Victoria Oruwari: Lessons in Uncertainty

The first time I heard Victoria Oruwari sing was in Bath Abbey, an exquisite sixteenth century church, restored by Elizabeth I. It was not Tudor music I was listening to but Gorecki’s Third Symphony, whose famous second movement is known as Three Sorrowful Songs: three laments, sung by mothers whose children have died or are lost. Oruwari sang them magnificently, her voice powerful, her delivery so restrained. Though the entire audience was standing, moving around the orchestra, her pure notes hanging suspended among the fan vaults.

I had no idea Oruwari was blind. But when, several months later, I went to meet her, I couldn’t but think of how difficult her journey must be compared with my own. Yet there she was, waiting for me, open and eager for what became an unforgettable conversation. I had sought her out because I was—and still am—fascinated by how people cope with uncertainty and the sheer bravura of her performance was a masterclass. Difficult music. A challenging performance space, singing solo. With such poise and power.

She lost her sight when an eye operation went wrong. This made her, she says, a very compliant child, haunted by the feeling that something was wrong with her. At the age of eight, she started singing, attracted to the stage by a sense that it was there she had permission to be heard. She knows that performing will always be more uncertain for her than for sighted musicians but has reframed this: it is unfair, yes, but her blindness does not make her less able. If anything, it makes her think through more precisely where certainty is to be found.

“Being blind has given me the creativity to deal with uncertainty, because I am always dealing with solving problems. I am very attuned to what I need. I came here today by bus; if it hadn’t come, I knew I could walk. I would need to ask someone to help me cross the road. I know I can do all of that.” Her certainty comes from imagining, ahead of time, what could work – and what her backup was. She expects her experience to be uncertain, and is prepared for it.

Confident in her capacity to solve problems is a source of strength; she can be confident not because she’s made that journey before, but because she knows she has overcome challenges before. That is the true definition of confidence: it isn’t that she has no fear but that she knows she has the capacity to respond creatively to the unexpected.

Like all of us, her confidence is enhanced when people take her seriously, expecting her to be capable. As when the conductor Charles Hazelwood first invited her to perform the Three Sorrowful Songs.

“This was my first encounter with Charles: he just sent me a text saying ‘You’re coming to Bristol. See you tomorrow at 12,” she laughed, remembering the suddenness of it all. “I had to book a hotel, get a train, I’d never done that before. This was harder than the music! But then when I thought about it, all I had to do was turn up. He treated me like a peer….”

Hazlewood founded the Paraorchestra when, after 40 years of conducting, he recognized he had hardly ever heard or seen a disabled musician—yet he knew from his own daughter that musical talent and disability were fully compatible. Once he looked, he found (making no concessions) players of startling excellence and ingenuity, up for anything; they now form roughly half his orchestra. But what they brought to their music astonished him.

“What I’ve learned,” he said, “is that this is a two-way street, that we had as much to learn from them as they from us. I’ve jammed and improvised all over the world, but try that with a classical orchestra—they sit on their hands, no one wants to start first, and that prickly pregnant pause goes on and on until all the oxygen has left the room. But in the first session with the Para, it took fifteen seconds to kick off.”

Hazlewood found that the ability of disabled people to create a team around them was extraordinary. That their visceral sense of uncertainty is constant, that they must be creative in solving problems, has produced bold and brilliant musicians, eager to try anything because they always expect surprises—and this makes them exceptional collaborators.

“Eliza has mobility issues and has to create a team of people to get her on the train, “ Hazlewood told me. “Victoria is blind and needs helpers too. They’re both brilliant at connection. I had so much to learn from them, we all did, we all have….”

Sacrificing a global conducting career to create the UK’s first orchestra made up of so many disabled players was a huge leap into uncertainty for Hazlewood and for everyone who joined him. But that hasn’t made them play safe; on the contrary, it’s made them even bolder in ‘orchestrating the extraordinary.’ Of course they’re helping to develop braille music scores; why wouldn’t they? They don’t cleave to old, rigid paradigms; with the support and courage of each other, why would they cleave to the tried and tested?

“Certainty is a prison,” Oruwari says. “It robs you of wonder and fear. And fear is an essential part of life. It gives you impetus to do something, to move forward. That means you have to discover and then you explore. You aren’t stuck.”

Over coffee and cake, we talked and laughed for hours about her practice as a therapist, her thrill at playing Glastonbury, her ongoing sense of discovery. When it came time to go, she asked me to help with some shopping at a nearby convenience store. I felt strangely proud to be walking with her as we crossed the road. Happy to be helpful. On entering, as she tried to catch the eye of an assistant, I was surprised by how difficult that proved. The whole ethos in such places militates against human connection of any kind and I could see assistants notice, then evade, her. When finally a young man responded, he seemed nervous, looking around as though seeking an escape. She wasn’t afraid, he was. Of what? A new experience. Being needed. A human connection: uncertain because unfamiliar. But this is Oruwari’s everyday life. And she’s very good at it.

Certainty is a prison. The more we crave it, the more inclined we become to stick to the narrow paths of familiarity, routine, habit. We lose the capacity to respond with curiosity to the new, with excitement to the different. We forget the richness in connecting with people unlike ourselves, sticking instead to the safe, the comfortable and the mundane. And here is the paradox: as we cleave to the familiar for certainty, we lose our capacity to grow.

What Hazlewood found in his orchestral players, what Oruwari finds each time she crosses the road, is that asking for and getting help is a gift to both parties. However frightening it might be, it liberates a capacity for discovery and growth. The late great Richard Hackman identified that in organizations of all kinds, what distinguishes the most productive is not IQ, efficiency or incentives; it’s helpfulness. Connection. Discovery. We may be afraid but, together, we move forward.

Want to Go Further?

UPDATE: The Paraorchestra won the coveted Royal Philharmonic Society’s coveted Ensemble award. As presenter Jess Gillam said in the presentation: ‘Paraorchestra should be the Pride of Britain. They are inspirational in their care and creativity, pioneering how orchestras and audiences interact. They are invigorating concert halls with thrilling experiences. Here’s to Paraorchestra and its disabled musicians, showing us all a way forward.’

The Paraorchestra is planning a Schoenberg Concert (that does still take daring!) and a new project with Jeremy Deller. They also have produced two albums, Death Song Book which might not sound as uplifting as it is: an exquisite anthology of music by Echo and the Bunnymen, Japan, Jacques Brel and David Bowie, Depeche Mode and Suede reworked by composer and Paraorchestra member Charlotte Harding. And then there’s Hannah Peel’s remarkable The Unfolding which takes a cyclical journey from the atoms of human existence to the awakening of life and back to our eventual re-folding back into the elements. I’ve written more about the Para in my forthcoming book, Embracing Uncertainty: How Writers, Musicians and Artists Thrive in an Unpredictable World.

For the Beauty of It

I was in Milan last week. It is of course full of artistic masterpieces but I also loved the wall art: surprising and refreshing.

Which, roughly translated, means: The only impossible journey is the one you decide not to take. Corny perhaps but true…