SPEAKER_13: Hey, it's Lulu.This is Radiolab, and I am about to hit play on what I think is an all-time favorite Radiolab.It is certainly one we've heard about from listeners over and over again.It was originally aired in 2011, and I'm not going to say much more except that we're going to launch you into the story, and then we have two pretty wild updates.So think of this as a trilogy, the Emily trilogy.Here we go with part one.
SPEAKER_15: in the wall wait you're listening okay all right okay all right you're listening to radio lab radio from wnyc
SPEAKER_06: Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad.I'm Robert Krulwich.This is Radiolab.Today, sort of a love story.Here's the guy.
SPEAKER_05: My name is Alan Lundgaard.
SPEAKER_06: Do you want me to say anything more than that?
SPEAKER_05: I don't know.Is this for like a credit?
SPEAKER_15: No, sometimes we have to let people introduce themselves.
SPEAKER_05: Oh, I don't know.I don't have a title.Okay.All right.
SPEAKER_06: So that's Alan.The girl, Emily, we'll meet her a bit later for reasons that will become clear.The story begins on a fall day in Brooklyn.
SPEAKER_05: And so the day in question, I guess it was the morning of October 8th.
SPEAKER_06: They're both living in this one-room loft in Brooklyn.
SPEAKER_05: And we woke up and, you know, went about our daily routine and prepared to go.
SPEAKER_06: He was in art school.She was taking some time off from art school to work for a local artist.So she would take the bike and I would take the train.What was the morning like?
SPEAKER_05: It was a beautiful day.The sun was low in the sky, so there were long shadows.I strapped on her helmet and adjusted it, took her bike out for her.We kissed each other goodbye and said I love you, and I watched her ride down the street. And this early morning, and then, you know, on I went, down into the subway.
SPEAKER_06: Six hours later, he's working in the studio doing some sculpture.And he gets a call from a cop.
SPEAKER_05: And he just said, Emily Gossio, she had an accident.She's at Bellevue.This is the address.And I said, oh, I mean, do you have any more information?And he just told me that it was bad. I was carrying a bunch of stuff and I just dropped everything and started running.
SPEAKER_06: Now, Alan and Emily had only been together nine months, but when it started, says Alan, it was just so immediate.
SPEAKER_05: The night they got together, they both just kind of knew.It was sort of like a weird prophetic kind of thing where I think it was the first day that the schools had a snow day.It was snowed out.It was kind of like this past blizzard, you know, sort of like city shuts down magical kind of thing.
SPEAKER_06: He'd gone out with some friends just as the snow was coming down.And we were trapped at this party.And that's where he bumped into Emily.
SPEAKER_05: Pint-sized, these big, like, iridescent eyes and a very kind of, I have trouble describing her voice.It's almost as if, I know you guys are audio people, but it's like stereo almost.
SPEAKER_06: Truth is they'd known each other for a while, but that night, says Alan.Fireworks all of a sudden.And it felt right.So you had a feeling this wasn't just a thing, this was a thing.Right, right.Or the thing.The thing.Right.The thing.
SPEAKER_05: The thing.
SPEAKER_06: The soul thing.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.All right.
SPEAKER_12: Well, Emily, there have always been boys around Emily.
SPEAKER_15: That's Susan Gossio, Emily's mom.She says at first when Emily told her about Alan, she thought, okay, so that's another boy.Emily seemed to have that effect on boys, perhaps because she didn't really seem to need them.
SPEAKER_12: Here is someone who's been obsessed with art and has given up everybody in her life for art.
SPEAKER_15: At the age of six, she was creating her own comic books.In junior high school, she took drawing classes every night, and then in high school, she left us, friends, boyfriends, to go to a high school of the arts in Florida.
SPEAKER_12: No one stands in the way of her art.It's all she sees.It's all she focuses on.
SPEAKER_15: But then she visited Emily in May, a few months before the accident, and she met Alan.
