CiTR

 

Introduction music plays: Sky Walker by Buffy-Saint Marie

 

(Alison)

Hello everyone. My name is Alison and you're listening to All Access Pass on CiTR 101.9 F.M. We're broadcasting live from Vancouver on the unceded territory of the hookameenam speaking people. In the studio today I'm joined by my accessibility collective teammates Lidia and the accessibility collective coordinator Deepi and our podcast coordinator Alex who's handling the switchboard for us today. You just heard Star Walker by Buffy-Sainte Marie off of her album Sweet America from 1976. It was her 12th studio album and was dedicated to the American Indian Movement. She is 77 years old and her last album was released in 2015.

 

(Nicole)

On today's jam-packed show, we have interviews from Monica Germino who is the performer of the concert “Muted” and will be presented at this year's PuSh festival and we also have coming up Andrew Gurza who is the star of the short film “Picture this”, um back to you Alison.

 

(Alison)

Uh..so now we're about to play an interview I did with Monica Germino who is a performer of the concert called “Muted” which will be presented at this year's PuSh festival on Monday January 28 at 8 p.m, Tuesday January 29th and Wednesday January 30th at 7 p.m. and then again at 9 p.m. on both days. If you need any additional information please go to PuShfestival.ca/festivalevents/. Here's Monica Germino

 

Music plays

(Monica)

...In the Philippines, I grew up in Virginia, I spent a year in Italy when I was a child. I ended up studying in Amsterdam in the Netherlands and I had a grant to study modern music and I ended up staying in Holland for the rest of..well.. up until now and I am a violinist.

I went through a very traditional path of conservatory training, very rigorous and I went to New England Conservatory in Boston and then I went to Yale University scored music for my master's degree and that was...I'm really grateful that I had that! And then I ended up in Holland because I was really already following of working with composers and I've always loved that. I recently started referring to my life and my calling kind of...not to sound too trite but, as being composer-driven, the work I do, because it really I do feel really fortunate in that I came across many many interesting and wonderful composers who shaped actually the way I played sometimes or what I played and how I thought and it would always sort of catapult me into another discovery or a new way of playing or new way of thinking and gradually things became more and more interesting for me. At least I had left the traditional orchestral world and the more traditional world of chamber music and I started doing more and more my own thing and most I guess most importantly I had my own group called Elektra and I also played in a duo with a sound engineer and we worked a lot on taking the violin to new places and and manipulating the sound and working with extra elements like whether it be filming and working with myself on a screen or playing back with an image that was done in real time or recording things onto a soundtrack and blending them onstage together or I began to use my voice more and more so I am a bit known for that kind of technique of singing and playing I teach it a lot as well and it's been a fascinating journey and it was all going pretty much as expected with a few hurdles in the way involving my years and that's part of what's going on and why I'm playing this particular program now and the way that I'm working now.

 

(Alison)

What is the performance “Muted” all about?

 

(Monica)

It's called “Muted” and the reason it's called that... is mutes are actually, they're not known as very exciting things until you do, until I got involved with them and I felt like this is actually extremely exciting. They are simply little devices that you put on the bridge of the violin to mute the sound or change the color of the sound.

 

So there's different things you can use them for and I'm on probably my four hundredth mute by this time because I have enormous collection so once I started I just I got a bit carried away and also there were some...a bit of press written about it and I had a wonderful donation from a violin maker of all sorts of different kinds of mutes and then I started commissioning mute makers and what I wanted to do is bring the violin down to a level where I could play it without damaging my hearing or without approaching the level that would damage my hearing and instead of doing what a lot of people suggested to me which was wear ear earplugs which I have tried for quite some time and I've written some things about that but it all comes down to the fact that if I wear earplugs to protect my hearing then I feel like when I'm playing the violin It's a sensory deprivation.

You can you can't hear the small beautiful sounds anymore that a violinist is used to hearing: the hair of the bow contacting the steel string or whatever kind of strings we're using and the rise and the sounds that the really small sounds that are subtle and your fingers tapping on the strings.

