While visiting Colorado this past week, we did many of the more obvious Colorado activities. We sat in a hot spring while surrounded by snow, drove through the Rockies, drank delicious local beers and even did some cross country skiing. However, what brought us to the great state of Colorado and its most excellent big town little city Boulder, was the Blind Cafe.
As a sighted person I have always relied on my vision to clue me in on the world around me. The only thing that I tend to do with my eyes closed is sleep...but walking around, eating, drinking and the like kind of necessitates an open eye. Sometimes it's interesting to try and do the most basic things in the dark. I've been able to walk from my bedroom to the bathroom with my eyes closed. And as preparation for the Blind Cafe on Saturday, I sat at a table and tried to locate my wine glass and get it to my mouth without incident. Doable, but strange.
Here's a little bit of backstory of the Blind Cafe, before I get into it. The Blind Cafe was started by Adam's good friend Brian "Rosh" Rocheleau about two years ago. He got the idea after visiting a dining in the dark restaurant in Iceland. From there a small idea and a general curiosity turned into actuality when he got to know some of the blind community in his adopted home of Boulder, Colorado. A blind friend that he knew from school really took to his idea and put him in touch with others in the blind community. The whole idea of doing a blind cafe is really reliant on the blind community, but I'll get more into that later. The Blind Cafe, as it stands now, are thrown as events and have been done in several cities across the US. It takes a lot of work, planning and volunteers to get one of these things together. Just blacking out a space can take a day or two, let alone all the other planning that needs to go into it. In the spirit of inclusion, the meals are vegan and gluten free. The dinner includes a Q & A with the blind servers, as well as an in the dark musical performance by Rosh and a collection of his musician friends, One Eye Glass Broken.
I knew a lot about what to expect going into the Blind Cafe. A few days before I had the chance to ask the organizer and mastermind behind the event, Rosh, a few questions about concerns that I had. "How many people are we going to be seated with? What happens when you need to use the restroom? Should I wear a smock?" He gave me some assurance that the blind servers would help us around if we needed to leave the room, and that yes, I might get food on me or a glass of water spilled into my lap but that it was totally worth it to ruin a good outfit. And then he dropped a bomb.
The meal was going to be family style.
Whaaa?
See I had it in my head that the blind servers would be dropping plates in front of us and explaining what was on it, same thing for our drinks. But no, we had to sit around a table with strangers and big plates and bowls of food between us and be expected to get it onto our own plates. We also had a jug of water and hot tea. As he explained this, I let out nervous giggles. This sounded absolutely insane.
Seriously though, imagine going to an Italian restaurant and trying to get the spaghetti onto your plate without muckling every inch of the table between that bowl and your plate. Or trying to find the salt and pepper without knocking over three glasses of water in the process. Or pouring yourself hot tea without giving yourself and the person to your left third degree burns. Or finding the bread basket and accidentally grabbing someones hand and trying to spread butter over their hand, and then realizing oh my god I've just spread butter on a strangers palm.
A lot can go wrong in this situation!
Adam and I arrived at the Boulderado Hotel(where the event was held) with our hearts filled with nervous excitement. We got there early so that we could have a few drinks before hand. Sitting in the dark with perfect strangers was going to be weird enough. Might as well have a good buzz going.
We made our way down to the conference room that had been transformed into our blind dining area. As we entered the lobby area we were able to see how many people were actually up for this kind of experience. It dawned on both of us that Rosh was really onto something quite amazing. There was a diverse group of people in that room of all ages and backgrounds. As I stood in line to be greeted, I felt a lick on the inside of my knee and turned around to see an adorable yellow lab in a harness, he was a seeing eye dog in training. There were probably about half a dozen seeing eye dogs in training there that night. Very well behaved and very sweet, they didn't make a peep and never caused a scene. I had a chance to talk to some of the trainers and learn about the work they do. A portion of the proceeds of these events go to a seeing eye dog foundation.
When it finally came time to grab the shoulder of the person ahead of me and walk cautiously into the dark, I was full of nerves. I had no idea what this was really going to be like. Think about being in a really dark room. Typically, your eyes will eventually adjust and you'll have some kind of vision. This room was so well blacked out that this was not the case. And after several hours of being there, your eyes still never adjusted.
Things to consider while eating in the dark.....