SPEAKER_12: I met Alan, and he was delightful.But there was a different look that I'd never seen in Emily's eyes before when she looked at him, and I didn't like it.
SPEAKER_06: Tell us about the accident from your perspective.
SPEAKER_12: For when I was at work.
SPEAKER_06: You were in New Orleans?
SPEAKER_12: Metairie, which is a suburb of New Orleans.And I get a telephone call.And I looked and I saw it was Alan.Alan has never called me before.I answered the phone.I said, hello, Alan.And he said, you have to come.Emily was hit by a truck.An 18-wheeler semi-truck.And I took a breath and I said, Alan, is Emily dead?
And he said, no, but you need to get here as soon as possible.
SPEAKER_06: Six hours later, her and her husband, Emily's dad, were at Bellevue Hospital here in Manhattan.
SPEAKER_12: They brought us into her room in surgical ICU.We all went in.
SPEAKER_05: She was just lying in bed.There were tubes.Tubes down her throat.Coming in and out.
SPEAKER_12: Her face was so swollen, covered in blood.Emily weighed, probably at the time of the accident, about 100 pounds.And she then weighed 128.She had swollen 28 pounds.Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_05: She had multiple fractures in her leg and her pelvis and the left side of her face.
SPEAKER_12: They had opened her abdomen, and they had taken her intestines out and put them on top of her body so that she could breathe.
SPEAKER_05: And she was just lying completely still, you know.
SPEAKER_12: That first 48 hours, nothing moved.Nothing.
SPEAKER_05: We took up shifts, you know.Her mother would be there in the day and her father in the evening, and then I would be there with her at night.Her eyes weren't even flickering.
SPEAKER_15: And as she sat there watching Emily not move, she says she kept thinking, why?I've got these four kids, and everything bad seems to happen to Emily.Starting at six months.
SPEAKER_12: Ear infections, then sinus infections, then asthma.
SPEAKER_15: By kindergarten, Emily was losing her hearing for reasons no one could quite figure out.She had to get hearing aids.On both sides.But somehow, her mom says, all this just made Emily more fierce.
SPEAKER_12: If anyone can conquer this...
SPEAKER_05: it's emily i think on the second day they started to take her off her medication expecting to see some sort of reaction from her and nothing nothing there was a nurse and the nurse said that emily was gone
SPEAKER_12: and asked me about organ donations.And I said, yes.And so I worked up enough courage to go into what they call the track room, which is where the residents usually are.And there was one woman resident sitting at a computer.And I went and I said, when are you going to let Emily go?And she said, we will have a family meeting tomorrow morning. and we'll talk then."And so I said, okay, and I left, and I went back, and I'm sitting with Emily, side of her bed, and I'm telling her, Emily and I read the book, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, when she was a sophomore, and I remember the ending of the book.There's a land of the living, there's a land of the dead, and the bridge is love, and that love is the only thing that survives, and it's kind of the way it goes. And so I was sitting there with Emily and I was saying this and talking in her ear and saying this and talking to her and telling her that I would love her eternally through all time, that our love would never end.
And Emily raised her left hand.It was chaos.I was yelling for the nurse.I saw it.I saw her move.
SPEAKER_05: That was really one of the really abrupt moments.
SPEAKER_12: Now, they knew.Emily was not dead.Emily was alive.But how alive?
SPEAKER_06: Over the next few days, says Alan, she slowly started moving more.
SPEAKER_05: Not really in response to anything.She'd writhe in bed, scratch her leg where there was a wound.
SPEAKER_12: We would hold her hand down, and she'd slap.She'd slap our hands away.
SPEAKER_06: But when they tell this to the doctors, the doctors would say, that's not indicative of any kind of mental functioning.Could just be a reflex, really.So the medical team began trying to determine just how damaged was she.
SPEAKER_12: The ophthalmologist teams were coming in, and they were trying to get Emily's eyes to, eye pupils to respond, and they weren't responsive.And so I knew what that meant.
SPEAKER_15: What did that mean?