 

These are all things that are essential to...anyway for me for playing the violin. So “Muted”, its origins are from four composers. Actually, one composer started Michael Gordon who's in New York, and I know Michael over the years I've worked with him at different times, most notably I made a violin arrangement of his iconic piece for cello-solo cello, and tube screamer pedal distortion pedal. So I made a version of that for violin and tube screamer together with my sound engineer and that was a huge exploration into a world of very very loud music. It used to be one of the loudest violinists that I know at least definitely in the Netherlands. I'm sure there's many many other the world but it is a bit ironic that I was playing incredibly loud music and loving it and being careful at the same time.

 

I mean I'm very aware that, that I had a sensitivity to sound and that I had to keep myself behind the speakers and not have a lot of sound pouring into my ears. That it was an idea of a composer born out of the situation I found myself in where I had to bring the sound levels down I had to bring the decibel levels down from 90 to 95 down to 80 and below. And when Michael heard that, he said I'm going to write you a piece so soft I don't care if anyone can hear it or something like that I'm paraphrasing. And that was a moment where I thought that I don't know if I can do that or I don't know what that would be like and I had a lot of doubts about that but that was actually the very beginning of a seed being planted for this program called “Muted” which is a sort of- it started out as an examination of silence and a very quiet sound and it ended up being something that is much more shifting decibel levels. The idea of taking a step back from that and addressing the idea of not necessarily having to play loud to be intense or loud to have a certain power. There's a lot of power in the music that I play in “Muted” and that's incredibly exciting. I did not expect that and I was really happy to discover I wasn't losing power by going this route.

 

(Alison)

How has your disability influenced the different types of music you play?

 

(Monica)

It's funny, I don't think of it as a disability although I know it is technically. It's also because of the way it's formed how I hear, it's... I feel like I hear much more than I used to because I'm so hyper attuned to it and that must sound kind of ironic. But it's the way I think about sound levels has completely changed, and things that aren't so much as loud to you will seem quite loud to me because it is, it goes up and down in sound levels but it does influence the different music and music I play in that I had to say goodbye to a large and much-loved repertoire that I built on my own or with my sound engineer with my group and it was really hard to just, just literally shuffle through these pieces either in my head or physically and say okay, that's definitely not -I'm not going to be playing that again.

 

So what's next? What do you do with these pieces that are fantastic and need to have a life further? I don't think that it means everybody should stop playing loud music and it's good to be aware of how you're going to do it. And I don't play it anymore but I'm still devoted to passing it along and it makes me so happy when I hear someone play a piece written by Annie Gosfield or by Julia Wolfe,  I will not play anymore simply because of the high decibel level but then it goes on it has had a healthy and happy life.

 

(Alison)

You play the violin. Why did you choose this particular instrument?

 

(Monica)

Well, I think it's, it's one of those childhood stories right. There was a piano in the house. I played that first. My sister played cello. I adored it. Nobody was playing violin yet. And I kept asking them give me a violin, can I please have a violin case? And they took a couple of years before I could even get my hands on one. So my parents luckily were both good amateur musicians and there was a lot of and also a lot of new music.

 

(Alison)

What kind of feedback or comments you have gotten by the audience?

 

(Monica)

Oh it's been unusual. I didn't expect the feedback I would get. There have been quite a few people tearing up. Not maybe not pouring tears but well actually on one occasion yes. But it seems to people get quiet in the performance. So I think there's maybe some time for reflection that we don't always have in our daily life. And also because the piece is about between 40 and 45 minutes long. And it goes in one go. So it's just, it's sort of the right amount of time to communicate a lot of different things.

 

There's some really powerful storytelling “Don Marquis”, it's fantastic text and the stories are so evocative and I think people make associations their own minds are quite personal and there's a lightness to it and humor. I think that it's unexpected they don't go in expecting to laugh. But honestly, when it's a lot of the text is based on a cockroach that has learned how to type on a typewriter at night, and what an alley cat who thinks she was she's the reincarnation of Cleopatra, you can't really take it all that seriously. There's a lot of lightness and humor and beautiful combinations of instruments. There's four different violins in the show. A lot of the reactions I get after the show are people wanting to look at the instruments and look at the mutes and I shouldn't forget they want to know about the lighting because there's an enormous role for the light technician who built this whole light setup of blue and white- primarily blue and white light that changes with the music and with the mood. And it's interesting because if an audience gets a little restless, Florian the guy who does the lighting he says: “Sometimes I'll just lower the light just a little and they get much less restless.” And it's interesting that light can affect an audience that way I would have never thought that was possible that he sees it all the time of course people who work with light are very similar to people who work with sound.

