At a dinner party attended by artists up the wazoo last week, I heard for the first time about Joseph Grigely, an internationally-known deaf artist who has created works out of the conversations he's had on cocktail napkins and the like (interview with Grigely here, examples of his work here).
I found this interesting for a couple reasons. First, because apparently hearing people find this work enthralling while the rest of us have taken written communication for granted as a medium. Second, because it was the third time I'd heard about such work or ideas. The second time was when I attended Louise Stern's reading performance at Gallaudet -- she's apparently working on something similar.
And the first was when I hung out for the night in a bar with a fellow creative... who was hearing.
Near the end of the night I went to visit the loo, and when I came back I found the middle third of my notebook missing. He'd ripped them out and stolen them and then told me, in a roundabout way, that it was for art's sake. He planned to do something with those pages. I'm still waiting to find out what.
I was a little surprised. That was my notebook, and that was just as much my handwriting as it was his. But I let him have those pages. I would have just thrown them away anyway.
Today I was flipping through said notebook, looking frantically for blank pages to write on while I was in the middle of an interview, and I found this lost fragment from that night. Consider it my drunken, amateur, and meager contribution to this new genre of art.
