5 February 2005: The Work in Progress

Woot! Argus is blogging!

And Sherpa has a short-term online journal going to chronicle the development of his new film project, The Greater Circulation. The work on the film includes four live paratheatrical performances based on Rilke's "Requiem for a Friend." I'll be in two of the four performances, playing a being called Embryo; Paradox, my brother paratheatrical apprentice, will be playing Embryo in the other two performances, so for two nights I finally get to experience being in the audience for one of these paratheatrical thingamajigs. Don't know yet whether I'll end up in the actual film, though either way I'll get to do some interesting and challenging work, and I'll have footage of my performances for eventual grad school portfolio purposes. Anyway, it's a good thing Sherpa's chronicling the details of this one, 'cause I sure won't have much time to.

The Work is very intense right now. The Song-as-Vehicle Lab tapped me into some deep levels of Autism. In integrating the information from that lab, I’ve realized that, as I explained it to my parents last week, “I’m a lot more Autistic than I am.”

What I mean by that is that my childhood environment was not a safe one in which to be deeply Autistic, so I developed a less-Autistic, more street-effective persona as a defensive strategy. As protective shells tend to, it’s become a cage, a limitation. Many people build up protective armor around their hearts, and then find that it limits their ability to fully give, receive, and enjoy love. I’ve built up protective armor around my Autism, and now I find that it’s limiting my ability to be fully Autistic.

And I want to experience the full depth and breadth of my Autism. I’m supposed to be a savant. Sure, I’m smart right now. I know that. I’m a straight-A student, my teachers are invariably impressed with me, I write well, I’ve succeeded at everything in life that I’ve really put my mind to. But my mind’s not everything it could be. I had an enormous vocabulary by the age of 18 months; early childhood tests rated my IQ at over 160. In the first couple of years of my life, I showed the potential to grow up as brilliant as my father. But I didn’t. To access the full scope of my intelligence, I had be fully Autistic. In suppressing the Autism enough to protect myself from the perceived dangers of my environment, I effectively lobotomized myself. And I didn’t even consciously know I’d done it. I’ve spent my whole life troubled by this nagging sense that I ought to be more than I am, but I never understood why before.

But this isn’t like a medical lobotomy. This is character armor. My full cognitive capacity is still in there, under the armor. And armor can be released. I have access to an awful lot of resources in that particular field.

What this is, in a nutshell, is Inner Child work. It’s about reclaiming the Inner Child, just like the New Age pop psychology folks talk about. It’s just that my Inner Child happens to be an Autistic savant.

Right now, my primary approach to this work consists of getting bodywork sessions from Highlander. Highlander is an enormously talented bodyworker, with a unique and eclectic style perfectly suited to my needs. His bodywork skills are very similar to my hypnosis skills, both in the spirit with which he uses them, and in the sense that he has some particular skills that he learned directly from masters in experimental settings, and that aren’t generally taught anywhere. Also, Highlander has some non-standard neural wiring himself. It’s not Autistic in nature, but the experience of learning one’s way around a nonstandard brain with no owner’s manual is still one that he can very much relate to. He understands what it is I'm trying to accomplish here.

Only doing these sessions once every other week right now – each session releases so much that I need more than a week of integration time.

I’ve felt physically fragile these past few weeks. I started working with Highlander because my body was breaking down as a result of its own efforts to shed the armor. Once I started doing sessions with him, my body started breaking down in new ways, as part of the process of release and integration. Feeling good today though, and my aikido, although in a difficult phase, is clearly advancing toward new breakthroughs.

The Paratheatrical Techniques Lab this Spring will afford me with another vehicle for this Inner Child work. The Embryo role, which I’ll be using the Techniques Lab to prepare for, will demand the same level of dearmoring, receptivity, and self-exposure that the reclaiming of my Autism demands; the two dovetail perfectly (it should come as no surprise to any of my regular readers that this has always been the case – the direction of each new Paratheatrical Research lab has always turned out to be perfectly aligned with the direction in which my Work is already moving at the time).

My aikido classes are huge right now. Lots of students testing in the coming weeks and months.

I finally got to see the preview (online, though it might well be in theaters by now as well) for Mozart and the Whale, a major mainstream Hollywood romance/comedy/drama in which the hero and heroine both have Asperger Syndrome. Screenplay by Ron Bass, who wrote Rain Man. Based on a true story. Looks worth seeing. Due for release this Spring.

One of my father's interesting hobbies is burning CDs that are compilations of songs built around specific themes. He sends copies of them to me and to whoever else he thinks should have them. They're always fascinating, and so far a couple of them are among the CDs I play most often. My father's taste in music is interesting and eclectic. I like almost all the music that he likes, except that, alas, he doesn't share my aversion to disco (one of his compilations, otherwise beautiful, has that vile old disco song "Electric Avenue" on it, lying in wait right between two charming Simon & Garfunkel songs, like a pederast clown having a fit of delerium tremens in the alley between your favorite café and your child's preschool, which means that I can't listen to the CD in any situation in which the Fast Forward button won't be within arm's reach at the appropriate moment).

The latest compilation arrived in the mail yesterday. It’s entitled 100 Years of Solitude, and the theme is autobiographical, in a way – here’s a small fragment of our email exchange about it:

Me: Fascinating track list. A first glance gives me the sense of autobiographical themes, with attention to the influence of past lives (e.g., “The Partisan”) and phases of this lifetime. And I can tell that some of the songs are about encounters with specific people you've got past-life connections with, though "Love Minus Zero" is the only one for which I can figure out the person's current-life identity (hi, Ma!).

Old Cutter John: Lives, phases, trips. Not that many identifiable people, really. I'll let it speak for itself. There might be more there than I intended. There's certainly less than there should be – no mention at all, for example, of the shared enmity between the cluster of souls and the culture of reckless mobility.

 

The arrival of this particular CD at this particular time is one of the many recent omens I’ve received to the effect that my current Work is leading me toward more past-life work. The last round of past-life work culminated in a rather spectacular and pleasing way at Burning Man 2000. My awareness and understanding of past-life themes has continued to develop since then, and in the past 18 months I’ve met a surprisingly large number of people with whom I obviously have long-standing connections, but I haven’t done any work toward unearthing further memories. Now it looks like it’s getting to be that time again.