 

(Alison)

Creatively speaking what is your personal attitude when it comes to music, the musical limitations that is controlled by your hearing level? And what is it like working with your peers who may want to perform in film levels that can be distressing for you?

 

(Monica)

I raged against it for a year at least. I was really angry and upset and what do I, what am I now? Am I still a violinist? So there were, the limitations were infuriating to me in the beginning. And in fact when Michael Gordon proposed this project the beginnings of muted and Julia Wolfe was the second composer to join, I remember walking with her down the Hudson River in New York City where she, near where she lives and she was walking her dog and I was talking to her about the whole thing and the whole experience and how I was being told I couldn't play very loud music anymore and I said so. And she said: “Well, well that's why we're thinking of writing this piece for whisper violin or for quiet violin,” whatever we want to call it. I call it whisper violin because I think it's evocative and it says what I want to say. And I said well but I've already said goodbye to the violin, because I really had at that point I was maybe three or four months into the whole discovery that I was going to have to protect my ears significantly. And she said in a dry lovely Julie voice: “Well say hello again!”

 

And so I really feel like the composers brought me out of this sort of raging angry phase into “what can I do now? Would this be interesting?” Is this something that- I'm not sure if this is an English or a Dutch expression but “Is this something that has legs?” Is it something that is going to be interesting for me, for the public, for my creative pat?. So this is all still to be determined. So far I love what this project has become that I stand behind it 100 percent.

 

So and as for the other part my peers are amazing, my group Elektra. We played together on a piece last year in the spring where it was, it was just with I think two of them- two of the four and I joined them in a trio of a friend of mine had written and she adjusted it and it was magical and we played, we were on little islands on the stage so that it wasn't too loud for me. There was a piano involved and a voice and me and the violin and singing and it was just beautifully done. So my peers are not pressuring me at all to play louder at all. They they're actually more towards me in my direction. I think a lot of people are aware of the problems facing musicians with our hearing.

 

(Alison)

For those who are hard of hearing and may not have difficulty hearing your music at your decibel level what would you suggest they do in order to enjoy it?

 

(Monica)

I don't know. I think that's something I haven't done yet. So in a way this experiment, I've been talking to the people from this festival that they organized about how we would do that. So I would know better how to answer that after I did it. But I have a feeling that it would have to- it would involve having a sign language person there, to sign the text that I'm saying since there is really a lot of text involved in the show, there's two rather long stories one is about our famous cockroach that types and the other one is about our a bit too wild and thinks he's very glamorous alley cat but those texts would have to be…

 

(Alison)

On your website, you mention that the audio log...

 

(Monica)

Oh audiologocial  Centrum Hilversum.

 

(Alison)

Yeah. Yeah.

 

(Monica)

Oh audiological Centrum Hilversum

 

(Alison)

...Has helped you provide research and explanations. What do you gather is the best way to enjoy music?

 

(Monica)

Well the verb “enjoy” would probably not be exactly how I'd think about it. I mean there's so many verbs “exhilarating” or “working with our moods” or “uplifting” or “somber” or all kinds of ways but what they primarily do in the nuts and bolts is I was really curious how do I know what I can play as a violinist and still be able to perform without damaging my hearing. And that was quite complex and not an easy question to answer because there's durations and decibel levels.

 

So for example, I can play my violin my regular violin for 15 minutes in one stretch and I'll be fine but if I go mix longer then I'm disrupting this, there's a relation between how long you can play and how loud it is. So if I if I go down to 80 I can play for hours. So what we were doing is we were also measuring the sounds of measuring the decibel levels of certain mutes. So I brought in special ones I'd commissioned that were made of leather or Cork and metal sort of like a hair clip and I would put them on the bridge and certain sounds I was really fond of and I play them into a decibel meter and they would hold it right next to my ear so they would get, you know, they had it installed in a place that would measure exactly what was going into my ears at the time. And I remember thinking I know which ones are going to work and I know which ones won’t. And I got probably seven out of the eight correct but one that I really thought was fantastic was not enough. Didn't mute enough so I would have to be more careful when I used it and use it for shorter durations.

