The Blind Paul

THE BLIND PAUL

by Rémy Vroonen

Passion and resilience: Follow Paul's journey as he proves that it doesn’t take eyesight to see.

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Imagine closing your eyes and then press on them using your fingers until everything is completely dark. Open them again and the only thing you can see is a psychedelic spiral, moving with neon flashlight colours.

What do you hear, how do you feel, what do you smell? Welcome to the world of the blind. You lost your eyesight and are now one of the 7500 people with sight deficiency registered in Denmark.

One of them is 73-year-old Paul Villadsen. Paul was born with ten percent eyesight, Doctors have tried to save the small percentage of vision he had left, but they did not succeed. He became blind at the age of seventeen, the same year he decided to leave his native city, Aalborg, and move to Copenhagen, where he joined the Instituttet for Blinde og Svagsynede. (Institute for the blind and partially sighted) There he learned braille and how to adapt to his new life, so he could lead a somewhat “normal” one, despite his blindness.

“To me it is normal to be blind. I have never been able to see completely. I am Blind Paul,’’ He says.

Paul lives with his dog Milo, who is also his famous dancing partner. They live in an apartment in Brabrand, 30 minutes away from the city centre.

Milo knows where the bus stop is, the bakery, the supermarket, the fitness centre and of course the forest where he can run free.

After walking up the stairs, to the fourth floor, he enters his small flat. In the corridor, there are four hangers on the wall with a specific item on each of them. On the first hanger is a backpack, followed

by Milos’s harness and leash, and then the jackets.

Everything needs to be organised, it’s important for him to build a routine. Paul ensures that he has control of everything, he enjoys it; this is his life.

In the living room, which has four large windows, light falls through the trees and reflects on the white empty walls in the evening.

‘’In the end, the only one who can keep me alive, is me.’’

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However, Paul doesn’t notice how the sun enters the room and engulfs his grey hair making him look like an angel. He sits there highly concentrated, reading his braille vocal score while doing his exercises as a bass choir singer, smiling as he sings with passion. He practices for his concert on December 9 at the Fuglsangcentret in Frederica. He and his choir will perform ten songs. Some are in English, others in Danish like Silent Night and Når du ser et stjerneskud, which is the Danish version of When you wish upon a star from the Disney movie Pinocchio.

On the right-hand side of the living room, there is a shelf, where in order from left to right, there is a vocal agenda, a braille typewriter, a braille address book, and a computer. Each item has its place, and he knows exactly where they are. There are two lamps in the living room, one standing close to the table, the other in the corner of the room, on a small shelf. Neither of them working; Paul doesn’t see the point.

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Next to the corner table, there is a large, antique wooden clock that at some point stopped its lean at 9:45. After a couple of times at his house, I noticed how easily Paul moves around and how he knows where each item is. Most of us spend twice as long looking for our keys every day, sometimes, we can’t even find them. For Paul it’s all about keeping control.

It’s 11:30 am, Thursday morning. Paul has just done an hour of fitness training and he is walking with Milo in the centre of Aarhus, the second largest city in Denmark. He needs to go shopping for a new pair of scissors.

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His senses are heightened today because it is very windy. Milo, too, is disorientated. He can barely hear, because the sound of the wind is muddled in with the sounds of cars, bikes, buses, delivery men and buggies. In a fragmented second of distraction, he could easily walk into a traffic sign or a clothing rack and hit his head again, in the exact same spot that he did yesterday. But it’s not a big deal if you are adept at the “One bruise a day keeps troubles away’’-philosophy, as Paul puts it.

Still navigating through the traffic, he dances with ease with his guide dog, escaping all the obstacles thrown in his way.

‘’I don’t think about things being difficult, I don’t think in that way. It’s because I don’t have a lot of negatives thoughts, what you should do you should do’’

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‘’What are they all searching for in the sky, all these blind people? ‘’ Charles Baudelaire wrote about blind people in Les Fleurs du Mal in 1861, and his message is that there is nothing to expect from heaven and there is no consolation either.

“Blind Paul” believes the same.

Blind people are often seen as weak, disabled, and different. In his everyday life, Paul is very active.

Besides singing in the choir, he has many other passions, including playing cards, yoga and TRX fitness. He plays bridge once a week at the Dansk Blind Institute and also online via Zoom. The blind people have a Dropbox group with 30 people.

When one of them wants to play he or she drops a message, and they organise an online tournament with eight rounds per call. Sometimes they do this up to four times in a week.

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Twice a week Paul has his fitness training. He enters the fitness room on the third floor of the Danish Blind Institute. First, he opens the windows to get some fresh air, then he sets up his soft exercise mattress which is aligned with the wall, he knows the exact spot. He hangs his TRX suspension trainer and conducts a session with multiple exercises using his body weight. One time hanging face up, another time facing the floor, doing his exercises carefully with attention to the movement. Doing these exercises are crucial. It prevents him from falling and he learns how to react if he does.

Paul believes that movement is a key element to life.

He has always been this way. A moment of pure joy for Paul is when he is skiing. He describes it as feeling the most freedom ever. Between cards, yoga, sailing and skiing, Paul has found ways to feel joy and to be at peace with his blindness.

He is able to see in a way we never could.

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