2005-02-11 - 1:07 p.m.

Last night I went to see an outstanding documentary (by Phillibert, Etre et Avoir fans) about deaf people. As well as prompting me to make the often repeated promise that I will never ever complain about anything in my life ever again (the same one I make after seeing anything involving a disability � especially that programme about the boy whose skin fell off), it gave an interesting insight into a very self-enclosed world with its own structure and social rules.

A lot of the deaf people involved liked to take the piss out of the hearing, and avoided being exposed to any sound even if they were physically able. They cast off their hearing aids at every opportunity, hating the blaring cacophony that they were sporadically exposed to. Those were sentiments briefly shared by myself when some biddy in front of me took twenty minutes to turn off her mobile phone.

I didn�t know that deafness was so rampantly hereditary, though. It seemed that most of the people in the film had at least five or six relatives that were also deaf, and also they tended to marry other deaf people � I guess courtship is tricky enough and the gulf of understanding between the sexes so large anyway that difficulties in basic communication make it near impossible, apart from in that film with William Hurt. This means that their children will almost certainly be deaf, but obviously communication within the family is just as easy / difficult as is in hearing families. There was a poignant moment when a deaf father got upset when he was told that his new born son could hear. �Oh well, I�ll love him just the same, of course�� he said. I mean, signed.

The other cause of much amusement to deaf people was that although there is some variance in sign language from country to country, it only takes a couple of days and Chinese can speak to German, Colombian to Finnish, etc. One man recalled laughing hard at the hearing idiot tourists in Japan, baffled by an impenetrable language barrier. He was chatting away to fellow deaf people in hours.

Another big laugh for them was getting hearing people to guess the signs for car, aeroplane, etc, and then ripping the shit out of them when they got it wrong, which they always did. Signing isn�t about big expressive gestures, its about economy of movement and speed. The signs being done by the hearers I guess were the equivalent of shouting very loudly and slowly at foreigners.

The cutest six year old ever invented summed up life without sound, though: I watch to listen.

A bit annoying that he could encapsulate a 90 minute film in four words, but touching nonetheless.