SPEAKER_12: It meant she could be blind.So Emily couldn't see, couldn't hear.
SPEAKER_06: Because remember, she wore hearing aids.And why didn't you just put those in?
SPEAKER_05: We tried.I mean, we tried many times to put it in, but she just wouldn't allow it.
SPEAKER_06: What would she do exactly when you did it?
SPEAKER_05: Flail her head, shake around.
SPEAKER_12: Kick, and she would hit.Had a lot of bruises on my body where she'd kicked me and pinched me.So we stopped.Every once in a while we would go back to it, but there was the question, you know, maybe she couldn't hear anymore.
SPEAKER_15: What do you do to a person who you don't know what's going on inside her and you can't get to her?
SPEAKER_05: You send her to a nursing home, and, you know, that's where she would have remained.
SPEAKER_06: And after several weeks in the ICU, Emily... She was stable.And that meant they had to make a decision.
SPEAKER_12: Once you become stable, then you have to move off surgical ICU and out of the hospital to either a rehabilitation or to a nursing home.
SPEAKER_06: So that became the new question.Where would she go?Could she be repaired, so to speak, in which case she'd go to rehab?Or is this it for her, in which case she'd go to a nursing home?
SPEAKER_07: Now, making that call medically... Is sometimes tricky.
SPEAKER_15: That's Dr. Michal Eisenberg.She's a physician at NYU, and it's her job to make that call.
SPEAKER_07: And she says one of the key criteria for getting someone into rehab... To do rehab on somebody, you need to have them reacting to you.A person needs to be able to participate in a meaningful way for three hours of therapy a day.
SPEAKER_12: They have to be able to follow commands because that's how you rehabilitate someone.If the person can't hear, if the person can't see, then there's no way to communicate with her.
SPEAKER_05: And so they made the assessment that she could not go to rehab.
SPEAKER_12: And that Emily should go to a nursing home.So I sent my husband back to New Orleans to look for a nursing home.
SPEAKER_05: That they could bring her back to.They just kept it all secret from me that they were going to take her away from me.
SPEAKER_12: I mean, how do you tell someone who loves your daughter that much that we're taking her away?But it was not just one life that we had in our hands.It was two lives.We felt that that would be the best thing for him.And Alan could hate us.Maybe as a way for him to bridge and let go of that grief.
SPEAKER_06: But then, as the doctors were prepping Emily to move her to a nursing home, they had to remove her tracheotomy, which was helping her breathe.And she all of a sudden started talking.Really?She spoke.
SPEAKER_05: Yes.
SPEAKER_06: What was she saying?
SPEAKER_12: She would curse.Don't touch me, you blankety-blank, you know.
SPEAKER_05: She would say stop.
SPEAKER_06: This was in response to someone touching her?
SPEAKER_12: Touching her.
SPEAKER_05: And if she wasn't cursing, says Alan?She would call everybody Miss Dashwood.
SPEAKER_12: Certain people that were touching her were Miss Dashwood.
SPEAKER_05: What's from Sense and Sensibility?But quoting Jane Austen.Oh yeah, we had watched the movie like a couple months previous to this.
SPEAKER_12: So somehow she was locked in the movie.
SPEAKER_05: And it was just the assumption of the doctors that she was just sort of mentally damaged.
SPEAKER_06: But if she's calling people Miss Dashwood, doesn't that at least mean something?
SPEAKER_12: No.It wasn't enough to say that Emily could follow a command like sit up, raise your right hand.
SPEAKER_05: So the plan was still the nursing home. I mean, no, every possibility had not been exhausted.
SPEAKER_12: I can see him.He was sitting across the room and his jaws were just clenched.I just was not going to give up.And he was saying, you have to give her a chance.You have to give her the chance.Do you have a plan?
SPEAKER_05: No, I had no plan whatsoever.I was lost.This experience was just completely traumatic to me emotionally.But at the same time, I was going to help her in whatever way I could.The only trajectory I had was to help her.
