Notes on Blindness

Hello. Testing, testing, testing...

Daddy, Daddy...

This is cassette one, track one.

10th of July 1983.

Have we begun yet?

Disembodied voices... 22nd February.

Speaking out of nowhere... 1984.

Disappearing into nowhere.

Thank you very much for the tape.

Everything drifting away.

Waterlogged, immobile.

Hello and welcome to...

A religious crisis... Down, down...

Can't we just go back?

It's a long time ago, isn't it?

Hmm...

How difficult it is to remember

the detail...

Let's think...

We were married on the 1st November

'79.

Well, you were driving, of course.

Well, you certainly weren't driving!

We took off down to...

- We got to Chichester.

- Oh, that was it... Was it?

- Where was our honeymoon?

- The southern edge of the...

- What was it called?

- Began with a C, Cirencester.

Ah! That was it, Cirencester.

That's a long way...

That ghastly B&B!

Was quite the worst place

we've ever stayed in.

I don't remember it being so bad.

- The bed was covered in dust!

- Yeah.

- I'm sure there were bedbugs.

- Well.

Do you remember the way the tide came in?

Right up the main street.

It took the form of a... dark,

black disc...

which slowly progressed across

the field of vision.

Went very quickly.

The doctor said that the eye

was so badly traumatised

from previous surgery...

"All we'll be able to do

is to preserve a little bit of sight."

Of course, you never believe that.

You keep on hoping.

That was the final eye operation.

Yes.

You were just out of hospital

when Tom was born.

He's smiling.

He's smiling at you.

I still had that little bit of vision.

I would see a flicker of a shadow

across the window

as you moved across it.

Yeah.

If I stood underneath

the central light in the room,

I could tell if it was on or off.

The stars had gone, the moon had gone.

I must still be able to see the sun,

mustn't I?

They didn't think it would last long.

Here we are again.

Another part of Imogen Hull's tape.

Er, side two. Now, then...

Imogen...

She was thrilled, you know,

as an older sister, having a little brother.

I don't think she realised

what was going on.

The little drop of the Father

on thy little beloved forehead.

The little drop of the Son

on your forehead, beloved one.

A little drop of the Spirit

on your forehead, beloved one.

There was nobody much around

in the university.

I could hear one of my friends saying...

"You know that John Hull's going

completely blind?"

Stopping and hearing that.

Ah!

Thoughts just came tumbling into my mind.

What about my reading? My research?

What about my teaching?

How am I going to teach?

How am I going to lecture?

Without any notes!

I went up to my office and sat there.

The students will be here

in about five weeks.

Now...

How am I going to do this?

A social worker told me about

all the things they could offer.

Mmm. Your first white cane.

There were special holiday

homes for blind people.

Maybe I'd like to have a dog and...

And she said, "You need a mobility course."

But I said, "No, I'm not doing that."

I haven't got time!

Most people would have made the time.

I was just too busy

keeping up with everything.

Well, you were also stubborn.

You were, sort of, in furious denial.

The only thing I was interested in

was how to function as a blind academic.

That, nobody knew.

We've got...

The Long Surrender.

Autumn Conquest.

I needed to have serious

books recorded sensibly.

Uh... What about anthropology and sociology?

All that was basically available

in the United Kingdom

was detective novels and romantic fiction.

Well, I'm interested in reading

contemporary social sciences.

No, look,

how do blind people read big books?

They said, "They don't."

Anyway, um, I'll sort it out,

so thanks for your advice.

They don't.

That was it.

Now, I didn't buy that.

I had a tape recorder, of course.

I had cassettes.

Is that the microphone? Yes.

Is it on?

That makes a difference, doesn't it?

Testing, testing, testing...

Today is Tuesday

and I'm wondering if this machine

will record or not.

Testing, testing...

Today is Tuesday

and I'm wondering if this machine

will record or not.

The first thing I did

was build up a team of people

to record books for me.

How did you get that going?

I can't quite remember,

but it became an absolute business!

I had up to 30 of them

working for me at one stage.

The books would come back on cassettes.

Hundred of cassettes.

Hundreds!

Yeah, that was transformative.

Down on this level. One...

Two...

Three...

I spent, I suppose,

the next two or three years

learning all of those little tricks.

With ingenuity and a little bit of help,

there were problems that could be solved.

Meaning is an operation

with intentionality...

The truth is that although it was,

in a way, so devastating,

I did enjoy it.

I was entirely occupied.

It wasn't until the final,

tiny bit of light sensation

slowly disappeared

that my mood changed.

Remember that day in Shrewsbury

when I caught a glimpse of a...

- Of a church spire?

- Yeah.

I think that's the last thing you ever saw.

That's probably true.

Dad?

Hey?

I had a dream.

You had a dream?

I had a dream

what I got some dinner,

but it didn't have at all

very much nice stuff in it

and I lost it again.

Wow...

- Was that the end?

- And you were in it.

He's telling me about a dream he had.

Now...

it will be cloudy, um,

throughout the evening.

Er...

and a big patch of wind on the,

um, satellite picture

just coming over and lots of...

What now?

What next?

I'd learnt how to lecture without notes.

Learnt how to recognise

the students by their voices.

The cassettes were pouring in faster

than I could read them.

All of that was done.

It was at that point

I realised

that I had to think about blindness

because if I didn't understand it

it would defeat me.

This is cassette one, track one.

Notes on Blindness

and this is the 21st of June,

After nearly three years of blindness,

I find that the pictures

in the gallery of my mind

have dimmed somewhat.

People and places I know and love so well.

Memories of my early life

spent in Australia.

So I found with great distress

that I could no longer remember easily

what my wife looked like.

Or what my daughter, Imogen, looked like.

I found that memories of photographs

were more easily recaptured.

In the case of my daughter, Imogen,

I have a wide range

of visual memories of her.

Of Thomas, now nearly three,

I have a few very vague impressions

based upon the first six or nine months

of his life

before I lost sight altogether.

And of Elizabeth,

I have no visual memories at all

and never have had.

Just a minute.

I am concerned

to understand blindness,

to seek its meaning,

to retain the fullness of my humanity.

We need to know

what kind of necessity is it.

Is it a psychological necessity?

Is it logical?

Is it a historical necessity?

A note on smiles.

Nearly every time I smile,

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