 

So but as far as enjoying music I fought with them a bit, because they wanted me to wear earplugs. They said the simplest way to do this is just wear earplugs. And when I say fight I don't mean actually fight but I..I really had to almost...I had to convince them that- I said look this is the sound I won't be able to hear and I would play it and show them. And they understood it. But in a way it's, it's their job to find the easiest, most guaranteed way to protect your ears and still be able to play. But for me that wouldn't be to use your word enjoying at all. It would be what I called it before which is a sensory deprivation and a feeling of losing something so essential to me. I mean I've been playing since I was six. The sound and the feeling of a violin against my neck and under my ear and in my hands. It's a huge part of me it's it's my almost my identity and I guess, you know, I mean I am a person apart from a violin but it's just been there all the time. So to lose any of that I was just unwilling and I thought “No I'm not going to, I'm not going to give this up!”

 

Extremely exciting is that in the middle of this process I asked a very gifted designer friend of mine Marcel Wanders to think about mutes with me and he's..he thinks outside of the box and he's an extremely creative and fantastic person.

 

And he came over the next day and said You know what. I don't know about this mute thing you're trying but why don't we build a violin that doesn't go above the decibel level that can harm you. And so he's designed together with this luthier and violin maker bus mass and in Amsterdam, they have designed a new violin that is literally being finished as we speak. And I've been playing it in a more raw and unfinished version but in Vancouver it'll be the first time that many many elements are on there that have not yet been on there. And it will almost look like I believe the finished violin and it's so exciting! It has the most sweet beautiful sound and it's actually made so that it doesn't need any mutes it doesn't need anything. It is just a gorgeous violin that you can play without damaging your ears and it's quite striking it's it's in the shape of a almost a stick like a long...It looks more like the shape of three or four flutes together than a violin. It's fascinating though, I hope the audiences in Vancouver...That is it is a truly striking thing to see and hear and I'm excited. I don't know how it sounds exactly right now because it's been taken apart all over again but I have utter faith that it's going to be spectacular.

 

(Alison)

For our listeners, why should they check out the performance: The Muted.

 

(Monica)

Well we've been talking pretty much non-stop about why I believe if you want to check it out. I think for their own curiosity and to seek out a different kind of beauty and a sort of respite from this chaotic swamped with sound world, you get a new awareness of what you're hearing and what seems loud and soft and how you perceive volume. That I think has proven interesting for everyone who's come and spoken with me afterwards. And the other thing would be just the simple beauty of what the composers have done and how they have composed for the combination of speaking and singing and playing and movement and light and that all of those things come together to put you in a different world even if it's only for 40 minutes or 45 minutes.

It's it's magical and it will stay with you, it stays with people. I still get letters about those performances as well because now we're in the middle of a lot of concerts and a lot of different countries. And the fact that it gets to come to Vancouver I mean it's all due to this really wonderful program: David Pay and Music on Main and then the PuSh festival, he's working with them but it it's such a such a far-flung destination from Amsterdam and it's it's so special I hope as many people can get in as possible. I know the seating is very limited but I hope we managed to at least get everyone who wants to hear it to give them a chance to come in and hear it.

 

Violin plays in the background

 

(Alison)

The interview you heard was from Monica Germino who is a performer from “Muted”. I would like to say thank you to Monica for allowing me to interview her and the PuSh festival in connecting us to her. Please go and check out this play as it sounds great! We have a new member, Nicole Le, part of our accessibility collective. You may remember her as she was part of our podcast panel show back in November. Welcome to the team Nicole!

 

(Nicole)

Great to be back. Thank you for the warm welcome. Great to be back on the committee this time.

 

(Alison)

Do you wanna lead us into our next song?

