awesome disability/divergent-embodiment things:

[shehasathree]

http://star-anise.tumblr.com/post/129610156974/c-is-for-circinate-so-hey-disabled-version-of
c_is_for_circinate 

So hey

Disabled version of Cinderella where the prince is entirely faceblind, and Cinderella has a musculoskeletal condition where her mobility could be seriously improved by custom orthotics.  Which of course she never had until the fairy godmother made them for her, which explains why her entire gait and posture changed at the ball and her stepmother/sisters never recognized her.

After that, well, the shoe-fitting is just efficient.

http://star-anise.tumblr.com/post/129609861769/dyspraxia-gothic

weird-mcgee

 

• You choke on water. You choke on air. Your friends ignore you choking. Things are always going down the wrong way. You’re not sure there was ever a right way.
• The bruises appear mysteriously. Sometimes you wake up to a constellation that wasn’t there yesterday (or maybe it was; there are always bruises somewhere).
• “If you keep practising, you’ll get better at it,” they say about football, about netball, about volleyball, about basketball, about baseball. You wonder how many people they’ve lied to before. You keep practising. 
• The words won’t come out, or they come out wrong. You have the sentence in your head but something else controls your mouth, something unknown. 
• You could do it yesterday. You might be able to do it tomorrow. You cannot do it today. 
• All you want is a routine. All you have is a fear of the things you’ve left undone. Nothing fits. 
• There are things you’ve left undone, aren’t there? You think you might have written them down somewhere. Someone saw you write them down. When the things are left undone, they will come for you.
• Your hands have betrayed you again. 
• Your muscles do not talk to each other about anything except for pain. 
• Do this, then that. Do this, then that. Clothes off, then shower. Shirt on, then coat. You know the rationale behind these things but the rationale is not enough. It is never enough. 
• The doctor asks, “What did you trip over?”. You do not know. You did not see. Maybe it was the eternal shadows that haunt the corners of your vision. Maybe it was your own feet. 
• Everything is too loud. Everything is too bright. Everything feels too rough. You scream until you can leave either this place or your body.
• The form asks what support you require. You do not know. You’ve never had it.

http://timetolisten.blogspot.com.au/2015/09/movement-teachers-i-am-your-dream.html

NeurodivergentK/kassiane:

Movement teachers: on the surface I am your dream student.

I'll walk in. You'll show me basics. Or have someone show me basics. They will do them at the same time I do, so I can exactly follow. I'm echopraxic, you see. If I have someone to exactly follow? I can do that. I can make my body do exactly what they do--or as close to exactly as different builds allow.

You will probably think that I am talented. I probably am not. I am echopraxic and I have a big library of movement to draw from. So as long as I have someone to follow I can look comfortable with the things.

You may be tempted to skip steps. You may forget there's things I haven't learned. I know how to do a lot of things with my body because of years of dance, gymnastics, & team sports. This is why I can give you the impression I have an aptitude: because if it is on the ground or in the air I have probably done something similar. I've done gymnastics. I've spun a flag & marched at the same time. I've done some ridiculous number of styles of dance. I've played basketball on feet and on wheels. Whatever you're showing me, I'm sure to have a bit of muscle memory that relates enough that I can copy you or more advanced people.

Here's where I'm your nightmare:

I can only copy for a substantial amount of time.

Comments

[vass]

BUT i have no way of telling where my 'natural' skills lie because i was raised in a musical culture deeply afraid of letting students learn through aural means

*nod* and maybe even without that cultural interference and channelling, it might be less where your "natural" skills lie, in one area, but something that could fluctuate over your life, which particular skills are easier or more comfortable. Particularly since you're autistic. :D

Oh, and also that it makes me mad that audiation is not a thing that is generally talked about.

