Everybody do the Shannon

The Shannon is a technique of dancing and skateboarding with crutches pioneered by American performance artist, Bill Shannon, who currently stars in a mesmerizing journey through a cityscape in a TV ad campaign for Visa. As is befitting of a performance artist, he takes our ten questions as a chance to consider life, death and transcendence.

What’s the best thing about being disabled?
Being alive.

What makes you angry?
I get angry with myself when I fail to live up to my ideals of how to live and be responsible.

What’s the funniest thing anyone’s ever said to you about your impairment?
I skated past a father and son in Brooklyn. My friend and DJing partner was on a bike behind me and overheard the son saying “Wow!” and the dad saying: “That is one lazy skater!”

If you were Prime Minister what one thing would you do to improve things for disabled people?
Switch the military budget with the education budget.

What’s the one thing that could be invented to make your life as a disabled person better?
A limitless renewable energy source that is environmentally beneficial to plant and animal life around the planet.

What do you most like about performing?
Transcendence: Escaping my internal-conversation and reaching a higher state of consciousness where the body becomes transparent and beyond the directive of thought.

And what do you not like about it?
Travel. I have to explain my unique situation to others in passing, or deal with their power issues, so from the car park to the plane seat it’s one ego after another to contend with.

Who’s your favourite disabled person ever?  
Superman: the irony of what happened to Christopher Reeves makes him one of the real icons of disability versus ability, fiction versus reality, who we project as our ideal self versus who we really are.

Do you have any special or hidden talent?  
I know what my hidden talent is and I am hiding it.

If you didn’t have your impairment, which other one would you like to have for a day?  
Death.

How would you sum yourself up in ten words or less?  
That guy just threw a flaming bag of crap on my porch.