On Oct. 21, AIDS Fund’s 26th annual AIDS Walk Philly and AIDS Run Philly will continue the fight and, with a new person infected every nine-and-a-half minutes, there’s still plenty left to do. Right in our own backyard, 30,000 of our friends, family members and neighbors live with HIV and need the services provided by funds raised during the walk. This week we spoke to Brian Morrison, who celebrates a decade of working on the walk. A sign-language interpreter, Morrison has led a fun and varied career, from teaching ASL at Community College of Philadelphia to signing for some of the world’s biggest superstars.
PGN: Tell me a little about yourself. BM: I’m originally from a little town called Versailles – rhymes with “fur sales” – Missouri. [Laughs.] It’s in the Ozarks area and we don’t go for that fancy French ‘ver-sigh’ pronunciation. I lived there and went to school in Springfield, Mo., and then moved to Springfield, Ill. I’ve been in Philadelphia now for almost 10 years, and I absolutely love it. I was a business major but I’m not really a numbers person so economics and accounting were just lost on me. I needed an easy A to bring my GPA up and I ended up taking a sign-language class and just loved it. I ended up getting a Bachelor of Science degree in education of the deaf and a Master of Education in adult and organization learning with an emphasis in teaching interpreting. I started my career at the Illinois School for the Deaf, where I was a teacher and dean of boys. It was a residential school so the kids lived in dorms. I started doing some interpreting on the side and eventually that took over. I think I may have a little ADD as well, so being in the same classroom every day was just not for me. With interpreting, it’s exciting because I might be in a doctor’s office in the morning, in a courtroom that afternoon, on stage at a concert that evening and in a cadaver lab the next day. It never gets dull. In fact, it’s what got me here to Philly. In 2002, I went to The Julliard School to take a weeklong class in interpreting for the theater. One of the teachers for that class was from Philadelphia and we became fast friends. After the course was over, she invited me to visit her. I did and had a great time. She worked at the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf and I went to work with her one day just to see the place. Someone at the school told me they just happened to have an opening and asked if I would like to interview for it. I said, “Why not?” and they pretty much said, on the spot, “If you want to move here, the job is yours.” That summer I’d just turned 30 and wasn’t happy where I was. I guess you’d say it was a pre-midlife crisis, so I said yes. How often do you go on vacation and end up with a life-changing offer? I’d gotten a taste of city life during that week in New York and realized that the East Coast is where I needed to be, and now I had a job offer. So three months later, my cat and I were driving across the country into a new life. At the time, the school had a deaf staff member who did a lot of HIV/AIDS outreach. Shortly after I moved here, the AIDS Walk was coming up and she said, “Hey, I think they’re looking for interpreters. You should reach out to them.” I’d only been here a week and I thought, “What a good way to meet some people.” Professionally, it was good for me to get out there and introduce myself but, personally, being a small-town kid who knew he was gay way back in the day yet didn’t know what to do with it, to be here and at the walk, it was a whole different world. It was incredibly moving and empowering. I did that in October and then went to my first Gay BINGO game in December, and here I am 10 years later, still doing it.
PGN: [Laughs.] Wow, Brian, you are a talker. You just went seven-and-a-half minutes without taking a breath. BM: Ha ha! I’m so sorry. [Laughs.] I think it’s a side effect from working with the deaf. In the deaf community, they want to know the whole story. They’re very into details so I have a tendency to give long, detailed answers. PGN: So what were you like as a kid? Were you very theatrical? BM: I was. I did a little community theater but I was never the star. I was content to be in the background chorus. I was very big back then – not that I’m tiny now – but I wasn’t leading-man material. With interpreting, even though I’m not on the stage, I can be the “star” and be seen doing what I’m good at. PGN: Tell me about the family. BM: Sure. My parents are small-town people. They were born and raised in my hometown. My father was a butcher at one of our local grocery stores. He started the job in high school and stayed there until he retired. My mother is a banker. I have one younger brother and we’re all very close-knit. I’ll tell you something I got from my father: During his entire 40-plus years at work, he never once took a sick day. He passed on that work ethic to us.
PGN: What did you get from your mother? BM: I think my heart comes from my mother. We’re both Cancers so we have that “home and family” nurturing personality. We like taking care of people and I learned how to get along with all sorts of people from her.
PGN: So let’s talk about not being so warm and fuzzy. What was the worst incident when you were the dean of boys and responsible for handling discipline problems? BM: Well, I can be very stern when I have to be. It takes me a long time to get angry but, when I do, you really see the Irish side of me. If that happens, you need to step back. I’m fair but believe in rules and I will make you follow those rules and respect what they’re there for. I had one kid who was very big for his age. He was a bully and had a lot of anger problems. I was trying to get him to go to sleep one evening and he was not having it. He was screaming and I finally said, “Fine. I’ll just go fill out a discipline report.” Those are a pretty big deal and if you go down on record, it’s not going to end well for the student. I was at my desk filling out the report and the student came in and picked up a chair and was threatening to throw it at me. I very calmly stood up, picked up my chair and said, “Okay, you want to start something? You first.” He looked at me like I was crazy, then put the chair down and went to bed. [Laughs.] It worked, but I probably would not advocate handling it the same way today.