I have an obvious new found respect for the blind, and appreciate their ability to maintain table manners. I was eating with my hands, closing my eyes and being all sorts of sloppy, cause it totally didn't matter. How on earth are you supposed to get a fork full of food up to your mouth without all the food falling off of it? I found myself either straight up shoveling food in with my fingers, using my fingers on the fork assist, and taking bites that were way to big and awkward. Sometimes I would think that I was about to put food in my mouth and it would be nothing at all, an empty fork. An empty glass on water. Something that wasn't even food at all. It was very strange.
Serving myself food was weird. One of the dishes was a curry rice dish. When I went to go and spoon it onto my plate, I poured almost the entire spoonful into my lap, completely missing the dish. Very glad I had enough forethought to put my napkin down. I didn't even realize it immediately though, not until I put my hand on my lap and realized I was covered in rice. When I used the tongs to grab salad, it took me about half a dozen tries to actually pick up any food with the tongs. Pouring water wasn't as hard as I thought it would be, you just had to do it slowly.
I found myself closing my eyes a lot, keeping them open and not getting any reward was to much work. My eyes felt tired afterwards, too.
Sitting down with strangers is always interesting, especially when you add darkness to the mix. I had kind of hoped going into this that I wouldn't actually know what anyone looked like before we sat down, because I like to be surprised by my own imagination for what people will look like based on the sound of their voice, but we were all grouped together by where we were sitting in the lighted lobby before hand. But there were still a few surprises in store for us. We originally thought we were going to be seated at table 5B and got switched at the last minute. Which led to this very interesting scenario.
After dinner was served and we had eaten to our tummies content, the bathroom train came to town!
I had hoped to get through this meal without having to get up, but I was sort of intrigued by the whole being led around in the dark by blind servers, so I decided to go for the trip. We still had a lot of the night left in the dark anyways, so it was kind of the right time to get up. Adam and I both got up and grabbed the shoulders of the last person in line and we were led out the low lit lobby.
You didn't think we'd have to go to the bathroom in the dark too, did you? Come on. Thats ridiculous.
So...yadayadayada its time to go back inside. We tell the server what table we thought we were at, which she brought us to. Of course it turned out to be the wrong table, so she told me to grab hold the next person and that she would swing us around to another table. I reached out into the dark and there was no one there. The music had begun, so I whispered to Adam "They left us behind. We're stuck here."
So we stood there, in the dark, no clue where we were in the room, and no idea on how to get back to our table. The music was playing, so we couldn't exactly shout out that we were lost. We were absolutely hysterical. We literally both had our hands over each others mouths trying to stifle our laughter. It was perhaps the most disorienting experience I've ever had. We could do nothing but wait. My favorite song that Rosh plays is Love and Rainy Days, which just happened to come on in that moment. So we stood there and slow danced, giggling, in the dark.
We were finally saved by a server that had over heard us and asked us if we needed help, she led us outside where we were able to describe (to the best of our ability) what table we were seated at. A server named Gerry came to our rescue and knew exactly where we had been seated.
My most favorite part of the whole night was the Q & A between the servers and the attendees. I should note that the "servers" were more like leaders, because they were essential to making sure that this whole night went smoothly. Their experience of life without sight is what made them ideal in organizing a sight-less dinner, they were our figurative eyes in the space and could navigate as well and as fast as any sighted person could have done with the lights on. I could really tell how empowering it was for these individuals to get to share their stories, and it was incredibly moving to be on the other side and to have the opportunity to learn their stories. This whole experience made me realize that I've never known a true blind person. I had a lot of questions that I wanted to ask, but felt weird about asking. As an artist, I just can't even imagine what its like to go through life without a visual vocabulary. To not understand what color is, or to even know what art or a painting is for that matter, what defines a beautiful face, the depth of a landscape...Only one of the servers was truly blind for his whole life, meaning that he had never ever had any sight in anyway shape or form. He said he didn't even see black, but, how would he even know what black is? Someone asked a really interesting questions, "Do you dream?". Of course he dreamed, was his answer, but his dreams had no visual. His dreams had no visual. This absolutely blew my mind. I don't know if I necessarily thought up until that moment that all people are downloaded at birth with certain visual clues or ideas, but the notion of a dream only consisting of sound and feeling just really threw me for a loop. Other servers went blind over time, or were born mostly without sight and had lost it completely. They explained to us their lives and their experiences, lives that seem so normal but also so different from my own. They answered questions honestly and without hesitation. Questions that people felt silly asking, they would have very straightforward and informative answers to. They described what its like to date and what interests them in people when they don't have visual clues to go on. They described how useful they felt brail was, how they used the internet and how they're friends and family help them go shopping for clothing. Gerry described his career as a car mechanic. A blind car mechanic, who knew? It never occurred to me that a person without sight could work on a car, let alone do it professionally for a whole career. He now owns a coffee shop in Boulder.