 

(Nicole)

Sure, our next song is called “Seize The Day” by a hard rock band called The Mendenhall Experiment, this is off an album called “The Mendenhall Experiment”. The band was founded by Brandon Mendenhall who is a self taught guitarist who also has Cerebral Palsy and includes Mike Lira who is the lead guitarist, Bruce Lira who is on drums, frontman Mario Valadez and Nate Stockton who is on bass.

 

Seize The Day plays

 

(Alison)

Welcome back to All Access Pass. The song you just heard was called “Seize The Day” by The Mendenhall Experiment off of their self titled album. Lidia, how about you introduce our next interviewee?

 

(Lidia)

Yes. So recently Alison and I had the great luck to interview Andrew Gurza who is a self-described cripple content creator and Disability Awareness consultant working out of Toronto. He's known for his work on the podcast “Disability After Dark”. A few weeks back we discussed a film that he stars in called “Picture This”,  a documentary based partly on his life. We were thrilled to be able to get him back for an interview and we heard a bit about the film and then a bit about his upcoming projects. Here we go!

 

Passionfruit  by Drake Plays

More music plays

 

(AD)

Oh You’re a friend of ours who loves to get discounts! Come down to CiTR with deals... this has come down to see you.

 

(Alison)

Guys we just had a bit of technical difficulties but we are ready to play you the clip: the interview with Andrew Gurza. And here we go!

 

(Lidia)

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

(Andrew)

Sure. My name is Andrew Garza. I am 34. I live with Cerebral Palsy.  I am a disability awareness consultant and triple content creator. I am a speaker, writer, and podcaster around sexuality and queerness and disability.

 

(Alison)

Awesome. Why do you think there isn't enough education out there on sex and disability?

 

(Andrew)

I think it boils down to people are afraid to talk about it. Disability is something that has been historically seen as the “Other”, and it's still something we are really afraid to touch because we don't want to be offensive. We don’t want to say the wrong thing and we certainly can't consider a disabled person as sexual, because that would be considered wrong. So I think all of these fears play into why we don't talk about it enough and also for many of us who don't identify as disabled right now, in a couple of years, disability may become part of our lives and that terrifies us.

 

(Alison)

Right! Jerry Osborne is the director of “Picture This”. How did you meet her?

 

(Andrew)

She actually approached me and said “I love your work. I want to follow you around for a year and just chronicle what you do would you be okay with that?”  Just at the time we were planning the second annual sex party for disabled people and she said: “I love this idea. Can we follow you?”

 

And so we went for lunch about three years ago now and she said: “I hadn't... I've never done a film like this. I have no real experience with the disability community but I'm eager to learn!” and I was immediately enamored by that because it meant that she had no preconceived notions about what disability was. She was simply coming in as a blank slate willing to learn and that was... that that's how we met and we've been both colleagues and friends ever since.

 

(Alison)

Nice! What inspired you to make this film “Picture This”?

 

(Andrew)

Well I was inspired by like I said Jeri kind of gumption and excitement in the topic and also it was being produced for the National Film Board. And to get my name on such a global and viral platform doing what I do was a huge coup for me. So I jumped at the chance to do that. Also just to talk about my reality as a queer disabled man, you know on a huge platform like that is a big opportunity that I couldn't pass up. So, my desire to do it was to put my name out there and it really was both a business decision for me and a personal decision to show my peers and my community that I am a sexual being and I deserve a space too.

 

The feedback I got from them from the film has been overwhelmingly positive. People are really excited by it because again we haven't seen a lot of this on screen. People have won a number of awards both at the Inside Out film festival in Toronto, it won the Best Audience Award in 2017 and it won the Best Audience Award in the same year out in Halifax and it's been all over the world. So the feedback has been very strong. People are really….They liked this film which I'm so proud of because it took, Jerry and I and her team and me a year and a half to do this film properly and at the end we were you know we didn't know how it was gonna go. We didn't know what the cut would look like. So when we got such high praise and feedback for just telling my story we were so excited!

 

(Alison)

That's super cool! Like through all this process did you have a favorite part of making the film?

 

(Andrew)

I think one of my favorite parts was seeing my best friend from Australia was in town for two or three days during the filming and we got to-we hadn't seen each other in about a year and a bit since then...and we get to sit down to hang out and it was paid for by you know the National Film Board.

