The Unsung Heroes of ACL

I went to Austin City Limits yesterday with Blanton, and yes, it was great, but I can't talk about that right now. My heart is so full for one specific issue that I have to pour it out before it starts to boil and I die. I think that's what happens, from my rudimentary understanding of anatomy.

Sign language translators at music festivals. These women (I didn't see any men) are valiant - they process live lyrics and output them into the sign language format deaf people have come to know and love, all while maintaining some semblance of rhythm and meter. The best part: I have no idea why.

There were translators at every show I saw, and they all behaved differently. At Phoenix, the translators was shuffling her feet like she was in a step train, pumping her knees like pistons while translating the stutters and French accent of the lead singer. During John Legend, another woman focused on communicating the whole sex appeal by slowly swaying her very wide and old body. She may have spoken with her hands, but she was communicating with her hips. And the last show, Kings of Leon, had a spotlight at an odd angle, illuminating only half of the translator, so that her signs became gigantic shadow puppets on the muslin that covered the speakers.

My personal favorite was the woman at Andrew Bird. That lady deserves a medal, or at least a VIP pass. Maybe some time at the autograph tent. She managed to communicate about half of Bird's lyrics while keeping her involuntary laughter at her own incompetence to a minimum. This is not because she was bad - I think that she had ACL's number one hands - but because Bird's lyrics are so weird. There probably aren't signs for words like "formaldehyde" and "anoanimal" and "vestments of translucent alabaster." I'm pretty sure she translated that last one as "gown of see through rock." I really don't see another way to do it.

The best part was watching her try to communicate whistling, violin, and xylophone all at the same time; she had to find some way of expressing the idea of looping, but the best way she came up with was to try and stifle her laughter and point to her puckered lips, as if she was undergoing asphyxiation.

Deaf people can taste the delicious Sweet Leaf Tea, smell the weed smoke, feel the burning cigarette a drunk girl pushes into the flesh of their arm (and when you read deaf people, think Cass Trumbo), but they hear no noise. Really - why are deaf people going to a music festival?