Speak Episode 4: Up Down Round and Round Featuring Frances Laube
Rachel [00:00:00] Hi, I’m Rachel Grey, and I’m Debbie Radcliffe, and welcome to our podcast Speak.
Rachel [00:00:08] Yes, a podcast from Being Studio. Being Studio is a community of artists with developmental disabilities. And today on Speak, we’re talking about love. So I would say that love is a pretty big theme in a lot of the artwork that gets created at Being Studio, we see a lot of artwork surrounding love of food, love of pets, love and family, love and friends, romance princesses, princes, true love weddings.
Debbie [00:00:51] There’s so many different kinds of love. My passion for dragons is love to like. You can see it in my artwork, what I love about dragons.
Rachel [00:01:06] So in today’s episode, we’re going to be hearing from Frances and her partner, Martin.
Debbie [00:01:13] Yeah, the love birds of the century. Their love is very, very strong. They don’t over each other like they they’re always together. They’re never far apart.
Frances [00:01:30] Hi, I’m Frances.
Martin [00:01:32] I’m Martin.
Frances [00:01:34] I describe myself as adventurous, likes to try new things. I don’t let my disability stop me from doing my adventures. My motto is if you don’t if you if you don’t do these adventures now when you’re older, you’ll be like, oh, my God, I’m just oh, my God, I missed out on that. I’m too old. And and then and then they’ll be like, then people will be like, no, you don’t get ticks. You’ve got to still keep going. You have more life in you to live.
Rachel [00:02:21] So for someone who’s never met Martin, could you paint a picture? Could you describe him for us?
Frances [00:02:27] Oh, cool. Get you OK. He likes to joke around. He definitely likes his quiet, quiet time when he gets to have a quiet time. And he is very he really likes to do adventures with me and he and he likes to be Mr. Romantic. And he’s a very good kisser. He has a funny sense of humour when the lockdown was Mike Gravel was around. So Marty would actually make my gravel laugh because he’d take, like, I don’t know, it’s called the squash. Right. And pretend that the squashes were more, more or less like boobs.
Martin [00:03:41] the man’s parts.
Frances [00:03:42] OK, the man parts, he’d show my grandma and my grandma would laugh like crazy. My mom would be like, oh, my God.
Martin [00:03:56] I did studies at Ottawa u. In science and engineering, it was a crazy programme, and I am a gamer, too. I support Francis was a who’s an artist. I really like to know I’m a gamer. I don’t stay inside, play video games all day. Yeah. Go outside to enjoy the weather.
Rachel [00:04:20] What do you like about gaming?
Martin [00:04:22] Well, it’s engaging. It makes me something to do it. It’s like a hobby. Like Francis is an artist who likes to do art. And I like how it’s how you apply apply logic to random situations. I think that’s kind of cool. I’m not really good at Languages. I’m not like, really, you know, writing stories. And I once once I, I got old school, they showed us a movie and they’re like, draw what you saw in the movie. I was like, huh? I want to do that. I drew many details and I just drew a square in direct a circle and a rectangle that wasn’t very creative when it came to drawings. So I think that was more like into science than anything else. And mathematics, not working with numbers. I was like when I was a teenager, I was like, OK, I’m open to the idea of dating, but I didn’t see the need to. Well, and then I realised I was always like that, then I developed this trigger when every time I see a couple, I, I freak out. Like, I don’t know how it feels, it doesn’t feel good when I see a couple, like in public, you know, especially in public. It used to be a worse, but it’s not as bad now that I with Francey.
Rachel [00:05:58] Do you remember how it would make you feel?
Martin [00:06:01] Like I got insulted or like I lost, like I lost, like I lost the competition?
Rachel [00:06:11] You’ve talked to us a little bit before about your relationship with faces. Can you describe that?
Martin [00:06:18] Is very associative. Actually, I can associate with different things in my head, like different letters of the alphabet and. Sometimes and sometimes music and. So in the face smiles. Well, in the face smiles, I like to catch a smile like that. Yeah, yeah, there you go. No eyes no nose, just the smile. Yeah, that’s fun. Other than that, my relationship with faces now can also be related to events, too, just like so many facets of a face when it comes to faces with me.
Martin [00:07:08] Well, before Franci came along, I wanted to focus on I was very focussed on the particular faces, but with Francey, well, this is the real deal I can play with, with a face so I can have folks in my head, not one face, so I can, so other faces are welcome now. Because I have the real deal with Francey, I can play actually physically play with it. Yeah, maybe that would explain why my affection, eh Francey.
Martin [00:07:40] Yeah, yeah, to be able to touch and kiss the face.
Rachel [00:07:48] And when you think of Frances, is there a story that comes to mind?
Martin [00:07:54] I am not good at stories I just said, I kind of have a hard time writing stories.
Rachel [00:07:58] That’s true. That’s true.
