Our own Ronan released an album. Ronan is lyricist for Josephmooon. You can read the story of their distributed collaboration on their blog:
These songs resonate with my autistic, bipolar, and disabled life. I’m super excited to add them to my favorite playlist, Chronic Neurodivergent Depressed Queer Punk: Punk Rock, the Social Model of Disability, and the Dream of the Accepting Community, where they will become part of my everyday coping.
Below, I’ll share lyrics from each song and relate them to my own, and the broader, neurodivergent experience using selected quotes from community writing.
- Floats Boat
- One Word
- Long Ago
- Up All Night
- Out of Tune
- Captolea
- Busybodies
- High in the Sky
- Cost Time
- Reusable Money
- Check For
- So Far So Good
The album “So Far So Good” is available on streaming platforms.
Floats Boat
Is there something you’re not telling me
You’re not telling me what floats your boat
It can be anything you want it to be
Only you can decide what floats your boat
Let me tell you what floats my boat
It’s writing songs that change the world
Maybe just a little bit I said just a little bit
Can you please tell me what floats your boat
That’s all I want to know
One of The Five Neurodivergent Love Languages is listening to someone infodump. “Floats Boat” is an invitation to infodump about your SpIns.
SpIns and Infodumps
I don’t know who invented the phrase “special interest.” Probably some researcher. Autistic people don’t really love the term because the term “special” has become tied so closely with terms like “special needs,” which we resent.
Nevertheless, somewhere down the line “special interest,” commonly shortened to SpIn (“spin”), became the term for the characteristically-autistic tendency to develop an obsession with something specific and often obscure.
Some special interests are short lived, and some last the lifetime of the person; but, however long they last, they are intense, delightful, and a vital part of autistic culture.
So integral are special interests to autistic culture that autistic people will post about feeling depressed and unmotivated because they don’t have an active SpIn at the moment.
Having a special interest is like having a crush or being newly in love. It is consuming and delightful. We love to share our special interests and a common example of autistic empathy is encouraging others to talk in great detail- “infodump”- about their SpIns.
It is considered a sign of caring and friendship to encourage someone to talk to you about their SpIn- whether or not you actually share their interest- because nothing makes an autistic person happier than discussing, learning about, or sharing about, their SpIn.
It is also quite acceptable in autistic culture to “infodump” on a topic whenever it happens to come up. To autists (an insider short-hand for autistic people), the sharing of knowledge and information is always welcome.
Source: 7 Cool Aspects of Autistic Culture » NeuroClastic
“Floats Boat” offers a “sign of caring and friendship to encourage someone to talk to you about their SpIn.” It also offers subversion.
Only you can decide what floats your boat
This recognizes a fact about SpIns: they come from within. They run on intrinsic motivation, not extrinsic.
In preparing a new Afterword for the 25th-anniversary edition of my book Punished by Rewards, I’ve sorted through scores of recent studies on these subjects. I’m struck by how research continues to find that the best predictor of excellence is intrinsic motivation (finding a task valuable in its own right) – and that this interest is reliably undermined by extrinsic motivation (doing something to get a reward). New experiments confirm that children tend to become less concerned about others once they’ve been rewarded for helping or sharing. Likewise, paying students for better grades or test scores is rarely effective – never mind that the goal is utterly misconceived.
Source: It’s Not About Behavior – Alfie Kohn
In autistic communities, we advocate embracing the obsession.
Embrace the obsession. Special interests are “intimately tied to the well-being of people on the spectrum“. “Special interests have a positive impact on autistic adults and are associated with higher subjective well-being and satisfaction across specific life domains including social contact and leisure.” “In my study, I found that when the autistic children were able to access their intense interests, this brought, on the whole, a range of inclusionary advantages. Research has also shown longer-term benefits too, such as developing expertise, positive career choices and opportunities for personal growth. This underscores how important it is that the education of autistic children is not driven by a sense of their deficits, but by an understanding of their interests and strengths. And that rather than dismissing their interests as ‘obsessive’, we ought to value their perseverance and concentration, qualities we usually admire.” “…the autistic children in my study were turning to their strong interests in times of stress or anxiety. And there has certainly been a lot of research which shows that autistic children and young people find school very stressful. So it might be the case that when this autistic trait is manifested negatively in school, it is a direct result of the stresses that school creates in the first instance.” “[E]nabling autistic children to engage with their strong interests has been found to be predominantly advantageous, rather than deleterious, in school environments.” “Furthermore, longer-term benefits have been associated with the pursuit of intense interests, with relatively few negative effects overall, which in themselves might only occur if autistic people are pressured to reduce or adapt their interests.” “Having intense or “special” interests and a tendency to focus in depth to the exclusion of other inputs, is associated with autistic cognition, sometimes framed as “monotropism”. Despite some drawbacks and negative associations with unwanted repetition, this disposition is linked to a range of educational and longer-term benefits for autistic children.“
Source: I’m Autistic. Here’s what I’d like you to know.
