Felt strangely emotional at the Sarah Blasko show last night. It's a good kind of emotional. The kind that feels like catharsis when you've lived a life like mine. I also couldn't sleep last night so I got out of bed and wrote this instead.
I don't fit in. I never have. It's the natural result of being steadfast in your preferences, but also having it thrust upon you. Whether it's being the youngest person at school, the interstate person at university that doesn't know anyone, or the only Australian (or West Australian) in so many group chats. I support a football team from a state I've never set foot in, and I take to my own learning mnemonics that tend to put a ceiling on how proficient I can be, but never in a way that's strictly clear. I could adapt muscle memory for learning piano but I could never read sheet music very well or attain a natural rhythm that made key signatures feel like anything less than an arbitrary difficulty constraint. I'll play competitive online video games like Tetris or Rocket League and become an irritant as I match win rates with players who seem objectively more capable of doing it by the book. Even in a game like Furi where I hold world records and thus the meta should be formed around what I'm doing, I still have quirks about my process that nobody emulates. I have very strong opinions about the way music charts should work, rooted in my self-taught statistical background that most will strongly disagree with. In all these cases, it's like there was a meeting that everyone but me attended on what the proper way to do everything is. Alternatively, it's just the lot in life of being on the autism spectrum.
If this isn't part of your life experience, let me tell you that it's weird. It's being prescribed to a journey where you can't fully relay your way of thinking to anyone else, because it's always different. This is true even regarding other people on the spectrum. I'd often attend groups that were for people just like me, except they weren't really. It's an experience that only makes you feel more isolated because instead of making you feel like you belong, it reinforces that there are even less likeminded people out there than you were led to believe.
Some of my biggest challenges growing up have come from the fact that it's not even apparent on first glance that there's anything atypical about me. I'd get majorly stressed out by certain tasks in school, but was often an afterthought because I was getting straight A's in most of my other classes, and wasn't the typical 'problem child'. I developed an early feeling of being a burden when I'd have to ask a teacher multiple times for alternative assessment because I was so good at masking when I was internally screaming. One time in high school I had to attend a seminar on understanding and treating autistic people with kindness, and the people running it were talking down to me because they thought I was a neurotypical bully who didn't know what it was like. One time in university, it was pouring down with rain and as a result I arrived late, drenched, and miserable about the fact, and my lecturer just glared at me like I'd run over their dog, I could never feel comfortable approaching them again. Another time I got put into an online group assignment and had to meet up at the other ECU campus I'd never been to. Instructions were unclear and I just wandered around like a lost soul for an hour until I eventually left, never exchanging another word online with these people and I think I had to just can the entire unit for mental health reasons, something I repeatedly did.
I'll admit that it's something I hadn't really come to terms with growing up either. How can you, after all? It's taxing enough to come to terms with everything about how the world works, only to find out that you're taking a different test to everyone else, and there aren't any readily available resources on the topic that can fully capture how things work. I even spent a lot of my teens with undiagnosed anxiety, and left them feeling like I missed out on so many formative experiences because I was unable to open up about anything. I sincerely apologise to anyone for whom time spent with me has been annoying, tedious, or frustrating, because I know I could be a handful at times. One of the painful parts of it all that I did manage to internalise at a young age was that intrusive thought that everyone around me was only courteous because of praxis. It's a strangely dehumanising feeling that has you feeling stripped of any soul.
Even well into adulthood, these kinds of feelings still arise. I live on disability allowance. I've never worked a day in my life. It's not the party it sounds like. It's a feeling of constant persecution, like just saying the fact is going to earn me ire to some percentage of people who see it. The kind who think the solution to mental health is to just get over it. Meanwhile, you're just isolated from everyone in your life. Everyone else goes out, works a job, meets people, falls in love, gets married, has children. I just sit at home most days. Chuck in the fact that I don't drink, don't have a driver's licence and am always hyper fixated on any manner of niche topics (that I am often not willing to talk about), and it's a miracle I can ever hold a conversation.