The night was rounded out by beautiful music, and the very last song was a tune that everyone sang together at the end. The lyrics went something like this:
"the light that shines through everyone, some day it will be gone. So make me yours I'll make you mine"
And everyone sang this line together over and over again. And after the very last time, a candle was lit and the room was illuminated for the first time. This is when I realized that I have one hell of an imagination, because that room looked nothing like the palace of a space I had created in my mind. I thought there were columns and a lot more obstacles in the room, because as we walked and saw only darkness, I guess I assumed that the space I couldn't see must be filled with something because I was so afraid of bumping and crashing into it. It was just a regular rectangle room, and where I thought I was in relationship to where the band was ended up being totally different from where I actually was.
All in all I found this to be a really wonderful and (forgive me) eye opening experience. The Blind Cafe is not about the food or really even about being in the dark for a few hours. To me it was about finding a space to trust those around you enough to be comfortable in a really uncomfortable situation, which is something that I now understand is probably what our blind friends are confronted with a lot in their everyday life. It also gave me a true appreciation and respect for those without sight. The visual world is typically hard enough to navigate when you have the obvious in front of you, take those clues away and you really have to learn how to trust your more subtle senses. I thought that this experience would be a lot more about the way food tastes when you can't see it or the way people sound when you can't see them, but it was about much more than that. Sitting at that table we all had to help each other and communicate, touching another persons shoulder when you wanted to get their attention is something you typically don't have to do. Addressing one another (and not forgetting their names), being clear and listening was rule number one. A phrase I heard used a lot was 'making space for' when it was time to listen to someone speak or play music. We let so many things pass us by because we're too busy with visual distractions, and what the Blind Cafe has to offer (besides a really fun, sometimes awkward and sort of silly dining experience), is an exercise in listening to each other and making space for the senses that we too often let fall to the way side. All in all, a truly enlightening community awareness project, indeed.
Check out www.theblindcafe.com to find a Blind Cafe event nearest you.
As a sighted person I have always relied on my vision to clue me in on the world around me. The only thing that I tend to do with my eyes closed is sleep...but walking around, eating, drinking and the like kind of necessitates an open eye. Sometimes it's interesting to try and do the most basic things in the dark. I've been able to walk from my bedroom to the bathroom with my eyes closed. And as preparation for the Blind Cafe on Saturday, I sat at a table and tried to locate my wine glass and get it to my mouth without incident. Doable, but strange.
Here's a little bit of backstory of the Blind Cafe, before I get into it. The Blind Cafe was started by Adam's good friend Brian "Rosh" Rocheleau about two years ago. He got the idea after visiting a dining in the dark restaurant in Iceland. From there a small idea and a general curiosity turned into actuality when he got to know some of the blind community in his adopted home of Boulder, Colorado. A blind friend that he knew from school really took to his idea and put him in touch with others in the blind community. The whole idea of doing a blind cafe is really reliant on the blind community, but I'll get more into that later. The Blind Cafe, as it stands now, are thrown as events and have been done in several cities across the US. It takes a lot of work, planning and volunteers to get one of these things together. Just blacking out a space can take a day or two, let alone all the other planning that needs to go into it. In the spirit of inclusion, the meals are vegan and gluten free. The dinner includes a Q & A with the blind servers, as well as an in the dark musical performance by Rosh and a collection of his musician friends, One Eye Glass Broken.
I knew a lot about what to expect going into the Blind Cafe. A few days before I had the chance to ask the organizer and mastermind behind the event, Rosh, a few questions about concerns that I had. "How many people are we going to be seated with? What happens when you need to use the restroom? Should I wear a smock?" He gave me some assurance that the blind servers would help us around if we needed to leave the room, and that yes, I might get food on me or a glass of water spilled into my lap but that it was totally worth it to ruin a good outfit. And then he dropped a bomb.
The meal was going to be family style.
Whaaa?