So, “can you please tell me what floats your boat?”
Maybe I can help you float your boat
We’ll write a song to sing along
And let it float away let it float away
Anything can float your boat
That’s all I want you to tell me
So everyone can see
One Word
I’ve not said the word to you
Afraid that you might say it too
“One Word” reminds me of a high school crush I could never talk to because of the tidal immensity of exposure anxiety and rejection sensitive dysphoria and the resulting situational mutism in their presence.
It wasn’t that the volume was too loud so much as that in the grip of an adrenaline rush everything was sensorily too much. The intense ‘pain’ was that the personal, individual, me-ness in it was unbearable. I was allergic to the experience of my own existence and the experience of hearing my own voice speaking from connected expression as me could, at times, be far worse than the terrible feeling you get hearing your own voice on an audio tape or answerphone.
Exposure Anxiety is the internal parent watching its vulnerable and exposed baby being stolen by the world outside or given away by ‘the self’; being robbed of control by what are felt as ‘outside forces’. Exposure Anxiety is a self-parenting survival mechanism, an intense often tic-like involuntary self-protection mechanism that jumps in to defend against sensed ‘invasion’. When it becomes chronic, it is self-perpetuating – like a boulder hurtling down a hill, gaining momentum. Chronic, uncontrolled, acute Exposure Anxiety is about addiction to your own adrenaline.
Exposure Anxiety makes it difficult to dare ‘expressive volume’ in a directly-confrontational (self-in-relation-to-other) world
Exposure Anxiety is about feeling your own existence too close up, too in your own face.
If I could draw you a picture of acute chronic Exposure Anxiety, I’d draw you a rainbow unseen within heavy stone walls. There’d be places in the stone where the cement had crumbled, been chipped away and some of the colour had come streaming out like a ray of light into the world. I’d draw you a picture of someone inside a prison, an invisible prison with replica selves on the outside, each a contortion, a distortion of the one you can’t see who can’t get out. I’d draw you a picture of someone avoidant with a social person waiting inside for the keys and a way out.
Exposure anxiety (EA) is a condition identified by Donna Williams in which the child or adult feels acutely self-conscious; it leads to a persistent and overwhelming fear of interaction.
Source: Exposure anxiety in autism | Network Autism
EA can be quite crippling as it it causes the person to feel acutely self-conscious and leads to a persistent and overwhelming fear of interaction. And that makes any attention from other people feel potentially threatening so that the child feels ‘exposed’ each time someone looks at him, talks to him or even compliments him.
Source: Autism and Exposure Anxiety. Don’t look at me! – Autism Daily Newscast
I dreamed of just the right situation where I would feel psychologically safe enough to unlock, like the calm of a quiet evening, away from the chaos and judgement of school.
When there’s a full moon in the sky
In the light of the night
“One Word” also evokes my solo polyamorous nature by offering the one word “to you and you and you and you”.
One word to say to you
To you and you and you and you
It wasn’t until looking into solo polyamory I realized I don’t have to feel guilty for having separate needs from my partner. Solo polyamory is the idea that people are autonomous beings who have different needs and wants, and alongside good communication and mutual respect between all partners, no one puts rules on each other because no one owns one another. There’s this expectation in mainstream society that if you’re a couple you should want to be together most of the time - but with solo polyamory, partners respect how much time you can set aside to see them based on work, hobbies and other people who are important to you. There’s no pressure to converge lives the longer you’re dating because with solo polyamory commitment and time together aren’t seen as mutually exclusive. In a solo polyamory group I recently joined on Facebook, I found a thread where a number of people on the spectrum talked about how finding solo polyamory has helped them work through their sensory sensitivities without feeling like there’s something wrong with them. If they need to leave a date because they’ve had too much stimuli for the day, their partners understand because they’ve had those essential conversations on what each other needs as an individual.
