1 October 2004: Temporary Autism Zones

I mentioned in the previous entry that sometime in the future I was going to create a section of this site dedicated to Autism. But I keep myself so busy that "sometime in the future" could be very far away indeed, and meanwhile, since I "came out" about my Autism, I've been getting inquiries on the subject almost daily, both from friends (old and new, online and off) and from web-browsing strangers who found this site while searching for Autism resources. So I've decided that instead of waiting for some improbable future date when I'll have time to do everything as thoroughly as I want to, I'll just go ahead and work bits Autism-related material into the site whenever it seems appropriate, and then possibly compile it all into its own section whenever I've accumulated enough of it.

So this morning, in the course of making some minor but long-overdue revisions to the Tribe page, I added two of my favorite Autism sites: Neurodiversity.com, a mind-bogglingly extensive compendium of Autism information and resources, and the website of Aspies for Freedom, an organization dedicated to community-building among Autistics, and to defending our cognitive liberty ("We oppose any attempts to 'cure' someone of an autistic spectrum disorder such as Asperger's Syndrome or any attempts to make them normal against their will").

To those who have been asking me for more details about Autism and Asperger Syndrome, I recommend the Wikipedia entry on Asperger Syndrome, and also The Autistic Distinction, an excellent essay by Neurodiversity.com creator Kathleen Seidel.

While we're on the subject of Autism, here's an excerpt from one of my papers for my Interpersonal Communications class ("Aspies" are people with Asperger Syndrome; "NTs" are neurotypicals - i.e., "normals"):

One popular NT stereotype is that Autistics are humorless. This is one of the many, many stereotypes of Autism that appeared in the movie The Rain Man, which is probably the most well-known depiction of Autism in NT culture. Here’s Tom Cruise’s NT character Charlie Babbitt, critiquing his Autistic brother Raymond’s monotone rendition of Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on First?” routine: "That's a joke, Ray, it's comedy, but when you do it you're not funny. You're like the comedy of Abbott and Abbott."

Actually, all the Aspies I know have extremely keen and well-developed senses of humor. We feel that it’s NTs who tend to have poor senses of humor. Aspie humor tends to be delivered absolutely deadpan. An Aspie won’t use any nonverbal cues to indicate that he or she is joking. No goofy body language, changing vocal inflections, emoticons or laugh tracks. Why would we need such things? To an Aspie, if something is funny, it’s funny. But without the big obvious nonverbal cues, most NTs don’t even notice that a joke has been made. Aspies, of course, find this hilarious: only an NT would need someone to signal them to let them know when they’re supposed to find something funny.

"Song as Vehicle" Paratheatrical Lab update: I came to the conclusion that the Glenn Gould piano piece I'd chosen wouldn't work for me, because the notes were too brief and close together - there was no way to "sing" it without hurting my throat. Fortunately, that Glenn Gould album I picked up also contained a piece called "Sonata for Bassoon and Piano," the third movement of which begins with a 40-second bassoon solo. Since the bassoon is a wind instrument, and so is the human voice, the notes of a bassoon are much easier to approximate vocally.

I learned this 40-second melody by using sound-editing software to snip it out and turn it into a repeating loop, which I turned into an hour-long CD that would drive any non-Autistic to chew his own ears off, and which, for a few days, I played nonstop whenever I was home alone. I tried humming and singing it in the third and fourth lab sessions at the beginnning of this week, and it worked quite well for me.

The lab is off to a good start; when we're all singing at once there are already stretches of time during which the sound is beyond my powers of descriptive hyperbole.

The schoolwork is piling up, so I don't expect I'll be posting many more entries between now and December. Off to go study now.

Random Kabbalistic note to self, jotted down during my World Religions class this Summer and just rediscovered: "Consider the song 'One Night in Bangkok' as a dialogue between Hod and Netzach."