Joseph Rizzo Naudi: 'Goose Woman Cat'

Written and performed by Joseph Rizzo Naudi, after James Clifford Kent’s photograph “Cary, Axiuli & Haytoo at home in San Leopoldo, Havana, Cuba”, part of the series "¡No hay más na’!" (There's Nothing Left, 2022–). The text is based on a collaborative discussion held on 10 December 2024 at the National Portrait Gallery in London, involving James Clifford Kent, Hannah Thompson and Joseph Rizzo Naudi—all members of the Centre for Visual Cultures at Royal Holloway, University of London. 

‘Goose Woman Cat’ is an example of experimental audio description, which uses fiction technique and blind approaches to knowing to create a multimodal narrative experience of an artwork. Listen along by following the Youtube link below.

The photograph was in black and white, but mostly it was in shades of grey, as
far as I could see.
     Apart from the goose, the only other bits of white were the tablecloth,
which the goose was standing on, and the cat in the bottom right of the frame. It
was a white cat lying on the floor, its tail curled around something dark and
perpendicular.
     A chair leg, the photographer said. The cat’s tail is wrapped around a
chair leg. It’s the leg of the chair that Cary, the owner of the goose, is sitting on,
and the goose is standing on the table next to where she’s sitting.
     There was Cary. She was sitting on the chair, beneath which the cat was
lying, its tail wrapped around the chair leg. Cary’s right hand lay on the white
tablecloth, close to the place where the goose was standing, feet planted, legs
straight, with its bold, chunky body and white feathers, and its beak open
slightly, as if about to honk.
     Was this a portrait of Cary, or a portrait of the goose? Or was it a portrait
of the cat, or a portrait of the cat’s tail as it flicked about the chair leg?
     When this image was taken, the photographer said, it was one of a series
made as he and Cary moved through the rooms of Cary’s house, she walking
with the goose in her arms like a countess moving through her mansion with a
lap dog.
     She has this connection with the goose, the photographer said.
     But Cary wasn’t a countess, and she didn’t live in a mansion. Cary lived
in a former Chinese laundry. Where was the laundry? In Havana, in Cuba.
Cary’s ancestors were Chinese, from Canton, and they’d set up this laundry
over a hundred years ago. And now that Cary’s children were gone, she lived
alone in this large house in downtown Havana, just by the market, just next to
the hustle and bustle, just outside of it.
     And in this room, the room where the photograph had been taken, there
was this quietness, the photographer said. Snap your fingers. Crisp as anything.
     The goose was standing on the table, and Cary was sitting on the chair,
and both Cary and the goose were looking off somewhere beyond the
photograph’s frame, towards the place where daylight was coming into the
room and playing its way across the image, picking out first the whiteness of the
goose, then the woman’s face, then the cat and its tail wrapped around the chair
leg.
     There was a kind of courtyard out there, the photographer said, and in
Havana, these existed in between rooms to keep the air cool. It was an open
space where, when this had been a working laundry, the clothes were hung out
to dry.
     Now there was none of that left, the photographer said, but still Cary had
walked through the house, and he had taken photos, and they’d come to this
room, and the woman had perched on the chair where she always perched, and
the goose had gone on the table where he always went, and the cat had sat
where the cat sat, and the moment was captured. Snap.
     Later, the photographer said, he’d looked at the image and noticed these
details: the tablecloth, which was as white as the goose and appeared to hover
above the floor; the aforementioned cat’s tail as it flicked around the chair leg;
the dresser in the background, and on it a doll and a Mickey Mouse mug, and
bits and pieces, and bric-a-brac. Then on the left there was the large bottle used
for storing cooking oil, a daily necessity and now, because of the crisis, a daily
struggle. Then he’d seen the makeshift cooking space that housed the oil bottle.
It wasn’t a kitchen. It was too small. And on the wall nearby were some plates,
decorative, he said, and on the right there was an empty egg tray. A big tray, for
sixteen or twenty eggs. Whenever Cary went somewhere that eggs might be
sold, she’d get as many as she could. That was what you did in Havana these
days. Everyone did it, the photographer said.
     When was this photograph taken? Black and white and grey. It could be
anytime, the photographer said, although the crisis was happening now, the
cupboard was bare, the people were gone, there was nothing left. But this had
all happened before, too. So was it then, or was it now? The bric-a-brac on the
dresser. Mickey Mouse on the shelf. The doll and the white goose and the
tablecloth, and below the woman’s chair, the cat, tail flicked around the chair
leg.
     Let me tell you something about that cat, the photographer said. Because
when I first met Cary, and we went to this room, I saw that this cat was sitting
on the stovetop there and he had all of this dark stuff hanging off the bottom of
his white fur, all along his undercarriage. And I said to Cary: look, I don’t want
to be rude, but your cat’s covered in excrement.
     No no, she said. That’s not excrement. He just gets singed when he sits
on the stove. It’s where he likes to sit. It keeps him warm.
     And it was like she lived in some kind of fairytale, this woman, her goose
and the cat who singed himself on the stove.
     And listen to this, the photographer said, playing a sound clip he’d
recorded in the room where the photograph was taken. A gramophone, he said.
Music, playing all the time I was there. And this photo here – he showed me his
phone – this is one I took of Cary. That’s her. She’s holding a rose. Why?
Because when I came back from London to visit her I’d said, what would you
like me to bring you? And she said, bring me a rose.

Joseph Rizzo Naudi is a blind writer and facilitator based in London, United Kingdom. He is a Techne postgraduate researcher at Royal Holloway, where he is researching artwork description, fiction technique and blindness as a creative practice. His writing has been supported by Arts Council England and Spread The Word’s London Writers Awards.

"Goose Woman Cat" won first prize in the 2025 King's College London & Royal National Institute of Blind People's writing competition for blind and partially blind people.