Source: How Polyamory Helped Me Advocate For My Needs As A Disabled Person | Thought Catalog
“One Word” is also just a rockin’ love song that’s a bit of a tease.
Long Ago
Long ago is long ago
Or right now right now don’t you know
Rejection sensitivity and exposure anxiety generate a lot of regrets and rumination on those regrets. My regrets come as flashbacks that travel in an instant from the long ago to “right now right now don’t you know.”
Long ago forever in the past
Long ago never can be changed
Pointless to be going back in time
So long ago so long long long ago
I know it’s pointless to go back, but I keep making the trip, usually involuntarily.
In other words, autistic people are indeed traumatised by a wider range of things than the teams were expecting. And diagnostic teams should be considering PTSD after a wider list of possible triggering events.
Source: Ann’s Autism Blog: Autism, Bullying, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Behaviour. The links?
One explanation for ASD and probable PTSD cooccurrence shown here may be that ASD serves as a vulnerability factor for PTSD. Hirvikoski and Blomqvist (2015) found that adults with ASD reported significantly higher subjective stress and poorer ability to cope with stress in everyday life, compared with typical adults. One’s subjective perception of his or her ability to cope with a specific stressor is central in defining the level of experienced distress (Karasek & Theorell, 1990). Individuals with ASD often show executive functioning difficulties (Kenworthy et al., 2008), which may impede their choice of appropriate coping strategies. Another aspect related to ASD that may affect individuals’ subjective distress level following trauma is sensory hypersensitivity (e.g. Horder et al., 2014), a factor that has been associated with vulnerability to PTSD (Engel-Yeger et al., 2013).
I incessantly script in preparation for social interactions and relentlessly post-mortem the interactions afterwards. I replay some conversations over and over for decades and lifetimes. An anodyne, forgettable conversation for most can be a source of lifelong relived trauma for me. I’m a constantly ruminating engine of regret stuck in past moments I wish I could edit.
One chance to travel back in time
For days or weeks or months or years
Today is all but long ago
So won’t you come to me right now
Some things look so easy
But we can’t go back, no we can’t go back
When it’s not so easy you are not alone
So won’t you come to me right now
Right now right now maybe someday
Long ago is long ago
Now is now and not forever
“Long Ago” captures my yearning to unhook from rumination on what can’t be changed and live in the present. “Now is now and not forever.”
Up All Night
I’m staying up all night
All night all night that’s not right
Staying up all night
That’s what I’ve been doing
Up all night all night all night
Try to stay out of sight in the daytime
I do it a lot
I have been up all night all night all night
That’s not right alright that what I like to do
Well I sleep when it’s day and stay up all night
Insomnia is a research priority for autistic communities. At Stimpunks, we keep the hour-of-the-wolf.
We can joke fondly about it now, but my forty-two-consecutive-month campaign against a full night’s sleep nearly broke my parents. They managed to hone hour-of-the-wolf parenting into a fine art by the end of this waking nightmare.
Sleep is challenging – but crucial.
Autistic burnout isn’t a permanent state, however. One of the best ways for anyone to recover from burnout is rest, particularly sleep, according to Amelia Nagoski, the co-author of the best-selling 2019 book “Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Response Cycle.” But autistic people have a harder time sleeping because of their neurological differences, according to a 2019 study.
Autistic people are more likely to sleep for shorter periods of time and experience lower-quality sleep, and they’re more likely to be night owls, the study found. Research on non-autistic adults shows that insomnia is a strong predictor of burnout, suggesting a similar link among autistic people with sleep disorders.
Ms. Nagoski, 44, addressed autistic people’s sleep woes in a recent YouTube video. “This essential thing that is fundamental to wellness is harder for autistic people,” she said.
Source: ‘The Battery’s Dead’: Burnout Looks Different in Autistic Adults – The New York Times
I was an insomniac as a kid. I’d stay up all night loaded with fear, anxiety, and hallucinations.
Over years and decades, the night became less about fear, and more about having the world to myself so I could read and write.
