Thursday 30th August 2012<\/p>\n
Yes, greatly moved. Although initially afflicted: ‘Heavens, they haven’t even got to B!’ But when Handel was sung and Paralympians were flying on wires through the air.. so calm, dignified, thoughtful and affirming. I loved the Non-Para Opening, but this was in another league, radiant with quality and intelligence. It was all wonderfully suggestive, multi-dimensional, open-ended, inconclusive. No trite yuck about disabled people being just the same as everyone else and not really disabled at all. The huge eye in the early part of the ceremony was an ambiguous symbol. What exactly might it see?\u00a0 There was even, when Ian Dury’s Spasticus Autisticus was sung and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights paraded, an angry, rebellious element which somehow did not jar with the otherwise calm celebration of\u00a0 objective inquiry, the inner life of the mind, the limitless possibilities of human thought,\u00a0 which, as science and invention, continue to produce more and more astonishing possibilities for disabled people, while, as a cast of mind or way of living, quite free us from any idea of disability at all, in others and in ourselves.<\/p>\n
But even this is to make it too straightforward.\u00a0 The flame was brought into the stadium by an ex-marine on a high wire from 350 feet above.\u00a0 He had no legs and the fabric of his shorts flapped without shame where they had been or might have been. It was a moment of terror and beauty.\u00a0 We must look and not flinch and not lie, yet look beyond. This was the ceremony’s stern and difficult requirement.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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Thursday 30th August 2012 Yes, greatly moved. Although initially afflicted: ‘Heavens, they haven’t even got to B!’ But when Handel was sung and Paralympians were flying on wires through the air.. so calm, dignified, thoughtful and affirming. I loved the Non-Para Opening, but this was in another league, radiant with quality and intelligence. It was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adrain-edge"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3749"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3750,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3749\/revisions\/3750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}