Impressions of Pure Joy
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at 1969 Gallery, curated by Chella Man
“I’m almost tempted to say that the fragments of poetry are prose becoming autistic”1
Ralph Savarese to Tito Mukhopadhyay
On Thursday
June 30th
2022
at Gallery 1969
the opening of Pure Joy
I was overwhelmed, with; well—joy
And still, sometimes it takes a while for me to process my feelings
to let the thing settle
inside me
to find the mental space
to slowly pick it up
turn it over
again
but as I walked away
I had forgotten about that
making a promise to myself
the inner checklist for what I thought this piece was gonna be:
Tmr. night/
write the first-shitty-draft
it's okay just get it all out
Saturday/
first review
and edit
set up the images
step away/ try to rest/ can’t
second review
and edit
step away/ beer: you’ve done well
Sunday/
final review
minor edits/ resist rewriting—remember, it will not make it better only opposite
submit
get that feel-good feeling for having successfully followed a plan/ beer: you’ve done well
Two weeks later/
Constantly, in my head, remaking this listing of the work to be done, next week, next week, next week—every time revisiting the works mentally, building an anticipation, a prolonged preparation, happening underneath the surface; not understanding why is this so difficult to get started? What was it I experienced at that show? How to start…
Two months later/
Attempting to language the experience at the show, I found myself a prolonged preface, as if caught in a Zeno-paradox, only ever halving my distance to the turtle/ the tree in front of me. Only slowly, realizing that getting back to the show actually was getting me back into myself. Trying to formulate the experience of it / it had taken me deep back into how I had arrived there
asking me about visibility
about how I felt seen
about my own experiences as an Autist
and could I even identify my own joy?
I had no answer. I had never considered this. I felt called to explore my inner geographies for what unseen aspects of my being might be wandering there.
What does it mean to be seen? Or, better yet,
What does it mean to show up unapologetically—what will be seen then?
I’ve been thinking about the distance between explaining and exploring my Autistic self. Since learning that I’m Autistic, I’ve been in a deep dive, devouring books/ talks/ performances that illuminated this new knowledge about my life, looking to realign myself with my new reality, the person I was always becoming even when I didn’t know and even more so when I unknowingly actively worked against it and therefore couldn’t fit my self into my own language. Trying to find a new language, with which to write myself back into my own life, I’ve strived to stay mindful of all the languaging that’s out there surrounding Autism, and still, I’ve often gotten it wrong.
and I’ve said it
I used person first language
because it sounds right
it’s sold very convincingly
very intensionally
to keep Autistics on the sideline
to keep control of the language
with which to control the narrative
to speak Autism in to an other
apart from you
not apart of you
something to
be cut away to
remove us from
ourselves
imprison us in our own bodies
I said it
person with Autism
because it sounded right
referring to myself and then this other
putting the person first sounds right—right?
It wasn’t until I read Autism activist and scholar Nick Walker that I understood the insidious nature of this language. The pathology paradigm2, so deeply rooted in the notion of Autism as a disease in need of a cure, the image of the healthy kid trapped inside the prison of a sick Autistic body. As Walker writes “We recognize that it would be outrageously inappropriate—and likely to mark us as ignorant or bigoted—if we were to refer to a Black person as ‘having negroism’ or being a ‘person with negroism’ or if we were to say that someone ‘suffers from homosexuality’”.3
I understand that I learn by examples, by mirroring or echoing and trying on things, having to embody them for myself, to feel it out, be familiar with the archs and tones and vibrations—it’s a constant learning curve; one on which I’m allowing myself to get it wrong. Also when it hurts. Because growing hurts. And I’m open to correcting; whenever I get new and better information. I see it as embodying the poetic language of uncertainty and doubt, which is intimately related changing of your perceptions.
Let’s try a quick thing together. Close your eyes and visualize an Autistic person, then come back and read on.