SPEAKER_06: And one night, just a few days before Emily was going to be discharged to a nursing home, away from him.
SPEAKER_05: I was there alone with her and it was 3 a.m.or something.
SPEAKER_06: And she was calm.
SPEAKER_05: Like she wasn't trying to fight me away or anything.I had helped her fix a thing that was wrong with her mouth wiring.It was like a wire that was poking her and I fixed it for her.
SPEAKER_06: And he says at that moment, something occurred to him.
SPEAKER_05: It really just was like in the recesses of my mind.
SPEAKER_06: He thought of the story of Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan.He'd read about it a few days earlier online and he thought, hmm. What if I tried what Annie Sullivan did with Helen Keller on Emily?
SPEAKER_05: I took her left hand with my left hand and I leaned over and using her wrist as the baseline for the words.
SPEAKER_06: And his finger as the pen.
SPEAKER_05: I just wrote I, waited a second, L, waited a second, O, waited a second, V, E, waited a second, U.
SPEAKER_06: Then, according to Alan, she said to him, She said, Oh, you love me?
SPEAKER_05: Thank you.
SPEAKER_06: She literally replied immediately to it?
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, she replied immediately.
SPEAKER_15: Does she know who you are?
SPEAKER_05: No, she has no idea who I am.
SPEAKER_06: But now he had a way to get to her, so he could figure out how much of her was actually there, and maybe even prove it to the doctors.
SPEAKER_05: You know, I had to have something that was conclusive to present to them.The following evening, I took out my cell phone, and it has a record function on it, and I started recording question after question to determine her cognitive ability.What is your name? What.W-H-A-T.
SPEAKER_02: What.
SPEAKER_06: Is.I-S.Is.You fingerspelled every letter?
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: Car.What is.Yours. What is your name?Emily.Let me tell it for you.
SPEAKER_05: She's writing her name on the palm of my hand.
SPEAKER_12: Alan called me at 4 o'clock in the morning, said you have to come now.I have proof.
SPEAKER_05: I'm now going to ask her what year it is. What?
SPEAKER_02: What?
SPEAKER_05: And I'm going to write year.
SPEAKER_02: Year.Is.Is.
SPEAKER_05: Is?Question mark.2010.
SPEAKER_02: Very good, very good.2010.
SPEAKER_05: Emily, very good. Very, very good.Do you know where you are?Question mark.
SPEAKER_02: No, I don't know where I am.
SPEAKER_05: Okay, right now I'm going to write hospital.
SPEAKER_12: Got there about 4.45 in the morning.Alan is over there by the bed, continuing to fingerspell and talk to her.And she calls him Alan.She knows that this person who is fingerspelling on her hand is named Alan.But Alan can't get her to understand who he really is, that it's her Alan.
SPEAKER_05: I'm just going to write my name again, Alan.Like, she just couldn't make that mental jump to connect her past life with her present.
SPEAKER_02: Alan?Alan? What ethnicity are you?Are you Asian?
SPEAKER_05: Am I Asian?Tell her no.
SPEAKER_12: Next thing I hear her say is, pull me out of the wall.
SPEAKER_05: She kept saying, pull me out.Please pull me out of here.
SPEAKER_12: It's dark in here.
SPEAKER_05: Pull me out.Help me.I know you can do it.
SPEAKER_12: Pull me out of the wall.
SPEAKER_05: I kept saying, I can't.I would write on her hand, I can't.
SPEAKER_12: Alan starts to sob, and I'm crying too.What are you thinking at this point?It wasn't enough.It wasn't enough.It wasn't enough.And I said, Alan, ask her about her hearing aids.And... So he fingerspelt hearing aid.And she said, okay.She agreed to put the hearing aid in for the first time.So we put it in and switched it on.
SPEAKER_05: He said, Emily.Emily, can you hear me?It's me, Alan.
SPEAKER_04: And immediately... Everything came back to me.I was there.I remembered everything.