Stay out of sight
That’s how I write
Staying up all night
That’s what I do
How about you
I’m writing this blog post at 2AM, so cheers night-owls writing at wolf-hours.
Out of Tune
Lately I’ve been feeling out of tune out of tune
I don’t know why but I would like to know why
And I want to get back in tune
Out of tune that’s what I am
Being out of tune pains my head
(can’t get out of bed)
Hurts from being out of tune and
I just so want to get back in tune
Out of tune that’s what I am out of tune
Feeling out of tune with myself and the world has been a fixture of my autistic, bipolar life. “Out of Tune” resonates broadly across neurodivergent experience. It makes me cry.
It concludes hopefully, though.
When I get back in tune
My good days will come back and I’ll feel better
If you’re feeling out of tune like I am now
Get back in tune like I said
I will get back in tune
But I don’t know when (hopefully soon)
I know it could take time
But let’s make it happen
Through the self-awareness gained from neurodiversity and disability communities and a chemical assist from Sertraline and Rexulti, I’m sufficiently in tune these days. It took time, but we made it happen.
There will be moments of de-tuning where I once again don’t know when I will get back in tune. I’ll play this song and work my way back with continuous fluid adaptation.
Many of the challenges that come with being autistic are pervasive, meaning they’re with us forever. Even if they aren’t active at all times, they still exist and may reappear when a particular coping strategy gets temporarily taken offline because the brain needs to reallocate resources for a more urgent task.
When this happens, an issue that was previously “fixed” can suddenly appear to be “broken” again.
In fact, nothing has been fixed or broken. We simply have very fluid coping strategies that need to be continuously tweaked and balanced. Because a child or adult goes through a period of having very few meltdowns, that doesn’t mean they’ll never have meltdowns again. If something in their life changes, for example the hormonal storms of puberty, they’ll need to develop new coping strategies. And until they do, they may begin having meltdowns due to the mental, emotional or sensory overload caused by the new development.
Being autistic means a lifetime of fluid adaptation. We get a handle on something, develop coping strategies, adapt and we’re good. If life changes, we many need some time to readapt. Find the new pattern. Figure out the rules. Test out strategies to see what works. In the mean time, other things may fall apart. We lose skills. We struggle to cope with things that had previously been doable under more predictable conditions. This is not regression to an earlier developmental stage, it’s a process of adapting to new challenges and it’s one that we do across a lifetime of being autistic.
Source: Autistic Regression and Fluid Adaptation | Musings of an Aspie
Captolea
Stay inside said Sheriff Carroll
He looks frightened so I’m holding tight
In my house with a double barrel
Ready to shoot Captolea dead on sight
Oh no there’s Captolea
He’s a killer with a gun and a knife
Stay away from him
Don’t say anything to him
I don’t want to die
I could interpret this as being about depression and reactivity, but I’ll let it stand as a good old-fashioned outlaw murder ballad.
Busybodies
Run away run away
Beware of busybodies
They are everywhere
Beware of busybodies
They just want to know everything
They ask questions yeah
Way too many questions so
Beware of busybodies
If you see them keep hiding
In a bunker if you find one
Beware of busybodies
They are in a lot of places
There they are right there and there
Talking trash about me and probably about you too
Run away, stay away
“Busybodies” reminds me of the “Make it Stop” campaign.
In the video, an autistic student navigates a gauntlet of questions and sensory overwhelm.
I’ve always struggled with questions. My school career was marked by situational mutism in the face of questions. Exposure anxiety and rejection sensitivity made talking difficult to impossible in all but the most psychologically safe circumstances.
I also struggle with answering within the confines of another’s framing. So many neurotypical and abled assumptions and norms are baked in that I can’t answer unless I start by rejecting the framing.
Dealing with all of the questions and bad framing, daily, is exhausting.
“Empathy is not an autistic problem, it’s a human problem, it’s a deficit in imagination.” We can’t truly step into another neurotype, but we can seek story and perspective. These videos offer a taste of what it is like to endure the daily gauntlet of neurotypical questioning. To not respond to questions is to be called rude. To not respond will get you publicly color-coded as an orange or red and denied perks that the compliant NT kids get. To not exchange this social styrofoam is to be a problem. Make it stop. Empathize with what it is like to navigate these interactions while dealing with the sensory overwhelm of raucous environments not designed for you.
