in his life, Minnow is calling the shots versus the voices calling the shots. In the past, the voices were always telling Minnow what to do. Now, Minnow is telling Minnow what to do. He is taking responsibility for not only control over the voices, but for the project he is creating as well. He is learning how to take control versus learning how to be a victim to authority. I am glad he has not been in school these past couple of months. Minnow is being “included” in the typical classroom set-up. He’s with typical children, which is fine. But he is left on his own to either succeed there or fail there with absolutely no support whatsoever. Support is the key to Minnow being able to succeed at something that has no connection to the voices he hears in his head. I have tried working with the school but it’s impossible. They have no resources and the classrooms are overflowing with kids. All we can really do is set him up with support outside the realm of the educational system.

We have not even begun to explore what digital technology can do with children who learn differently. The technology is simply beyond the reach of most schools.

In fact, my biggest problem with Show Me Your Life is getting the adults to relinquish control of the camera.

I do not think the school can be worked with. I totally reject the idea of it, and please don’t email me with suggestions that would get his school environment to change. It’s not going to happen, and I am not open to wasting my time on stuff that will not go anywhere. No way I am reinventing the wheel.

What we will do is simply continue working with Minnow outside the context and constructs of his school and we will attempt to keep drowning the voices out.

Why This Dance?

I keep wondering why this dance, and why this kid, and why am I even open to working with him for another year; if I can live with AIDS another year. It takes me a while to GET things. I’m stupid. It finally came to me. The WHY of it. I get the HOW of it. I know how it works. And then, I’m watching him dance, and as I watch him dance, I can feel his heartbeat.

NO VOICES IN THE DANCING

This year, I’m thinking maybe we can totally eliminate the voices Minnow hears. We’ve already managed to kick most of them out of his head.

How.

No medication.

A lot of: Dance. Choreography. Music. Video. Movement. And taking responsibility for accomplishing these things. One thing at a time.

This year, I’m thinking we could go for broke.

http://tim@showmeyourlife.org

United States of America

WARNING: Explicit Imagery and Colloquial Language

Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)

Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS)

La Toya

I was raped now I have HIV. My mom does not let me go outside our apartment no more. I am like a prisoner. I go to school but the other kids know and they will not be friends with me. I am making images and music on the computer. It is art. I put the ocean in this one. I made it red like blood. I have bad blood in me. I have never seen the ocean. I would like to see it some day.

Tim Barrus Comment:

Cinematheque Films and Real Stories Gallery and I are involved in the creation of a Video/Art program called Show Me Your Life where kids at-risk are given video cameras and challenged to go out into the world and film their lives. Usually, it’s a journalist who does this. But we never see these lives as portrayed by the people who live them. Inevitably, we are going to have kids who do sex work in a variety of countries (Thailand, Congo, USA, France, Brazil, etc). These kids are at risk for HIV and some of them are at risk for violence as they already have HIV.

The world is not necessarily Disneyland. Many of our video cameras have been returned to us by social service agencies who have articulated: “we did not understand prostitution would be included in your program. We cannot participate.”

We have always said that children who are at-risk are often at risk for prostitution. This is called survival sex. These children are making videos of their lives. Those videos are stunning. The violence children live surrounded by is extraordinary. We have just never wanted to see it. HIV/AIDS is not an abstract idea in Show me Your Life. It is an everyday reality. Children forced into survival sex is repugnant. Yet the issue must be met head on to understand how it works.

These children at-risk are in need of voices, too. They are all too often silenced.

Silence equals death.

We will continue to arm children with video cameras and we will continue to tell them: show me your life. It isn’t always pretty and it isn’t always acceptable. Children have been killed because they were discovered with our cameras. Until we can face and understand HOW CHILDREN ON THE PLANET REALLY LIVE THEIR LIVES, we will never meet the challenge of the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

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Cinematheque Films: The Studio Arts Education: Students are allowed access to fair use art materials and mixed media in the teaching of iconic manipulation in photographic, video and film production. Representations and facsimiles posted here are presented as teaching tools and instruments employed to instruct students in the techniques and application of mixed media art and collage. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act allows art-teaching entities the fair use of such materials in classroom and teaching-research applications.

http://TIM@SHOWMEYOURLIFE.ORG