SPEAKER_12: The door opened, and Emily stepped out.She was back.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's just like hearing his voice.I knew it was him, and then he said my mom was there.
SPEAKER_12: And I heard her say what I had been waiting for her to say all those weeks.I screamed, Mommy, Mommy.She said, Mama.
SPEAKER_04: I couldn't believe they were there the whole time.
SPEAKER_06: We asked Emily, before she came back, where was she?
SPEAKER_04: I didn't know where I was, if I could see at all.I mean, all I knew is that I was sleeping, and I was always dreaming.
SPEAKER_06: She says people would come to her in her dreams and say, Don't touch that.Stop scratching your wounds.
SPEAKER_04: My dreams would blend in with reality.
SPEAKER_06: She says she knew somehow that there were people around her, but she couldn't get to them, and that she also knew she was in a dream.
SPEAKER_04: Why am I still sleeping?
SPEAKER_06: that you couldn't somehow wake up from?
SPEAKER_04: I felt helpless.I felt really helpless.
SPEAKER_06: Were you waiting for someone like that?
SPEAKER_04: I was waiting for some communication, you know? And I was relieved.Alan, he's a miracle to me.
SPEAKER_06: Emily's now at the Rusk Institute, which is one of New York City's leading rehab centers. And on the day we visited her, she just had a breakthrough.
SPEAKER_04: Today was the first day I could stand on both legs and walk.Actually walk.I walked 100 feet today.
SPEAKER_06: After rehab, she'll be moving into an apartment in lower Manhattan with Alan.She's blind, and the chances of her seeing again are slim.But Alan plans to spend his time helping her cope and helping her find a new way to make art.Emily, can you introduce yourself?
SPEAKER_04: Do you want me to say my name is Emily Garcia?
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, just so we have it all on tape.
SPEAKER_05: They asked me if I would have a title, and I couldn't think of one, but I thought of one.
SPEAKER_04: A title?
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I'll do mine.My name is Alan Lungard.I'm the boyfriend.
SPEAKER_04: My name is Emily Garcia.I'm the girlfriend.
SPEAKER_05: You're the star of the show.
SPEAKER_04: Oh, is that what I should say?
SPEAKER_05: No.
SPEAKER_00: When we come back, Emily's story continues. Rocket Money will even try to negotiate your bills for you by up to 20%.All you have to do is submit a picture of your bill and Rocket Money takes care of the rest.Rocket Money has over 5 million users and has saved a total of $500 million in cancelled subscriptions, saving members up to $740 a year when using all of the app's features.Stop wasting money on things you don't use.Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to rocketmoney.com slash WNYC. That's rocketmoney.com slash WNYC.
SPEAKER_13: Radiolab is supported by BetterHelp.We keep such a close eye on so many of our battery levels, our phones, our computers, and so on.But when is the last time you checked in on your own little social battery? We're often so busy with our jobs, our families, our loved ones that check-ins with our own well-being can take a backseat.So it can also be helpful to look inward and ask ourselves some questions like, do I have the energy to socialize tonight or could I use some rest?Therapy can give you the self-awareness to set some boundaries, build a social life that doesn't drain you, and work toward being the best possible version of yourself. If you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try.It's totally online and designed to be convenient to fit your schedule.All you have to do is fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapists anytime for no additional charge.Find your social sweet spot with BetterHelp.
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SPEAKER_10: Hey, it's Latif.Here at Radiolab, we often get fixated on something.For the last few months, it has been moons.Partly because we recently helped name a quasi-moon of Venus.We named it Zeusvei.Also partly because North America is about to have a total eclipse, which we are stoked about.Anyway, we've all basically become lunatics over here. Why, right?That's the question.Why spend so much time thinking about the moon?
Because it's something we can all stand side by side and marvel at together.We want to remind you that there is beauty and weirdness and profundity all around us. And if you're into that, if you think there's a place for that, support us.Join our membership program, The Lab.It comes with all kinds of perks, including a limited edition Zuzve t-shirt.You asked, we got them.Go to radiolab.org slash join to check out the shirt and to become a member who helps us fund the show.Thanks for listening.