See I had it in my head that the blind servers would be dropping plates in front of us and explaining what was on it, same thing for our drinks. But no, we had to sit around a table with strangers and big plates and bowls of food between us and be expected to get it onto our own plates. We also had a jug of water and hot tea. As he explained this, I let out nervous giggles. This sounded absolutely insane.
Seriously though, imagine going to an Italian restaurant and trying to get the spaghetti onto your plate without muckling every inch of the table between that bowl and your plate. Or trying to find the salt and pepper without knocking over three glasses of water in the process. Or pouring yourself hot tea without giving yourself and the person to your left third degree burns. Or finding the bread basket and accidentally grabbing someones hand and trying to spread butter over their hand, and then realizing oh my god I've just spread butter on a strangers palm.
A lot can go wrong in this situation!
Adam and I arrived at the Boulderado Hotel(where the event was held) with our hearts filled with nervous excitement. We got there early so that we could have a few drinks before hand. Sitting in the dark with perfect strangers was going to be weird enough. Might as well have a good buzz going.
We made our way down to the conference room that had been transformed into our blind dining area. As we entered the lobby area we were able to see how many people were actually up for this kind of experience. It dawned on both of us that Rosh was really onto something quite amazing. There was a diverse group of people in that room of all ages and backgrounds. As I stood in line to be greeted, I felt a lick on the inside of my knee and turned around to see an adorable yellow lab in a harness, he was a seeing eye dog in training. There were probably about half a dozen seeing eye dogs in training there that night. Very well behaved and very sweet, they didn't make a peep and never caused a scene. I had a chance to talk to some of the trainers and learn about the work they do. A portion of the proceeds of these events go to a seeing eye dog foundation.
When it finally came time to grab the shoulder of the person ahead of me and walk cautiously into the dark, I was full of nerves. I had no idea what this was really going to be like. Think about being in a really dark room. Typically, your eyes will eventually adjust and you'll have some kind of vision. This room was so well blacked out that this was not the case. And after several hours of being there, your eyes still never adjusted.
Things to consider while eating in the dark.....
I have an obvious new found respect for the blind, and appreciate their ability to maintain table manners. I was eating with my hands, closing my eyes and being all sorts of sloppy, cause it totally didn't matter. How on earth are you supposed to get a fork full of food up to your mouth without all the food falling off of it? I found myself either straight up shoveling food in with my fingers, using my fingers on the fork assist, and taking bites that were way to big and awkward. Sometimes I would think that I was about to put food in my mouth and it would be nothing at all, an empty fork. An empty glass on water. Something that wasn't even food at all. It was very strange.
Serving myself food was weird. One of the dishes was a curry rice dish. When I went to go and spoon it onto my plate, I poured almost the entire spoonful into my lap, completely missing the dish. Very glad I had enough forethought to put my napkin down. I didn't even realize it immediately though, not until I put my hand on my lap and realized I was covered in rice. When I used the tongs to grab salad, it took me about half a dozen tries to actually pick up any food with the tongs. Pouring water wasn't as hard as I thought it would be, you just had to do it slowly.
I found myself closing my eyes a lot, keeping them open and not getting any reward was to much work. My eyes felt tired afterwards, too.
Sitting down with strangers is always interesting, especially when you add darkness to the mix. I had kind of hoped going into this that I wouldn't actually know what anyone looked like before we sat down, because I like to be surprised by my own imagination for what people will look like based on the sound of their voice, but we were all grouped together by where we were sitting in the lighted lobby before hand. But there were still a few surprises in store for us. We originally thought we were going to be seated at table 5B and got switched at the last minute. Which led to this very interesting scenario.
After dinner was served and we had eaten to our tummies content, the bathroom train came to town!
I had hoped to get through this meal without having to get up, but I was sort of intrigued by the whole being led around in the dark by blind servers, so I decided to go for the trip. We still had a lot of the night left in the dark anyways, so it was kind of the right time to get up. Adam and I both got up and grabbed the shoulders of the last person in line and we were led out the low lit lobby.
You didn't think we'd have to go to the bathroom in the dark too, did you? Come on. Thats ridiculous.
So...yadayadayada its time to go back inside. We tell the server what table we thought we were at, which she brought us to. Of course it turned out to be the wrong table, so she told me to grab hold the next person and that she would swing us around to another table. I reached out into the dark and there was no one there. The music had begun, so I whispered to Adam "They left us behind. We're stuck here."
