'"Social disability" does not begin to sum up my lifelong history of insomnia, anxiety, depression, cluelessness and isolation ... Nor, in all modesty, does it address the singleminded, fiercely exclusive energy I can bring to a project that has captured my attention, the immersion in an otherworldly ecstasy that music, writing, and film provide, and the very occasional but no less profound joy in my own strangeneness."
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/02/opinion/tim-page-on-experiencing-asperger.html
Tim Page is a professor of journalism and music at the University of Southern California. I'm glad to say that he read my paper on autism a couple of years ago. (I had cited him in the text and I received a notification that he had confirmed the citation).
Page's words here strike a deep chord with me, with certain qualifications. I've never suffered from insomnia. I developed a habit of addressing annoying things early in a day, before winding down in a way that takes me to my happy place by listening to the music, watching the TV shows or films or doing the things I enjoy. I have developed the habit of bathing myself in the warm memories of happy times past, and the way that old comedies and films conjure up the times when the people I loved and who loved me in turn were still alive. Living in the past is often an essential refuge when the present is so bereft of genial company.
I will admit to cluelessness, though, at least with respect to the world 'out there.' That said, I keep seeing the latest reports back from that mad mechanarchy 'out there,' and that world strikes me as a whole lot more clueless than I am. On a couple or more occasions now the question of depression has raised its ugly head as a possibility for my struggles. Discussions with my doctor have always dispelled the idea that I am suffering from depression. I do suffer from extreme and chronic anxiety. And I do suffer from overload and burnout, causing me to retreat and withdraw. But this is not depression. In discussion with doctors, it becomes clear that my assessment of my often bleak circumstances is objectively accurate and realist. If I suffer from anything it is a 'depressive realism.' I'm actually very cheerful and chipper in my good self and it takes very little to put the smile back on my face.
But what Tim Page says about music, writing, and film here certainly applies to me. I have written over twenty million words in the past quarter of a century, always to the sound of music. No music, no words: word, return to music (Osip Mandelstam). I do immerse myself in the written word and the world as written. I approach the world 'out there' with my 'writing voice.' With that immersion comes a transcendent ecstasy. With every wish there comes a curse, as the song goes. Autism is not a curse but a condition. With the pain and suffering comes a joy, delivering ecstasies beyond the wishes of the wildest dreamers by day. I don't just get an unbearable sensory overload when the world and its 'events' are coming at me from all directions, I get an incredible sensory euphoria when I'm settled in my routines and on top of things, soaring high on intellect and emotion. The ecstasies, if less frequent than the agonies, are more profound, and sublimely sensuously cerebrally pleasurable. I call it a sensible transcendence. Or, even more ecstastic, a sensuous transcendence.