SPEAKER_13: Lulu Radio Lab, we are following the story of Emily Gossio.And a few years after her accident, from her emergence from the wall that her mind was trapped in, we followed up with her.And we'll call this part, part two, Walking Fishes.
SPEAKER_06: Of all the stories we've ever done, I think this one has gotten the most response.And when we left that story, Emily had emerged from the coma and begun to recover, but she was blind.Totally blind, right?
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_06: And like no light, nothing coming in?
SPEAKER_04: No.
SPEAKER_06: Okay.Needless to say, it was a very big adjustment.
SPEAKER_04: I just had to develop my own ways to navigate throughout the world and trust myself.
SPEAKER_06: And being a visual artist, she had to develop new ways to draw.
SPEAKER_04: I had crayons, and if you draw the crayons hard enough, you can feel the wax on the paper.But then one day in the summer of 2012, she gets a call. from the Lighthouse School in New York City.
SPEAKER_06: The Lighthouse School?
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's a school for the blind.
SPEAKER_06: Her mom had found out that they were trying out this brand new technology.
SPEAKER_04: I think they were doing the study for the FDA.
SPEAKER_06: Very experimental, and her mom signed her up.Long story short, Emily shows up to the Lighthouse School one day and walks into this room, and a guy named Ed gives her this thing.
SPEAKER_04: He gives me his device.
SPEAKER_06: Can you describe it?I mean, is it a big helmet?
SPEAKER_04: No, it's not.It's just like a regular pair of sunglasses.
SPEAKER_06: Though they were a little heavier than your normal sunglasses, she says, because right on the front, like on the bridge of the nose, was a little camera pointing forward.
SPEAKER_04: And then attached to the sunglasses was a little wire.
SPEAKER_06: That ran out of the camera and down to this little square piece of metal.
SPEAKER_04: I think it's made out of titanium, and it's just like the size of a postage stamp.Or a little bit thicker, though.
SPEAKER_06: Ed explained to her that a little piece of titanium was filled with thousands of electrodes.And what was going to happen is that the camera was going to convert images into patterns of electricity on that little square.So he told her to take the little square.
SPEAKER_04: Place it on your tongue.
SPEAKER_06: Put it right on the center of your tongue.
SPEAKER_04: And close your mouth.So I put it on and they turned it on. And it was like, it started to tickle.Imagine a lot of Coca-Cola, like a lot of bubbles on your tongue and always like prickly, prickly feelings.
SPEAKER_06: The idea behind this thing, according to science writer Sam Kean, author of The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons, is that we actually see with our brain, not our eyes.I mean, it might seem like our eyes are doing the seeing and our ears are doing the hearing and our fingers and tongue are doing the tasting and the touching, but that's actually not how it works.Each of our senses sends signals into the brain. as electricity.Little blips on nerves.And it is the brain that then converts those little blips into what you perceive as a sight or a sound or a smell.Now, obviously, someone who is blind, their retina is not sending those signals anymore.But what if there is another way to get signals for light and dark and color into our brains?
SPEAKER_14: In all of our brains, there are lots and lots of pathways going from every part of the brain to every other part of the brain. And normally your brain isn't using those pathways, even though they exist.It's like there's a road there, but it's shut down and traffic can't be on it.But what if you could open up some of those routes?
SPEAKER_04: He just let me sit with it on for an hour or two hours.
SPEAKER_06: Emily says at first she had no idea what was happening.She would just swivel her head around and feel the patterns on her tongue change.
SPEAKER_04: And every time I looked around, he'd say, Oh, that's a chair.That's a door.That's me.That's your mom.
SPEAKER_06: And it went on like this for a while.Ed showed her a ball and a square.
SPEAKER_04: A plastic banana.
SPEAKER_06: And nothing was really happening for her, except for the prickly feelings on her tongue. But then there was this moment.
