In the events series Letters Live, performers read letters – old and new, original and written by others – in front of a live audience. In this video from an event at Freemasons’ Hall in London in 2016, the US actress Gillian Anderson reads a remarkable 1924 letter from the US writer and disability rights advocate Helen Keller to the New York Symphony.
In the letter, Keller, who lost her sight and hearing in early childhood, recounts her ecstatic encounter with Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony through a radio broadcast. After a family member suggested she place her hand on the receiver, she was swept up in an unexpected richness: a cascade of vibrations that opened her to a new way of sensing beauty she had long believed was beyond her reach. Even more strikingly, her retelling not only describes, with astonishing precision, the interplay of instruments, voices and rhythms, but also captures the symphony’s meaning as a fully realised aesthetic experience. Combined with Anderson’s poise and expressive voice, the reading offers a reminder that what is often deemed a disability can be nothing less than a different, and sometimes even deeper, way of sensing the world.