So we stood there, in the dark, no clue where we were in the room, and no idea on how to get back to our table. The music was playing, so we couldn't exactly shout out that we were lost. We were absolutely hysterical. We literally both had our hands over each others mouths trying to stifle our laughter. It was perhaps the most disorienting experience I've ever had. We could do nothing but wait. My favorite song that Rosh plays is Love and Rainy Days, which just happened to come on in that moment. So we stood there and slow danced, giggling, in the dark.
We were finally saved by a server that had over heard us and asked us if we needed help, she led us outside where we were able to describe (to the best of our ability) what table we were seated at. A server named Gerry came to our rescue and knew exactly where we had been seated.
My most favorite part of the whole night was the Q & A between the servers and the attendees. I should note that the "servers" were more like leaders, because they were essential to making sure that this whole night went smoothly. Their experience of life without sight is what made them ideal in organizing a sight-less dinner, they were our figurative eyes in the space and could navigate as well and as fast as any sighted person could have done with the lights on. I could really tell how empowering it was for these individuals to get to share their stories, and it was incredibly moving to be on the other side and to have the opportunity to learn their stories. This whole experience made me realize that I've never known a true blind person. I had a lot of questions that I wanted to ask, but felt weird about asking. As an artist, I just can't even imagine what its like to go through life without a visual vocabulary. To not understand what color is, or to even know what art or a painting is for that matter, what defines a beautiful face, the depth of a landscape...Only one of the servers was truly blind for his whole life, meaning that he had never ever had any sight in anyway shape or form. He said he didn't even see black, but, how would he even know what black is? Someone asked a really interesting questions, "Do you dream?". Of course he dreamed, was his answer, but his dreams had no visual. His dreams had no visual. This absolutely blew my mind. I don't know if I necessarily thought up until that moment that all people are downloaded at birth with certain visual clues or ideas, but the notion of a dream only consisting of sound and feeling just really threw me for a loop. Other servers went blind over time, or were born mostly without sight and had lost it completely. They explained to us their lives and their experiences, lives that seem so normal but also so different from my own. They answered questions honestly and without hesitation. Questions that people felt silly asking, they would have very straightforward and informative answers to. They described what its like to date and what interests them in people when they don't have visual clues to go on. They described how useful they felt brail was, how they used the internet and how they're friends and family help them go shopping for clothing. Gerry described his career as a car mechanic. A blind car mechanic, who knew? It never occurred to me that a person without sight could work on a car, let alone do it professionally for a whole career. He now owns a coffee shop in Boulder.
The night was rounded out by beautiful music, and the very last song was a tune that everyone sang together at the end. The lyrics went something like this:
"the light that shines through everyone, some day it will be gone. So make me yours I'll make you mine"
And everyone sang this line together over and over again. And after the very last time, a candle was lit and the room was illuminated for the first time. This is when I realized that I have one hell of an imagination, because that room looked nothing like the palace of a space I had created in my mind. I thought there were columns and a lot more obstacles in the room, because as we walked and saw only darkness, I guess I assumed that the space I couldn't see must be filled with something because I was so afraid of bumping and crashing into it. It was just a regular rectangle room, and where I thought I was in relationship to where the band was ended up being totally different from where I actually was.
All in all I found this to be a really wonderful and (forgive me) eye opening experience. The Blind Cafe is not about the food or really even about being in the dark for a few hours. To me it was about finding a space to trust those around you enough to be comfortable in a really uncomfortable situation, which is something that I now understand is probably what our blind friends are confronted with a lot in their everyday life. It also gave me a true appreciation and respect for those without sight. The visual world is typically hard enough to navigate when you have the obvious in front of you, take those clues away and you really have to learn how to trust your more subtle senses. I thought that this experience would be a lot more about the way food tastes when you can't see it or the way people sound when you can't see them, but it was about much more than that. Sitting at that table we all had to help each other and communicate, touching another persons shoulder when you wanted to get their attention is something you typically don't have to do. Addressing one another (and not forgetting their names), being clear and listening was rule number one. A phrase I heard used a lot was 'making space for' when it was time to listen to someone speak or play music. We let so many things pass us by because we're too busy with visual distractions, and what the Blind Cafe has to offer (besides a really fun, sometimes awkward and sort of silly dining experience), is an exercise in listening to each other and making space for the senses that we too often let fall to the way side. All in all, a truly enlightening community awareness project, indeed.
Check out www.theblindcafe.com to find a Blind Cafe event nearest you.
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