SPEAKER_04: Ed had this really long styrofoam rod and he flashed it in front of me.He moved it up and down in front of my face.And I was like, oh my God, what was that?
SPEAKER_06: Suddenly, she says, she just saw it.
SPEAKER_04: I was like, oh my God.It just happened on its own.
SPEAKER_06: What did it look like?
SPEAKER_04: In some of my mind's eye, it looked like a long, white, skinny stick.
SPEAKER_06: Could you see the texture of the stick?
SPEAKER_04: No, I couldn't see texture.I couldn't see in three dimensions.It was very flat.It was kind of like that kid's toy light bright.So imagine like a black screen and little tiny white dots.
SPEAKER_06: All arranged in a line. So Emily was allowed to keep the BrainPort device for about a year and a half.And during that time, the light, bright resolution of it did get better as her brain learned to speak tongue.
SPEAKER_04: It was awesome when I saw the people moving.
SPEAKER_06: And one of the things that really struck me in our conversation was I asked her about this video that her mom had sent me showing her wearing the device and walking down the street. She told me that usually, you know, now that she's blind, when she's walking down the streets of New York City... Especially uptown, where the streets are a lot wider.She says people see her in her white cane and walk a really wide circle around her.
SPEAKER_04: So, I hardly ever notice other people walking around me.It feels like I'm just walking alone. I can always hear the traffic and the sounds of traffic, but not other people.
SPEAKER_06: But she says when she put the device on and put that little sensor on her tongue, the sidewalk came alive.
SPEAKER_04: I thought it was amazing.I didn't know this many people were on the street at the same time as me.And now they're all there again.
SPEAKER_06: But she described them in a way that sounded almost like a painting.
SPEAKER_04: like really soft blotches.Everything was really soft, like soft blotches of ink that could move. They were walking and I could see their legs moving and I could see them, their gait.But I couldn't see them clearly, like I couldn't see their features or whether they were wearing a shirt or shorts or a dress or pants.I could just like see their shadows.And every now and then I see the light casted on them.Really?Yeah.
SPEAKER_06: I imagine somehow like underwater creatures
SPEAKER_04: Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_06: Squishy jellyfish-like?
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.Yeah, like lighting up.Yeah, like that.
SPEAKER_06: And that, for Emily, is what it's like to translate the city with your tongue.New York City becomes this, uh, hazy sea of walking fish that make their way along in the sunshine.
SPEAKER_13: It's been a full decade since that last update with Emily, and she has been busy.She completed an MFA program at Yale, and the artworks she's been making have been shown in museums and galleries across the world, including an exhibit that just opened at the Queens Museum in New York City.We sent producer Sindhu Nyamasambandhan to Emily's home in the Upper East Side. where she lives with her partner, Kirby, and London, her guide dog, to talk with Emily about what's been on her mind, her tongue, her heart these days.
SPEAKER_03: So, like, in the second episode, it was about that, like, sunglass, like, tongue device.I haven't used that in years, but it was fun to experiment with.
SPEAKER_04: Was there a reason you stopped using it? I just found that drawing with my hands, tactile drawings, was a lot easier and more freeing than trying to look at something through my tongue.You know?So... And sometimes it would give me headaches, too.It just was too slow for me.And, yeah.
SPEAKER_03: Is there any other tools that are helpful to you in your art making process?Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: I have a rubber pad, a drawing board.So when I place my paper over the rubber padding and I draw into it using a ballpoint pen, the lines of my drawing will pop up.And so I'm tracing the line of my drawing with my left hand as I draw with my right hand.And so I feel like I'm looking, I can see what I'm drawing as I'm feeling it. I color all my drawings using Crayola crayons, and I was able to organize them by putting each crayon into their own separate envelope that I put a Braille label on so that I can pick and choose which colors I want to use.But before that, I had... created a color journal with these Crayola crayons, and I asked Kirby to describe each color to me, and then I associated that color to a memory.That way I'm able to clearly visualize the Crayola colors I'm using.Do you have that with you?Do you know where it is, Kirby, my color journal?
