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Sport 39: 2011

THE VINCENT O’SULLIVAN DREAM

THE VINCENT O’SULLIVAN DREAM

I’m to launch his book (the four books book), chairing a kind of ‘hour with’ session, but only because someone far more important has had to pull out, I’m doing this as a favour to the publisher, as a last-minute ring-in, feeling slightly put-upon, and I’m there just in time, after a desperate taxi ride from the university to Te Papa. But I would neverpage 65 take a taxi from the university to Te Papa! I don’t seem to have a copy of the book, but manage to borrow one off Tilly Lloyd who happens to be running the bookstall. But Vincent is on the far side of the room—which is the wrong side of the room—and now he starts declaiming something. What is he doing? Eventually he realises he’s in the wrong place and comes to the front, but now he stands yards away on my right, nowhere near the raised platform with its table and mikes. The room is long and narrow, but the four or five rows of seats stretch horizontally. Actually, they stretch forever. I can’t see the ends of the rows. Vincent starts making strange gestures; he stays still on his feet, but his body and head and arms move: a mix of gestures from (maybe) deaf signing and break dancing. A dumb show. I can’t figure this out at all. But then I look at the book I am holding and see that it is not the one I thought was the point of this event; rather it’s a new book entirely—a long narrative poem à la Browning, made up of monologues—and one of the characters is deaf. Vincent is apparently reading one of his monologues. God, he is prolific! That’s all right, then. And now it must be time to wake up.