Source: I’m Autistic. Here’s what I’d like you to know.
Neurodivergent people are forced to attempt understanding of neurotypical people and society. We are constantly judged and assessed by neurotypical standards. We must analyze and interpret in order to conform and pass so that we can get the sticker, the “cool kid cash”, and the promotion. There is almost no reciprocity in return.
Source: The Double Empathy Problem: Developing Empathy and Reciprocity in Neurotypical Adults
There are entire industries of Busybodies pathologizing neurodivergent life, applying bad framing, asking the wrong questions, and “talking trash about me and probably about you too”.
Y’all know the file, right? This has been the thing that had been following me since I started special education. Those things are thick and deep. KGB got nothing on special ed.
Source: The Gift: LD/ADHD Reframed
There are entire industries forcing intimacy.
Forced intimacy is a cornerstone of how ableism functions in an able bodied supremacist world. Disabled people are expected to “strip down” and “show all our cards” metaphorically in order to get the basic access we need in order to survive. We are the ones who must be vulnerable-whether we want to or not-about ourselves, our bodyminds and our abilities. Forced intimacy was one of the many ways I learned that consent does not exist for my disabled asian girl bodymind. People are allowed to ask me intrusive questions about my body, make me “prove” my disability or expect me to share with them every aspect of my accessibility needs. I learned how to simultaneously shrink myself and nonconsensually open myself up as a disabled girl of color every damn day.
Forced intimacy is the opposite of access intimacy. It feels exploitative, exhausting and at times violating. Because I am physically disabled and use a manual wheelchair, I often experience forced intimacy when able bodied people push my wheelchair without my consent or when I am in situations where I have to be pushed by people I do not feel safe with, know or who are actively harassing me while pushing me. This often happens when I am traveling and have to rely on strangers for my access needs. I cannot count the number of times a strange man has pushed my wheelchair in the airport, while saying offensive and gross comments to me. These are the moments where disability, race, gender, immigration, class, age and sexuality collide together at once, indistinguishable from one another.
Source: Forced Intimacy: An Ableist Norm | Leaving Evidence
Now listen here busybodies
I’ve got something to say to you
Go away and don’t come back
We don’t want you busybodies
We’re tired of bad questions and bad framing. As an exercise, let’s flip the pathologizing lens.
Neurotypical syndrome is a neurobiological disorder characterised by preoccupation with social concerns, delusions of superiority, and obsession with conformity. There is no known cure.
Source: NeuroTribes by Steve Silberman review – an enlightened take on autism and difference
Perhaps the most obvious giveaway is an NT’s tendency to make “small talk” or to want to “chat” with you. While small talk appears to be nonfunctional, for NTs it serves a very specific purpose. It’s a good idea to humor them and participate to whatever degree you can tolerate. If you’re patient with them, many NTs will soon feel comfortable enough to move from small talk to more interesting, in-depth conversations.
Source: What is neurotypical?
Another odd behavior neurotypicals exhibit is their habit of “small talk.” From what we can tell, small talk appears to be talking just for the sake of talking. A “how are you doing” results in the same non-answer of “fine.” It seems unlikely everyone everywhere at all times is truly “fine,” so it seems that that is a non-answer to what is in fact a non-question. It has been observed that if you give an actual answer to the question, the questioner gets frustrated and impatient, as though they are annoyed that you would actually answer them. A whole conversation can actually go on like that, with general questions giving rise to pat answers so that you could actually change out any pair of people and you would end up with the same conversations each time. The vast majority of their conversations are not about anything of any substance, and, again, they seem positively annoyed if you try to engage them in such a conversation. As a group neurotypicals seem positively frivolous most of the time.
Source: A Pathological Look at Neurotypical Behavior – An Intense World
High in the Sky
I am high up in the sky
Way above the Northern lights
On the way to the moon
Far above the stars
High up in the sky
Life is never too long
But life can be too short
With people dropping bombs all over the world
From high up in the sky
High up in the sky
I love that second verse. It’s a flash of the autistic sense of justice. I often want to disassociate from a bomb dropping world that is way too intense.
I’m in the sky now, for just as long as I need to be
Almost to the moon that’s my destiny
When I get back we’ll talk about it then
And I can’t wait to see you again my friend
High up in the sky
Avoiding meltdown and burnout requires managing sensory diet, and sometimes that means retreating into your head and heading High Up in the Sky, detaching from an intense world designed against you.