SPEAKER_09: Let me look and see if it's here.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's just amazing.So it's just like memories connected to each color or each color has a memory and there's how many of them?
SPEAKER_04: In my journal, I have 90 on record.
SPEAKER_03: Oh my gosh.Wow.Okay.Here's the journal.It's like this little gray book. What is one?Okay.Denon is a Crayola name, and then it says ilk made?
SPEAKER_04: Oh, sorry.The Crayola crayon is named Denon, and my memory of Milk made the Vermeer painting, and she's wearing this blue blouse over her dress, and it was just the most beautiful blue I can remember seeing.Okay.
SPEAKER_03: Okay, I'll just do a couple more.Above, I think it says, like, see to Dallas.Is it Dallas?
SPEAKER_04: One of my favorite movies is The Fifth Element.Okay.And so, Leeloo Dallas is the main character in this movie, and she has really awesome orange hair.Okay.
SPEAKER_03: When you say that, do you see that moment in your head?Yes.And I guess you see sunset orange, orange.Yeah.This time I'm going to read the memory and then you can tell me the color.My hair, summer 2005.Oh, that's midnight blue.Yeah.Yeah. Does your experience of being in the wall ever show up in your work?
Oh, no.No, not at all.So is that a period of time where you don't really make art about it?Oh, no.No, I never make art about it.
SPEAKER_04: No.Why?It's just, I feel like I really just want to leave it all behind. Yeah, right now my work is really centered around memories and dreams and also the intersectionality of the experience of disabled people and animals.And it also focuses on love and intimacy and co-partnerships.
SPEAKER_03: I'd love to talk about your exhibit at the Queens Museum.
SPEAKER_13: All right, I'm going to just cut in here for a second to describe Emily's most recent exhibit, which is currently at the Queens Museum in New York City.You can go check it out.And so you walk into this room and there are these three big white dogs standing on their hind legs.They're made out of paper mache.And each one of them is holding a leash up in their paw that's connected to this walking stick, this giant walking stick that they're all sort of... dancing around, almost like a maypole.And at their feet are all these papier-mâché flowers in red and magenta and pink.And around them are these giant papier-mâché trees.And the whole thing is called otherworlding.What does this show mean for you?
SPEAKER_04: The show, to me, is a celebration of my relationship with London.London and I have been working together for over a decade.The three sculptures of London are human scale.We kind of took dimensions from my body and London's body and meshed them together. There's London.There's London.Tell me more about London.Yeah, London is a blonde English Labrador, and she is 13 and a half years old.She's my first guide dog, and she changed my life in many ways.When we're together, I feel like we become this super organism.
In some ways, she and I are going back and forth between... You know, a maternal and, like, a spousal relationship is a relationship built on interdependence.
SPEAKER_03: I'm curious, like, what specific moments you can think of with London that really inspired this piece.
SPEAKER_04: Mm-hmm. In the beginning of our relationship, when we're just starting to bond together, which is a really important process of your relationship with the guide dog, is the bonding.I would turn on music. London would prance around me wagging her tail and I'd hold my arms out to her and she'd jump up and put her paws in my hands and we'd kind of like stomp around to the music together. So in a way, I feel like what really carried me through all these years is these foundations of love that I've had from my partner, London and Kirby.London and Kirby, yeah.We're Kirby and London, you know?If you want to make it in alphabetical order.
SPEAKER_09: It's London and Kirby.That's for sure.
SPEAKER_04: We're a team.
SPEAKER_13: All right.That'll do it for today.Thank you so much for tuning in.We'll be back in two weeks with more.
SPEAKER_09: Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler.Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts.Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design.Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, Ekadi Foster-Keys, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Natalie Middleton.Let's go.Yeah.I always want to do this.Hi, I'm Erica in Yonkers.
SPEAKER_08: Leadership support for Radiolab Science Programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation.Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
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