There's a positive side to all of this. I am extremely lucky to be surrounded by friends and family who largely understand my limitations and value my unique input. I'm not always good at expressing my gratitude for this, but I'm saying right now here that you're much appreciated. Having a lot of time to myself has allowed me to thoroughly nourish myself in things that interest me, with the belief that the next fixation is right around the corner. My speedrunning achievements earned me a certain respect among peers that gave me the confidence to open up more online, and subsequently meet so many friends around the world. I still sometimes feel like a gimmick character, but one who is better respected and understood for it. Even if I don't get out much, I've still amassed some eccentric anecdotes, enough to fill out a solid winning streak full of the dreaded interview segment on Jeopardy! Remember that time I got called up to be on national radio?
I see my fortune as a means to be happy, and it's something that gives me reason to reciprocate it. In a world riddled with conflict, misinformation, and conflict over that misinformation, I find it most satisfying to do things with kindness. It's one of those things that sounds hokey, but I can't overstate just how much better my mental health has been ever since I stopped trying to compete with anyone in some imaginary competition to be the most correct or to live the best life. It's possible to correct or inform someone without sounding smug. Alternatively, it's looking at my own intrusive thoughts where everyone hates me, and responding by putting forward a version of yourself such that you don't feel like there's a good reason to be attacked, or it's one that makes the other person come off in a bad light if so.
I'm not perfect, I never will be. What I can be though, is someone with a strict personal morale code on what is just, and to follow that to the fullest. It's probably something I've always stood by. I remember when I was younger I'd sometimes do the wrong thing and I'd have these full on episodes where I'd start crying and struggle to breathe correctly for a few minutes (I still don't know what it's called?). It wasn't necessarily me being upset that I'd been punished, but rather that I'd failed to do the right thing and let myself down.
My condition is still very debilitating. While I am fairly active in various parts of the web, I still lack the brazen confidence to say anything & everything that's on my mind, lest I be overbearing and annoying, or just accidentally slip out the wrong take without enough nuance. I still can't do eye contact. I'm always either stimming or thinking about stimming. I can't attend any sort of outside activity or location with someone without staying still in one place, lest the computations of everything get overwhelming. I still struggle to address people by name or sometimes even gendered pronouns as I just get strangely embarrassed by the whole thing (this is the unusual apolitical route to wanting to use they/them pronouns for others as much as possible). I'll have therapy sessions or just normal conversations where I am either unable to talk, or simply cannot stop talking and there's no good middle ground (who could possibly count how many times I was told to be quiet in Year 12 Specialist Maths, only to do the same thing again a day later?). I'm one of the worst people to be shown something to react to because so often my reaction is just quiet contemplation. I might come across as an emotionless husk at times but I'm anything but.
Anyway I think I was supposed to be talking about music.
My journey of musical rediscovery in 2006 is something I can never stop talking about, and in fact I did so less than a week ago on this blog. Not to repeat myself too much (though I will), but there were times when music felt like my closest friend. I'd listen to triple j every morning, and every night and just be engulfed by this seemingly never ending world of ideas. People like to make fun of triple j presenters and listeners nowadays, but I have to express just how fundamentally important it was for me to have this source of positivity and have it reinforced by all these voices on the other end. When you're filled with reassuring voices, it's easier to believe in the good of it, just like how surrounding yourself with wise-cracking pessimism will do nothing but sink you to that level. Utilise absolute caution when reading the comment section anywhere, those crabs are always more content with filling the bucket rather than even trying to get out.