 

(Alison)

Perfect! Yes!

 

(Andrew)

...And reconnect. And then I think one of the other favorite parts of the film for me was hearing my mom talk about what my work means to her and why it's important that I do what I do because it really validated for me that as a freelancer and as somebody who kind of is totally self-taught, and self produced, and doing the work that I do kind of on my own as an independent producer; to know that I had the support of my family in doing this without a real safety net, without a “real proper” job, to know that she values what I do in this sphere and to see that on film and to know that...

 

That part of the film resonated with the audience I think more than most of the film. People told me: “wow your mom's fantastic in the film!”  So that's that's one part that I really cherish because it was really...that was around my birthday time and we got to make a cake together and just to be glad to do mother and son stuff but also talk about disability and also talk about my work on camera and in front of the world. That was that was really special. I love that part of it though.

 

(Alison)

What were your friends and family reaction to you discussing sexuality in a form of disability? I know you touched on it with your mom.

 

(Andrew)

Yeah. The rest of my the rest of my family has been overwhelmingly supportive. They realize that it is, they've seen me give talks and they've seen me do my job and they know now that it isn't just a hobby that I have, that I want to want to do, and I dabble and it's really and truly what I do. So now that they see that I can support myself with this career there they are really positive! My sister and I- my sister who lives in Australia, Heather, are working on a sex toy, a sex toy company for and by disabled people socially. It's strangely become kind of a family affair this thing about sex disability. My family's really embraced it with me and how it's helping me to grow it into something more.

 

(Alison)

Nice! What are your own thoughts on “Picture This”. Would you have changed anything about the experience?

 

(Andrew)

Honestly Jerry and I had talked and we so continue to talk about doing a longer piece or doing something a little bit more kind of racy or doing something you know more...that speaks to a little bit more of what I do and how things have changed in the last three years of making the film. Would I change it? No. I think it's a I think it's a fantastic snapshot in time of where it was at the time and what I thought about at the time. Some of my views have changed since then but I love it's a great primer in looking into who I am and what I do and I mean I strongly urge people to go watch it just to really see disability in a different light especially around queerness, especially around same sex relationships and disability because we were starting to talk more more about sexuality and disability but it tends to be from a hetero normative and straight cis kind of boundaries. And so part of my film is to say let's let's bring queerness into that let's bring you know different variations on sexuality into the disability spear and really explore them more.

 

(Alison)

Yes, so there might be like a sequel?

 

(Andrew)

Nothing's on the page right now, but it's something I wouldn't turn down if it was ever brought up again...

 

(Alison)

Really nice!

 

(Andrew)

Because if you look at the intersection between between disability and queerness, there are so many of us who experience disability in one way or another that are always...so there are many of us who experience both disability and queerness and we don't get enough exposure. But there are there are so many of us out there who are not cis and are not straight and are not had our numbers in any way. So I really wish that the rest of the communities, the two communities would come together to acknowledge that

(Alison)

Right, Yeah! In the film, you call yourself cripple. Why is that?

 

(Andrew)

I have been calling myself a queer cripple now for a couple of years professionally and I do so, not to just create shock value. I mean a little bit of it is shock value because I'm what I would say I'm a provocateur. With disabilities I like to push that envelope a little bit and see how far I can get somebody like freaks out but I enjoy using language that was once deemed derogatory too and I would never put that title on somebody else with a disability without their consent. It's a title that I have chosen for myself to... and I kind of use it as a shield to be like I know what you might think of me and I'm gonna ...if I call myself a cripple then you can't hurt me because I've heard all that before and I know that you're being ableist. It doesn't scare me go ahead.

 

It's a term of endearment and in terms of empowerment that I use for myself and I did so in the film to kind of shock people a little bit into paying attention to what I was saying. When I say I am the number one career cripple, that I talk about frankly about sex and I talk about that kind of stuff in my podcast and my work, I do so because then you'll pay attention to me and then you'll pay attention to all the other stuff I'm saying. If I sanitize the language for non disabled audience to make them feel comfortable, then you won't pay attention and that's not what I'm here to do. I'm here to be a rabble rouser. I'm here to make waves and create change through the language and I do so by using that language for myself but never I would never appropriate that to someone else without their consent.

