I don't have anything in particular to say about this, other than it makes me think a great deal about what goes on inside the minds of broken people. Not just the autistic or cognitively impaired but also (and I suppose inevitably) ones like Schuyler who exist in two worlds, the one in which we all live and which they find crude ways to send the rest of us little telegrams (using things like sign language or the Big Box of Words), and their own world of monsters, where they scream and laugh and deliver their own internal oratory that no one will ever hear.
"The first part is in my "native language," and then the second part provides a translation, or at least an explanation. This is not a look-at-the-autie gawking freakshow as much as it is a statement about what gets considered thought, intelligence, personhood, language, and communication, and what does not."
22 comments:
I have several friends with younger siblings who are autistic, and when you meet them, they seem in their own world, only because we don't understand it. I wonder why people are so disbelieving and so limited to their understandings, when ironically their field of study is of the human mind.
That was beautiful and touching. It really makes one stand back and wonder how many situations we have been in that we did not think with our whole mind and heart. Thank you for sharing.
Viv
I listened to the whole thing and thought it very interesting. In the first part where she is "singing", I found that to be really annoying. Then I wondered if she finds our speech equally annoying.
I can't imagine how hard it must be to live in a world where people assume she is extremely mentally deficient based on her looks and actions...when really her IQ is likely higher than the majority of those around her. In that sense, I guess Schuyler is "lucky" in that she looks very normal. People are predisposed to think she is intelligent and will hopefully treat her accordingly.
What an amazing clip — thought-provoking and moving and, I suppose, surprising, too — if I'm being perfectly honest.
Thank you for sharing it with the rest of us.
Amen!
Amanda has a blog at http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/ and she also wrote http://www.gettingthetruthout.org.
Love it ~ I wonder how other special kids might percieve this? Did Schuyler find this interesting? I will show it to my kids ~ and discuss.. I'll get back to ya if anything really interesting comes out of it. Smart woman she is ! I wonder if this is part of a series ..?. thanks for sharing AS ALWAYS !! :D
PS . I'll totally have to check out her blog as posted above comment THANKS!!!
I find it interesting that she dedicated it to Ashley X, who I think is the girl from Seattle in the news so much. She has encephalopathy and her parents chose to stunt her growth.
this may the most amazing, beautiful thing i've ever seen.
as an artist who's occasionally played with working with sound, the entire audio of the piece is just mind-blowing and completely inspiring.
Your preface,your explanation, helped me more than the video's translation to understand the other world. Thank you. The vido translation was all too simple. The sounds, the patterns in the first part visualized another world that is different AND beautiful. Our own imagination is better than the translation; the video as a whole gets one thinking in the right direction.....
What a brilliant and gifted woman, and how generous of her to share her thoughts with those of us too stupid or closed-minded to comprehend them until she puts them in "our" language.
I think it's fascinating that the way she chose to first draw conventional thinkers into her world was through sound and music -- the universal languages, as it were. Her song is lovely; it's only a miniscule portion of the melody contained within her.
If only we could ALL think with all the brain we possess. If only we had any idea how much the human brain is capable of. And if only we conventional thinkers had the ability to understand that someone working from a different part of her brain is the same as we are.
Thanks for sharing it, Rob. I look forward to you and Julie and Schuyler kicking down more walls.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BtNETd62Ug
This women seems to be saying that the clip that you linked to is a fake. It's still intresting but I thought you should know.
Freaky. I thnk this makes it all a little more interesting, if anything.
My 9yr old son thought it was different then anything he's seen, BUT, insisted on watching on (very curious)... by the end he said he really liked it & that this woman just wanted to be treated like everybody else because everbody is good at different things and she was really smart to do this video. He also told me she seemed to write better than me..probably so! "outta the mouths of babes" ... simple+sweet
I must admit to being surprised at how eloquent and intelligent she (and the 'real' poster?) appear to be, and this makes me feel incredibly ignorant, as I feel that I must have wrongly assumed (or had the pre-conceived notion) that autistics who do not communicate do not have the capacity or vocabulary to speak in such an articulate manner. I now feel foolish and rather disappointed in myself. I have had no experience with autistics, and found this fascinating (and a learning experience!)
K
anonymous, Amanda has a vocal group of detractors - it seems like some people are so deeply invested in the idea that autism is "curable" and that it must be a good thing to "cure" it that they can't wrap their minds around a person who appears low-functioning writing things that are smart. It serves their agenda to believe she's fake.
I met Amanda at a conference, we hung out, she's cool and definitely real.
Thanks for directing me to that. It was the most powerful thing I've seen on the internet in a very long time.
My youngest sister is cognitively disabled and has struggled her entire life with being treated as different, not-normal or even sub-human because she doesn't communicate and experience the world like you and I do.
Thanks for sharing a fascinating video. The singing reminded me of Dead Can Dance. At least for me, the jury's still out about what exactly is real here. It does seem that there is an autisitc woman out there who can write well and make videos. But which woman is the real deal? I'm not sure I can take Kitty's word that she's met the gal at a conference. It could totally be true, but what do we know about Kitty?
The more I think about this, the more I keep coming back to the fact that we are all stuck in the room in our head, singing and screaming. Many of us can open the door of our room, when other rooms align with it, and describe to other people a bit of what's in our room, maybe swap some items of furniture. But ultimately, we can never cross the threshold. We can't really know what other people see when they look over our shoulder into our room, as we can't know what their rooms would really look like, were we to be able to enter them. Some people can't open the door to their room quite so far, or only rarely align with another room. When some describe their room, others don't recognise it as a room at all. These people make us wonder about the nature of rooms entirely and maybe think about how lucky we are to be able to open our doors so wide. In the end though, even if our room has invisible walls and aligns with lots of others, we're all stuck there.
I think I've stretched this analogy about as far as it will go...I enjoyed taking a pause to think about this though, thanks!
There is a very well known woman named Temple Grandin who has written about what it is like to be a person with autism. She has autism and was thought to be low functioning, but she is actually a brillant engineer and has a doctorate. Her books are an interesting look into how some people with autism think. She actually sees things in 3D and can manipulate plans in her head to see them from all sides. She wasn't aware that other people didn't see things that way until someone was talking to her about a new computer program that allowed you to do that on their computer.
here's a link to her website:
http://www.grandin.com/inc/ads.html
SueM
Hey Rob -
I've read a lot about Amanda and the comments she makes in various autism blogs, and I can say one thing for sure: she would kick your ASS for saying she is "broken" and lives in a world of "monsters." Amanda is all about disability acceptance, trying to get people to understand her so that they can see she does NOT live in her own world. She lives in our world, but just perceives some things differently, that's all.
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