Martin [00:08:02] I’m doing it with analogies, if I can, if if I if I get going, I don’t know what kind of analogy I can make with France this. Oh, I can I have one like a flower and all, but a flower that can’t stand on its onl, it needs like some kind of wood wooden structure. But still a beautiful flower.
Rachel [00:08:26] I love the idea of describing things with analogies. Do you have an analogy for being in a relationship?
Martin [00:08:35] It’s like when you’re not in a relationship, you’re just watching a screen about about cool looking people and there’s nothing. And then when you feel like you’re about to get in the relationship, there’s something coming in from behind you. But then if if that something is. If if , that something really wants you, is interested in you and sort of envelops you in a ball, in a ball of. A ball of warmth and love, and then the screen just disappears. You don’t just see you don’t just see beautiful, beautiful things on the screen look gorgeous looking people of the opposite gender.
Rachel [00:09:20] What do you see instead of that?
Martin [00:09:23] Like you’re just enveloped in a ball of warmth and love and you see you see a beautiful light and you go, yeah, and you just leave the leave where you were. You were. When you go out on adventures. And it’s becoming real, not not imaginary. And you start flying.
Rachel [00:09:52] OK, so I’ve got a big question for you, how would you define love?
Frances [00:09:59] Oh how would I define love? That is a tough one (love is like a sea) OK, you it well define it. Well, when you find love, when you know you you know it’s the right guy and you know it’s the right person, gets you lots of kisses, the affection.
Martin [00:10:26] And the affection part of it.
Frances [00:10:29] We it’s not only one person then that that comes up with ideas. It’s both of our both of us come up with ideas of what we’d like to do.
Martin [00:10:42] Living life together.
[00:10:43] Yeah. Yes.
Martin [00:10:45] Going through life together, through looking for true love you have in the system the way yeah. Yeah. Love can be an assistant in life, joining people to people together and.
Frances [00:10:58] Yeah. And also sometimes even with parents like my my parents have a kick sled that we use and my mind like actually we and so I use the kick sled and Marty pushes me and then I push him. So it’s really, really fun while my parents did cross-country and I was pushing the kick sled.
Martin [00:11:26] That’s Love? How’s that have to do with defining love?
Frances [00:11:29] oh yeah, we have to define.
Frances [00:11:32] Well, define… How to explain it.
Martin [00:11:37] Yeah, it’s not an easy question.
Frances [00:11:39] No, this is what I think… How it’s defined is you you kind of know when the right person comes along because you kind of you kind of it’s like to just your destiny, your your destination, your destiny. Destiny comes to to you in a way. And then you’re like, oh, I found. I found this person and they say, honey, they they mean a lot to you and you seem to do a lot of adventures with the person that you find.
Rachel [00:12:34] We thought we’d take this question to a few other people.
Debbie [00:12:39] What does love mean to you?
Jessie [00:12:41] OK, so what love means to me.. Friendships and being in relationships love feels like home. It makes me feel whole and. Simply amazing.
[00:13:01] The feeling I have for my boyfriend is kinda incredible and kinda warm, hugging and kissing him of all that, I can do that soon because I can’t wait until the virus is over. All of a sudden, we feel a big fat kiss, not a soggy one like a dog.
Caroline [00:13:21] But when your partner says, I’m going to support you, I’m going to take care of you, I’m going to be there for you and be there for you always. But in my case, I have lots of boyfriends, so I’m not settling with one from settling with three.
[00:13:42] So it feels great.
[00:13:46] Because when you’re going through a hard time, they are there for you.
[00:13:53] Being in a relationship is amazing and you get to talk, had to have conversations and kiss and cuddle and we love talking we just love having these conversations together.
[00:14:12] Yeah, love is tough.
Debbie [00:14:16] It’s very tough, but it also can be very fun.
[00:14:21] Yes, in a way yes. When your boyfriend is with you, yeah.Yeah, yeah…
[00:14:26] Being romantic love is hard to talk about and I really just talk about myself when it comes to love and people around me like my friends…
[00:14:39] When all of that that blows drifts away. You feel like brokenhearted, but. I’m not going to cry and I’m not going to break myself down.
[00:15:01] Some friends you drift apart from.
[00:15:04] True Love, it’s deep, it goes deep and involves the deep stuff, not just the stuff on the surface.
[00:15:16] It’s really hard commitment
[00:15:19] And that makes me feel so happy about when I am being with him. It means a lot to me, that he is in my life. I’m so grateful love for his for me.
Rachel [00:15:37] Oh, my gosh, I can’t I can’t take all this talk about love. It’s like I can make it through maybe like three and you can’t make it through all of them. Oh, my gosh. It’s just really nice. It’s so beautiful that people care so much about each other.
Debbie [00:15:57] Are you crying?
Rachel [00:16:04] Yeah man, I can only last so long. You know what I’m saying?
Debbie [00:16:08] I hear you.
Lizzie [00:16:12] Well, I love you both because we are one of the biggest reasons I know.
[00:16:23] How it feels to be Lizzie.