 

(Lidia)

Yeah. And given how, in like so many contexts ableism is going to be a given. Do you have any- for listeners, do you have any resources or like books or anything that you could recommend that they turn to in order to educate themselves.

 

(Andrew)

Yeah I mean they can look to books, like there's a book by Kelly Trace she's a sex educator out of- she works and lives I think in Guelph now but she's originally out of Halifax. She wrote a book back in 2014 called “Hot, Wet and Shaking: How I Learned to Talk About Sex”. It's a fantastic memoir of her life as a disabled woman. I would highly recommend that I'm going to shamelessly plug myself. You can head over to my podcast:  “Disability After Dark” which is a fantastic, which is again it's mine laughs,  But it's my show about sex and disability. I would also recommend that if you want to learn more about sexuality, disability and social justice you hop on to “Chronic Sex” which is run by my friend Kirsten Schultze out of the U.S who does amazing work in social justice disability and sexuality and they have a podcast and they do blogs and things like that. That's a fantastic resource as well. And I mean the “The Ultimate Guide to Sexx and Disability”, it's slightly outdated now but it's a good primer if you want to get a beginning on how to talk about disability and sexuality.

 

(Lidia)

And I'm wondering, because you do use, like, “cripple”  as a way of like making sure that people like direct their attention in certain ways. Do you feel like part of the education here is finding ways to get people's attention?

 

(Andrew)

Yeah. And I think it's also finding ways to keep it entertaining for me. That's why I call myself a cripple because the reactions I get are not entertaining to me like salacious, but it's entertaining to see how scared people are to talk about this and to talk about this language and talk about all these things. These are important conversations we need to be having or not having. And so by saying cripple, people sit up and take notice and they want to challenge me which is good because when we're talking about it so that's part of the education too, to challenge people's thinking and to challenge people's able’s viewpoint, even mine, so that language done in a respectful way without malice helps to do that.

 

(Lidia)

Right, yeah. So there is so much stigmatization and a lack of resources on disability and sexuality. How and at what point did you realize this? Because not everyone comes to this realization.

 

(Andrew)

Yeah, I mean I think I realized that because I was...I'm queer. I’ve been queer since I was like five years old but I really realized when I was done with school, I was finished with my education and that I was looking for a job and I wanted to do disability consulting and everybody told me: “That's not a real job. Go find a real job, go get a 9 to 5 and I very quickly realized that a 9 to 5 job given my level of disability was not physically or emotionally something I could do.

 

So I started, I remember, I remember from years previously that I wanted to always talk about sexuality and disability but people told me that, “that's not going to make you money.” So I didn't think about it for a few years and then when I was done school I just one day decided to talk about it and put it out there in the public sphere and ask magazines if they'd ever talked with a disabled person about queerness and many said no. And I jumped on that bandwagon and to integrate- “let me be the guy, I have stories, let me tell you about things.” And I just started sharing my experiences and it went from there but I always realized that from a very young age I just know how to, I didn't know how to turn into something tangible and now I do.

 

(Lidia)

Yeah, Awesome! After being so vocal and public about your opinions, how did you deal with this scrutinization and respond to people in an educational discussion? For example fetishizing versus humanizing sexuality for people with disabilities.

 

(Andrew)

I've always kind of played with the idea of fetishizing disability. I think if you...if you do so- If I take ownership of the fetishization, it's not a problem for me. If I straddle the line between being fetishized and being humanized, It's why I think a little bit of fetishization is not a bad thing. People are going to be critical of you no matter what you do and especially when it comes to disability and things they're afraid of, they're going to come up with all these reasons why they can't engage you and that's fine. I'm going to keep my head down and do my work. And if people want to criticize me do so respectfully and we'll have a conversation otherwise I don't have I don't have time for you.

 

(Alison)

I’m kind of the same way. You don't like me with all my flaws. I'm just gonna keep on moving forward.

 

(Andrew)

Yeah pretty much.

