[Xmca-l] Re: Notes on Blindness

[Annalisa Aguilar]

Greg!

Yes the piece is really great and well produced! 

If you read the article that accompanies the video on the Times page, the writers indicate that over time as he adjusted to blindness, he came to revel in the other senses to the point that when he was helping with the movie, he'd forgotten that he'd gone through that painful time, and apparently wasn't happy to revisit the memories. I think that is the point of the last scene with the rain (inside), to show that he began to "see" differently, with sound. Maybe? At least, that is how I interpreted it.

I also thought, as you, it was remarkable that he remembered photographs, maybe these map in memory differently? Like you say because of reduction of modality?

What also seems significant is that if we don't use those organs of perceptions we lose memories of those perceptions. Which may mean that memory is something that must be reconstructed with the organ somehow, even if we aren't using the organ to perceive externally while retrieval of the memory? I'm not sure I explained that very well…

Kind regards,

Annalisa