Cost Time
Everything costs time everything
Everything costs time yes it does
Costs time getting out of bed
Doctor says you got your head in the fog
Got to cook and eat your food
Costs time to walk your dog
Costs time no matter what you do
Take a shower and get in the pool
Drive a car hang out with your friends
Go back in time or forward again
“Cost Time” speaks directly to chronic spoonie life. Spoon theory is a popular metaphor for energy expenditure in the disability community.
At that moment, the spoon theory was born. I quickly grabbed every spoon on the table; hell I grabbed spoons off of the other tables. I looked at her in the eyes and said “Here you go, you have Lupus”. She looked at me slightly confused, as anyone would when they are being handed a bouquet of spoons. The cold metal spoons clanked in my hands, as I grouped them together and shoved them into her hands.
I explained that the difference in being sick and being healthy is having to make choices or to consciously think about things when the rest of the world doesn’t have to. The healthy have the luxury of a life without choices, a gift most people take for granted.
Most people start the day with unlimited amount of possibilities, and energy to do whatever they desire, especially young people. For the most part, they do not need to worry about the effects of their actions. So for my explanation, I used spoons to convey this point. I wanted something for her to actually hold, for me to then take away, since most people who get sick feel a “loss” of a life they once knew. If I was in control of taking away the spoons, then she would know what it feels like to have someone or something else, in this case Lupus, being in control.
She grabbed the spoons with excitement. She didn’t understand what I was doing, but she is always up for a good time, so I guess she thought I was cracking a joke of some kind like I usually do when talking about touchy topics. Little did she know how serious I would become?
I asked her to count her spoons. She asked why, and I explained that when you are healthy you expect to have a never-ending supply of “spoons”. But when you have to now plan your day, you need to know exactly how many “spoons” you are starting with. It doesn’t guarantee that you might not lose some along the way, but at least it helps to know where you are starting. She counted out 12 spoons. She laughed and said she wanted more. I said no, and I knew right away that this little game would work, when she looked disappointed, and we hadn’t even started yet. I’ve wanted more “spoons” for years and haven’t found a way yet to get more, why should she? I also told her to always be conscious of how many she had, and not to drop them because she can never forget she has Lupus.
Everything costs time, especially when you are chronically ill and only get so many spoons.
Reusable Money
Reusable money that’s what I got
Use it every day and I never run out
I spent 10 dollars I still got that 10 dollars
Feels so good, that’s how I get around the world
Reusable money is my precious yes it is
Use it every day for whatever I want
I can’t run out I always have enough money
And it’s really not an option that’s how I get around the world
“Reusable Money” is a rollicking fantasy about having as much money as you can spend and traveling the world.
Beneath that, though, I feel the weight of our journey fighting for scraps in systems designed on “artificial economies of scarcity”.
Bascom tells me that experiences like ours happen because disability service systems are never designed to support people with disabilities but are “about managing access to scarce resources. We start with the assumption that these resources are limited, so you have to prove over and over again that you need them more than anyone else. If we as a society invested more resources in supporting people with disabilities, we could redesign our systems accordingly.”
Source: I Shouldn’t Have to Dehumanize My Son to Get Him Support | The Nation
Society mints billionaires more billions during a pandemic while neurodivergent and disabled people struggle against artificial scarcity in systems designed against us. “Reusable Money” invites a fantasy of fungibility where that money helps us “get around the world”.
Check For
“Check For” is delightfully enigmatic. It’s “some very cloudy ice”.
Check check for you my friend
Check it once check it twice
I’m in a good mood what about you
Just a piece of cloudy ice
Check check check over here
Ain’t nobody got nothin’ to say
Check for a deep pool a deep deep pool
Check for a cold day a very cold day
The Stone Age should’ve made me strong
Banging on rocks all day long
Ain’t got no money, just got this song
Waiting for someone to sing along
Check for the top, the top of us all
Check for a flag but not a flag that is cruel
Check for the guitar I’m playing right now
Check for the rule ‘cuz it’s a good rule
In the Stone Age I did not belong
On my computer all day long
Ain’t got no money then move along
Unless you want to help me sing my song
Check check for you my friend
Check it once then we’ll check it twice ‘cuz
It’s a cold day a very cold day
And you’re some very cloudy ice
I’ll reach for a neurodiversity angle by saying: I would not belong in the Stone Age either. I need my computer. It connects me with other cloudy ice folks who “help me sing my song”.
