Onwards to CDs, I got a Putamayo 'Tango' disc that should be enjoyable. Then to the DVDs, where there is much that offers hope. Julia thought Warner Herzog's Land of Silence and Darkness (Land des Schweigens und der Dunkelheit) might be too depressing:

(From the DVD cover):
"In this astonising documentary about the world of the deaf-blind, acclaimed director Warn Herzog (Signs of Life, Aguirre: The Wrath of God) explores the life of Fini Straubinger, a remarkable and kind-hearted 56-year old deaf and blind woman who has dedicated her life to helping the similarly afflicted.

"From their first flight on an airplane to a day at a petting-zoo, Herzog captures the joys and struggles of those who have been isolated from the world around them.

"Land of Silence and Darkness is a tribute to the triumphant nature of the human spirit and a glimpse into an existence so intense and abstract that at times it seems to reach great lyrical heights."

That was compelling, but so were the words of the director, "Of all my films, this is the one I want to be available to audiences the most." I sensed there was something I needed to experience here.

And I did. When we are shown the efforts with those who were born deaf-blind, we get a staggering sense of what their isolation must be like. A young deaf-blind boy was being shown how to swim, but the very experience of the pool of water itself was terrifying to him. He, and another young boy at least had those who were working with them. Sadder still was a twenty two year old deaf-blind boy who was really a large baby. No one had ever worked with him until Miss Straubinger came to him. It was likely too late for him to get a concept of language.

Sad, too, was a forty eight year old deaf-blind woman whose mother had died. She had been able to receive understanding from her mother by putting her hand to her mother's lips. But now that her mother had died, she seemed unreachable, for she'd lost the words.

Without a language, without words, whether they are tapped and stroked into the palm of the hand, or gestured in elegant dancing hands, or enunciated from mouths, or engraved into stone stelas, we are lost. Without words, we are lost on an island which is overtaken by the sea, and swallowed up by incomprehension.