 

(Lidia)

If I can, if I can take us back to the, the sex toys real quick. Can you give us like the spill on that and if we can be seeing any products in stores soon or where we can get those?

 

(Andrew)

I don't think we’re gonna seeing any products in stores soon, we're just at the research stage which is really early on and we're not even sure what prototype of these toys would look like. My sister and I are working with a team out of RMIT University in Australia in Melbourne, who want to help us create these toys. So we're looking right now for funding to do preliminary research just to get the research off the ground. We need about 15 grand, so if people want to hear more about those toys and the things we want to do with it...Again the toy is- just to be clear- the toys that we ultimately want to create on the line are not toys where you simply adapt a non saleable toy for a disabled person. It's toys that are built from scratch around with a disability driven design in mind. So our goal is to make a toy that is completely usable for somebody with...right now we're focusing on individuals with physical disabilities because that's my disability and that's my lived experience that I can share in. So where we want it, we want to create toys for individuals with lower dexterity, limited hand mobility, muscle spasms things like that.

 

And so we're looking for some capital to get things moving on that front. So if people want to donate to that or have some have some dollars to spare I know it's tough because we're all tapped out but if they do they can always head over to deliciouslydisabled.ca  and our whole mission statement is there, everything we want to do is there and they can donate there if they'd like to.

 

(Lidia)

All right. Well, that's all the questions on my list.

 

(Alison)

Yeah I think this is wonderful. Thank you so much Andrew!

 

(Andrew)

Yes thanks! I'm just going to again plug myself very quickly before we take it off. If anybody listening in they want to follow my work, they can head over to andrewgurza.com where they can get links to my podcast, they can follow me on Twitter @Andrewgurza. They can also  hire me to speak because I do speaking tours both in person and on skype and as a freelancer I'm always hustling and let me work so anybody in.. You guys are in Vancouver right? Yeah I love Vancouver, if anybody wants to have me speak, wants hear me talk or over skype, on sexuality and disability. Reach out to me! Andrewgurza.com and we can have a chat and see that it makes me work for 2019.

 

(Alison)

Awesome. Thank you so much Andrew.

 

(Andrew)

Thank you for having me.

 

(Lidia)

Thanks! Have a good one.

 

(AD)

-Excuse me, Hi! I was wondering how,  I maybe, might potentially get to be on the radio?

-Oh word. Yeah you could do that at CiTR and Discorder!

-I'm sorry?

-You can cover events and issues in the city and interview people or you could join a collective and work with people with similar interests to make a show collaboratively even make a few friends!

-Oh wow that sounds superb!

-Totally! Just email volunteer@citr.ca and they can help you get started or just come into the station whenever. -Oh I definitely will. Thank you so much.

 

(AD)

The PuSh international performing arts festival is celebrating its 15th year this January. The festival brings the best of contemporary performing art from around the world and across the country right here in Vancouver featuring genre bending work in theatre, dance, multimedia, music and film. PuSh is proud to present work that explodes notions of what performance is and celebrates artists whose work starts conversations. Tickets are on sale now at pushfestival.ca.

 

(AD)

Oh you are a friend of ours who loves to get discounts! Come down to CiTR with deals. We partner with some local businesses, so come down to us to get your card, before it’s too late.

As a member of CiTR/Discorder, you get amazing deals with some of Vancouver's finest local businesses such as: Koerner's Pub, Australian Boot Company, The Bike Kitchen, Roofers Guitar Shop, Vinyl records and the Cinematheque. For more information visit citr.ca/friends

 

(Nicole)

That wraps up our show for today. If you are interested in joining our team or think that there is an issue we should bring up on our show, please send us an email accessibilitycollective@citr.ca

 

(Deepi)

Thank you to our interviewees: Monica Germino and Andrew Gurza.

 

(Alison)

If you are on Twitter or Instagram or both, please follow us at @access_citr.

 

(Lidia)

And if you missed part of our live show today and you want to listen again or catch up or listen a third time you can check us out on our podcast at citr.ca at All Access Pass.

 

(Deepi)

Thank you for listening and tune into our next show in two weeks. Wednesday at 2 p.m..

 

(Nicole)

Stick around for more CiTR programming coming up next. Thank everyone, bye!