ANI launched its online list, ANI-L, in 1994. Like a specialized ecological niche, ANI-L had acted as an incubator for Autistic culture, accelerating its evolution. In 1996, a computer programmer in the Netherlands named Martijn Dekker set up a list called Independent Living on the Autism Spectrum, or InLv. People with dyslexia, ADHD, dyscalculia, and a myriad of other conditions (christened “cousins” in the early days of ANI) were also welcome to join the list. InLv was another nutrient-rich tide pool that accelerated the evolution of autistic culture. The collective ethos of InLv, said writer and list member Harvey Blume in the New York Times in 1997, was “neurological pluralism.” He was the first mainstream journalist to pick up on the significance of online communities for people with neurological differences. “The impact of the Internet on autistics,” Blume predicted, “may one day be compared in magnitude to the spread of sign language among the deaf.”
Source: The neurodiversity movement: Autism is a minority group. NeuroTribes excerpt.
Until one day… you find a whole world of people who understand.
The internet has allowed autistic people- who might be shut in their homes, unable to speak aloud, or unable to travel independently- to mingle with each other, share experiences, and talk about our lives to people who feel the same way.
We were no longer alone.
Source: 7 Cool Aspects of Autistic Culture » NeuroClastic
One could make the argument that autistic people created the very computer environment autistic people are most comfortable in.
In fact, there is pretty good evidence that most of the science, technology, and arts you enjoy are the products of autistic minds.
Source: Welcome to the World Autism Made – An Intense World
So Far So Good
So far so good
I hope it stays like this forever
So far so good
But the wolf is at my door
Here at Stimpunks, we live in a Cavendish bubble of respite that is designed by neurodivergents, for neurodivergents.
Since reading NeuroTribes, I think of psychologically & sensory safe spaces suited to zone work as “Cavendish bubbles” and “Cavendish space”, after Henry Cavendish, the wizard of Clapham Common and discoverer of hydrogen. The privileges of nobility afforded room for his differences, allowing him the space and opportunity to become “one of the first true scientists in the modern sense.”
Let’s build psychologically safe homes of opportunity without the requirement of nobility or privilege. Replace the trappings of the compliance classroom with student-created context, BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), and BYOC (Bring/Build Your Own Comfort). Let’s hit thrift stores, buy lumber, apply some hacker ethos, and turn the compliance classroom into something psychologically safe and comfortable to a team of young minds engaged in passion-based learning. Inform spaces with neurodiversity and the social model of disability so that they welcome and include all minds and bodies. Provide quiet spaces for high memory state zone work where students can escape sensory overwhelm, slip into flow states, and enjoy a maker’s schedule. Provide social spaces for collaboration and camaraderie. Create cave, campfire, and watering hole zones. Develop neurological curb cuts. Fill our classrooms with choice and comfort, instructional tolerance, continuous connectivity, and assistive technology.
In other words, make space for Cavendish. Make spaces for both collaboration and deep work.
Source: Classroom UX: Designing for Pluralism
Burnt out friends who’ve stayed within our Cavendish space for peer respite have remarked how hard it is to go past our red gate, the boundary of sanctuary from the waiting wolves of an ableist world.
I like my way want to keep it that way
For as long as I live
Precious to us all to be alive
So far so good
In this world of time
Our Cavendish space has three acres worn with our stim trails. We each have our ways, our patterns, our habits, our stims that soothe us, and we each have space to do them.
“Some autistic people’s needs will conflict with each other. For example, some autistic people may need the TV playing to calm down, as it can help to focus on specific sounds. But for others this may cause more stress depending on their mental state. Additionally, some autistic people may need to stim to feel relaxed and comfortable, or it may be involuntary when they are stressed, but noises they make (e.g. verbal stims), could really stress another autistic person out. I think the key here is space.”
Source: “It’s Not Rocket Science” – NDTi
We’ve been living So Far So Good within a remit of inclusion, access, and constancy.
But wolves are at the door in this world of time.
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