PGN: I was in Korea not too long ago and they gave me an interpreter for a question-and-answer session. I’d say a simple sentence and it seemed like the translation was four minutes long. Is it similar for ASL? BM: It’s interesting. Sign language is very conceptual; there’s not a sign for every word. It goes both ways. One sign might convey a whole sentence in English but, on the flip side, a single word might take a whole sentence. It has its own syntax and grammar that’s different than English.
PGN: Are there different dialects? BM: Yes, there are. Just like people from the East Coast or Deep South would sound different, there are different signing accents. There are a lot of regional signs. There might be a sign for, say, birthday, that’s only used in Philadelphia. Florida, for instance, may use a different sign for that word. Even the way we pronounce “waa-der” for water can come across in sign language. But I can still travel and be understood. There’s nothing that’s too far out of the realm of understanding.
PGN: You’ve been doing the AIDS Walk for some time. What does it mean to you? BM: We get a number of deaf people who participate in the walk, and I think just the fact that we can be there so they can fully understand everything and participate on the same level as a hearing person is important. And it’s a good cause.
PGN: A funny moment? BM: The funny moments that stand out happen more at [AIDS Fund’s monthly] Gay BINGO. The drag queens really play with the interpreters and try to get us to sign as many dirty words as possible. And then repeat them.
PGN: You’ve interpreted for some pretty big names. BM: Yeah. I’ve gotten to do Madonna, Barbra Streisand, Bruce Springsteen, Justin Timberlake, Janet Jackson, Christina Aguilera, Ricky Martin, Josh Groban and groups like KISS, U2 and Def Leppard.
PGN: What was a memorable celebrity encounter? BM: I was interpreting on the Rosie O’Donnell R Family Vacations cruises and Sheena Easton was performing. As I was signing, she came over, put her hand down my shirt and starting rubbing the hair on my chest. And then she stuck her finger in my nose! I was like, I don’t know if I should feel violated or turned on right now. Normally, we don’t get to speak to the performers, but we certainly get a front-row seat. PGN: What was the most difficult concert to do? BM: Probably the KISS concert, just because it’s so loud and spontaneous, which makes it hard to understand what they’re saying/singing. And they have a big deaf following who came with painted faces and everything.
PGN: Just last night I was listening to an old disco song and laughing because I couldn’t figure out a word of what they were saying. How do you do it? Do you get lyrics ahead of time? BM: We try to. I’ll research the artist online and look up the song lyrics but some of the artists have decades’ worth of music, and we don’t know their set list ahead of time, so you just do your best. If you have a smart phone, you try to look it up as soon as you know what they’re singing. Then you just listen closely and try to figure it out.
PGN: So to be an interpreter for the deaf, you have to learn to be a good listener? BM: Yes, yes. And my brain is always on that wavelength. If I’m watching TV or listening to music, I’m always thinking, Hmmm, how would I interpret that?
PGN: Do you have to be a good speller to interpret? BM: Yes, it definitely helps. Although if it is something like a medication that I might be unfamiliar with, I would ask the doctor to spell that for me.
PGN: How about some random questions? People often mistake me for … ? BM: [Laughs.] Someone who knows Braille.
PGN: What is your favorite movie quote or scene? BM: “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” [from “Princess Bride”]
PGN: What was your favorite childhood toy? BM: The game Simon. It was the color/sound matching game and I loved it.
PGN: What dead superstar would you want to interpret for? BM: Several. The fun side of me would love to interpret a Queen concert with Freddie Mercury. The “professional” in me would love to have interpreted [President John F.] Kennedy’s inauguration speech.
PGN: Any tattoos or piercings? BM: I have five tattoos, none visible, and four piercings. My favorites are a small, bright-green shamrock on my ankle for my Irish heritage – it was my first – and a Celtic cross I have in the middle of my back in memory of my favorite uncle, who passed away unexpectedly. The cross is a copy of one on his headstone.
PGN: What is your coming-out story? BM: I was a late bloomer: I came out at 25. I told my parents the day after Thanksgiving while I was home for the holiday. Coming from a small Midwestern town from a Catholic family, my family didn’t take it that well, but it was definitely not as bad as it could have been. It took a little time, but they became very accepting.
PGN: Tell me something about your significant other. BM: My partner and I have been together four years in November. We got engaged in Ireland at the Cliffs of Moher in the summer of 2011. He is also an interpreter and we met while I was on an interpreting assignment. I was interpreting for a deaf actor who was doing a show, and he was in the audience while he was a student in an interpreting program. I found out later he had turned to his friends with him and called “dibs” when he saw me.
PGN: What was a fun travel experience? BM: My first trip to Australia. I went to speak at a conference and stayed for five weeks. I got to work at the Sydney Opera House and did some theater-interpreting training around the country. The best part was that I took a few days to go by myself to the Outback. I went to Ayers Rock and it was very spiritual. The whole idea of me, a boy from a small Midwestern town, more than halfway around the world, standing and looking at such a magnificent sight was a real “wow” moment.
PGN: Do you have any hobbies? BM: [Laughs.] I like to read comics. I have a DC digital collection, Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, etc.
PGN: Which superhero would you be? BM: Oh my. When we were kids and used to crew up to play superheroes with my brother and cousins, I would invariably end up being Wonder Woman. How it took until I was 25 for anyone to realize I was gay is crazy.
For more information about AIDS Walk Philly or to register, visit www.aidswalkphilly.org. Registration packets are also available at all Starbucks locations in Center City.
To suggest a community member for “Family Portrait,” write to [email protected].
