I just read the memoir of John Robison, Look Me in the Eye. He did not have a diagnosis of his Asperger's Syndrome until he was in his forties, and his account of his suffering, delivered with calm logic and the driest of humor, is riveting. He is the older brother of Augusten Burroughs, whose memoirs of his childhood and recovery are lurid and hysterically funny even as they also horrify. They shared a childhood marked by abuse and the mental illness and alcoholism of their parents. By some miracle, they are now both thriving, happy, and very close, partly as a result of their writing and the connections they have made with readers. Robison has also written about taking part in clinical trials of rTMS (which I wrote about earlier), and it seems to be having a noticeable effect.
While immersed in this book, I head the Talking Heads' song "Cities" on the radio. One of the things I found compelling in my early fan days was David Byrne's persona, a mixture of paranoia, hyper-intelligence, and yearning.
Their album Fear of Music, their darkest, was another collaboration with Brian Eno; it came out in 1979, at a time when I was finishing college and reeling from the impact of my parents' divorce and its revelations about our family. I broke out in painful, maddening eczema, all over my body, and for months I was covered with itching painful scabs. I felt as if I had leprosy. The songs on Fear of Music and David Byrne's way of singing them are entwined with those memories. "What is happening/to my skin? Air can hurt you too, air..."
"Air" and "Cities" (1979 performance)
I have now learned that Byrne now thinks he might fall "on the spectrum" of autism, somewhere between Asperger's and "good at math"; he has said it is not so much a diagnosis as an explanation for his intense shyness, the focus, the need to control. I wonder.
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3 comments:
I love it! "Between Aspergers and 'good at math'" is a terrific category name.
When I first learned of the autism spectrum several years ago, it was so helpful to me--it gave me a handle on a whole bunch of people I knew (mostly men, but not only) to whom I did not relate very well.
I finally stopped badgering them to relate to me emotionally and started asking them to help me with computers. We were all a lot happier.
Fascinating about David Byrne--and it makes sense to me too.
Recently I watched the excellent documentary
"Autism: The Musical"
--(maybe you've seen it? it's on Netflix)--
about a woman who creates a theater production with kids (truly WITH kids, they co-create it) with autism.
One of the kids--a real cutie who won't shut up about dinosaurs--turns out to be Stephen Still's son (of CSNY)--and Stephen says when his son was diagnoses, it made sense for himself too--helping explain, for instance, the way he "hid behind" his guitar, he said.
The movie is really liberating because the theater director does not approach autism as a "diagnosis" so much as an alternate way of being --one that requires a creative approach to working with systems designed for "neuronormative" folks. I found it very comforting because I've had to design my own creative-systems approach to life--not that I'm on the autism spectrum, but I sure have never felt "normative"! : )
Yeah, I know a few people like that, too. Nobody in my family has been diagnosed with Aspergers, but I have some relatives who are not "neurotypical" and I relate very strongly to folks who are "loners" and share some traits with that group. I had a relationship with a brilliant engineer who I"m absolutely sure was using alcohol to medicate his lack of fit with society's norms, and who would have been greatly helped by having a way to understand his gifts and limitations differently. I still miss him.
Yeah, it's so hard to struggle through "normal" society without other people--like the woman theater director in the "Autism: The Musical" documentary--who help us co-create ways that work for us, for our brilliance.
And it's heartbreaking to try to love people who haven't found a way to tap their gifts as gifts instead of as torments. (My mother... your engineer...et al.)
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