I could hardly talk about this to anyone. Even if I felt brave enough to do so, I'd never believed in myself to have the social cache to convince anyone that this thing I like that's outside of their zone of interest is worth adding to it. As time has gone by, my musical interests have only gotten more specific and isolated, not in a deluded 'I'm the only one who listens to Mitski' way, but the kind where my favourite song of last year gets less hits per day than I do. Depending on who you ask, I have a reputation for having arcane knowledge about music (I wouldn't completely agree and the frequency in which I miss trivia questions would back this up). It's usually buffed by my concentrated knowledge in isolated areas, and that's derived from the positive feelings I've gotten from it. I will never understand the pissing contest that music fandom turns into, where everyone has to put anyone else down for not having the objectively correct takes, which no one can agree on. It's this exhausting experience where I'll feel out of the loop for not having heard a particular indie album, and then somewhere else I'll find someone suggesting that this same indie album is a red flag that makes the world worse by existing. It's a world where not knowing an artist who has billions of streams is somehow a badge of honour and the bare minimum of curi. I derive no joy for bringing people down over preferences. When I listen to obscure music, it's not to brag that I'm the best crate-digger, it's just me liking what I like. Maybe I'll get mentally lumped in with snobbish listeners for saying that, but I'll never exhibit that behaviour, and more likely chide others for doing it. The real best reason for listening to obscure music is that it's often immune to the discourse. Like oh, there's an archetype for being a man who likes Clairo, but I've never heard a word about what it means to listen to GAZAL. It's much more fun that way.
Where does Sarah Blasko come into this? Well we're in what Homer Simpson would call the creamy middles. The sort of fame that's hard to quantify as it's localised entirely within one country. We're talking about albums that sold in the tens of thousands but didn't generate any crossover top 40 hits, making it all very easy to avoid if you're not looking for it. That's why I hadn't heard any of her music until that one fateful day in 2006 when the music video for "[explain]" came on TV. It's something I grew a soft spot for but I don't think I could even admit to myself how I felt, because it just didn't seem like my wheelhouse. Nowadays I listen to a lot of music that could be described as 'girly', but taking that first step is very difficult.
Australian music is in a difficult place right now. It's absolutely still being made and heard (often quite good too), but it's being pit against an algorithm that doesn't want it to succeed, and it feels like every year on the ARIA Charts, the ceiling for Australian music that hasn't hit it big overseas gets increasingly lowered, and those instances of Australians hitting it big overseas are also shrinking. It's increasingly normal to look at the ARIA Singles Chart and see no Australian music in it.
This is a cycle that fuels itself. If nothing gets big, no one talks about it. If no one talks about it, nothing gets big. Not only that, but you start to look at past successes that have left the discourse machine, and they feel as though they're fading away too. Just from doing this blog, it's shockingly common to find artists that were once briefly very popular, whose monthly listener stats are pitiful in a way a blackball or boycott could only dream of managing. As I get older, this gets increasingly true for artists who were core to my upbringing, and I can't even be surprised. You often have to be my age to have come across it in the first place, so younger listeners are writing them out of the canon, not out of malicious ignorance, but because they're not being exposed to the same channels I once was.
It's why in all of this, I am so glad when I'm able to experience something that can be described as a popular agreement. Finding out that not only was Sarah touring, not only was it a nostalgic celebration, but that it was specifically those very two albums I adored in full and in sequence, is one of the closest moments I've come to literally jumping for joy. It's not often you get to see something that is genuinely catered specifically to your interests, specifically to your moment in time, one that feels increasingly fleeting. But then you get there, and not only is it sold out, but everyone is respectful. There's no one getting up in my face about me wearing a mask or looking like a scrawny weirdo, no one bumping me every 30 seconds without even the slightest inclination to apologise, no one ruining the experience for anyone else. It was just the ideal way to experience some songs I've adored for close to two decades, with solemn respect and politeness. It goes without saying that the show was excellent, better than I could have imagined even, and a big part of that was through attaining that rare comfort. For once in my life, I felt like I fit in.
(this post will not affect my bi-weekly posting here, expect the usual affair of music, charts & life minutiae on Monday, thanks for reading if you got this far)
No comments:
Post a Comment