Yes, this. Although if they had, when I was in primary/secondary schooling, I would have taken it as a reason I shouldn't be a musician/am not good at music -- the way people who don't have strong reading skills do now. There REALLY REALLY needs to be more awareness in the classical music (education especially) world that there are multiple valid paths for musicianship, and that musicians can work on their weaker skills rather than how easily they come being a sign of whether one is a "true musician" or not (blech). The Romantics had a lot to answer for (I keep saying that, and I keep digging down to new layers of bullshit in my psyche or in Western culture in general. I read a Mary Oliver poem just last night about suicide and Romanticism, in which she said much the same thing, and yeah, FUCK the Romantics. I love them, but fuck them, fuck that entire movement in all its branches of artistic/musical/literary history.) Fuck the idea of having to be a Chosen, Destined, True Artist who is Naturally Talented and A Genius to get to have a career in or even enjoy one's art, SO FUCKING MUCH. It's so destructive.

btw, two successful musicians I can name off the top of my head who did not have good reading skills, but did have excellent audiation: Noel Coward, Luciano Pavarotti. Coward could play on piano and sing what came into his head, but had help writing down his compositions. And he was super prolific even if most of his stuff didn't age well.

And Pavarotti... every source I've read that mentions his music-reading ability (namely that he couldn't, at all) lists it as a personal failing, along with being fat and a womaniser. Like it was proof he was lazy and stupid. But no one could say he was a bad singer, and I do not believe the narrative that he simply had a naturally beautiful voice and didn't have to work. Apart from anything else, he memorised hundreds of roles in multiple languages. And the having a beautiful voice and retaining it for a full lifetime as a world class opera singer argues that (as well as being lucky with his anatomy and his later health) he also had excellent technique and was a very good kinaesthetic learner.

There is so much class stuff bound up here, too, in which learning systems are valued. Cartesian mind/body duality, too. Lots of great singers have Pav's story -- working class background, often trauma background too, not academically gifted, worked their arses off singing, fat in adulthood, written about like The Voice was something that just happened to them, a rescue fantasy, a "gift", not a talent that they invested in and worked at and protected and took risks to pursue. Like footballers and soccer players, but with way more magical/religious language and stars on foreheads.

Or like Onassis said to Maria Callas -- I'm quoting from memory, but something like "all you've got is a whistle that won't work," when she was having vocal problems in her mid-career. Rudolf Bing said something similar too, about how singers were like mutants -- not his word, but I can't remember what he did say -- freaks, maybe -- like opera singers have "a voice" and that's the only remarkable thing about them, this one very local anatomical variation.

And it's very untrue: having a beautiful singing voice is really not as unusual a trait as all that. It's having a beautiful voice plus the right confluence of skills (memory, performance, social, aural, linguistic) and teaching and environment and opportunity and interest/enthusiasm and business acumen (or a manager who they can trust) and health, that's unusual.

And people say similar things about instrumentalists too, but it's way intensified with singers, to the extent that when I was at uni, the instrumentalists said it of the singers but not of themselves. The idea that it's just a freak gift, not something you work at. A thing you have, not a thing you do, and why do you need to practise? God, that sounded awful, why are you wasting your time trying to be a singer?

I don't think that it is necessarily as common as legend has it, or that the reasons this happens are to do with the factors it is assumed.

Emphatically agreed. Also, improvisatory ability as a form of musicianship that doesn't get assessed in classical music exams, doesn't necessarily require reading skill, but does require a very high level of understanding of harmony and voice leading. Like Baroque church organists realising a through-bass on the fly, or 20th-century blues and jazz bassists improvising a walking bass. And some electronic musicians now, too. Just because it is not happening on paper does not mean it is not complex or learned as fuck.

And also that even though you wouldn't think it would make that much difference, apparently trying to think of myself as someone who is not best-at-reading-over-other-things, even outside of the context of words, is screwing with my head slightly. ahahaha. /o\

No, I can totally see how that would screw with your head. Fucking tapes. And being verbal can get so tangled up with perception of intelligence, of personhood, ime.

IF I AM NOT ~A READER~, THEN WHO AM I?! *pats self on head* - it's okay tiny hyperverbal/hyperlexic!nika, you're allowed to be complex. we contain multitudes and all that.*

♥ ♥ ♥

btw, thank you for this discussion. Singing and opera were my special interest for so long, and I haven't pursued it in years and years, so it's weird and wonderful how it all comes back and how I still have things to say about it, but they're different from what I'd have said back then. There's so much joy still there to feel. And I really value hearing your thoughts and opinions as someone who's worked and studied in a different area of the same thing and had such different experiences.

[shehasathree]

Too tired for proper reply, but: yesssss, and thank-*you*. :D