You saw the person for your inner eye, good. For most, especially allistic, I will wager this person is a close resemblance to Raymond Babbit, Dustin Hoffman’s beloved 1988 character in the hit movie, Rain Man; or Sheldon Cooper, if you’re younger. Because as Remi Yergeau writes “Media accounts of Autistic people communicate the sensationalism of savant-beings who are at once so extraordinary yet so epistemically distant and critically impaired.”4 There’s very little room for nuance, Autism is flattened into a mere image. The Autistic life is presented as hollowed out and othered, not a fully engaged human experience, but sidestepped from “a real life”. It reduces Autists to the idea of the disability and asks us to perform the disability to be accepted by matching allistic stereotype. “A glance can freeze us in place; it can possess us. . . But in a glance also lies awareness, knowledge.”5 I often find myself stuck in the glances, explaining Autism to others while my explorations go overlooked as mere quirkiness—something aesthetically I have just pulled out of the blue, not something ethical about my experience. My expression always judged through the lens of the allistic, the “that is not how we do it here”, the confusion in allistic eyes where it’s easier to see it as less than to do the work of trying to understand that there can be more to the world than what you expect to see. How language can fall away to reveal the poems within, to be seen as distilled not diluted. What would it mean to be seen? To have Autistic experience written into the understanding of life. Allistic is thought of as not even the golden standard, but
just the given
just the normal
just it
really
against which
all else is measured
but when I expose myself as me
when it shows that I don’t fit the bill
then the only thing to consider
is to determine how far removed am I
how great are my deficiencies—not how great am I
This measure of disorder places a burden of explanation on the disabled: why are you not like everyone else? It alleviates the “normal” of doing any work to understand something outside of themselves. While ironically, everyone “normal” is constantly trying to be unique but doesn’t recognize true uniqueness when it’s standing right in front of them. Frantically doom-scrolling to find that one eccentric thing / jacket / posture / style / post, that will set you apart. Reversing Henry Ford—the algorithms sell us uniqueness by churning out the same answer in a thousand different colors, merely concealing that underneath it’s all the exact same “normal” thing.
And in the middle of this, I find myself suspended in limbo. I present allistic—even as someone for whom the world is made: I’m a tall, athletic, able-bodied, white, cis-gendered man, and through a lifetime of subtle and not-so-subtle hints, have tried to perform this role I was asked to play to the best of my abilities, even when always feeling outside
the world looking in
observing my
self perform
the act of humanness
not fully in it
it was valued by the response
its appearance got from others
creating a separation
from the self
being this third person
walking in the world
wearing a mask of the idea
of what it was to be human
constantly sidestepping myself
in an attempt to perform what
seemed so natural to others
as I didn’t understand what was going on inside me
and in that instance it all just drops away from me
but I’m not free’d I’m suspended within my
self no longer fully attached to my
experience I find it difficult to grasp let alone express
hanging there in a language that doesn’t exist
trying to hold on to anything coming my way
failing a best not at all at my best
and you look at a point in me I can’t locate
trapped right in front of you
and it hurts
and I can’t explain it
only hint at it
as I’m trying to explore it for myself
which can be hard to find space for
let alone words
that have never existed within me
needing to be heard
by me
by others by me
to see them
see me
Many friends have approached my new realization with skepticism, wanting an explanation for that which they don’t understand, that which doesn’t fit their reality of me. Well-meaning old friends, who I love, who I think love me, dismiss me entirely without even noticing it: “that’s not how I see you at all.” As if to save me from making this mistake of crying Autism. Because why would I choose to live like Rain Man?
Resulting in most of my thinking about my Autistic self being rooted in the perspective of helping the other understand, which has absolutely nothing to do with me. What I want to explore is my authentic Autistic self. To explore the magic of what I’m experiencing on a daily walk, when looking through my viewfinder, when stringing lines across my notebook pages, considering them as poems which are also drawings, constellations which are drawn out of me. Reveal how my Autistic gaze makes spatial connections, juxtapositions, and overlays of distinct places to build new worlds. Worlds that include incoherent fragments, impossible collisions, multiple scales, and viewpoints all simultaneously. This joy rushing through me in playing with my matter. Centering joy is centering the individual.
And so back at the opening; a beautiful space, filled with joyful folx. It was overwhelming. I had no echo for a space like this, no way of preparing myself for what I walked into. People spilled out onto White Street, a huge new wooden ramp allowing access (and showing what we can do in terms of access if we so choose). Hands flapping everywhere, from stimming, gesturing, non-verbal communication. After walking around the show, I am overloaded. I constantly try to calm myself down and talk my courage up, to just say thank you (and hopefully something meaningful), to the person that curated this experience
but as I get close to Chella Man
I
divert
new round
no
new approach
standing there waiting
aborting
round again
and again
fifth time’s the charm
still unable to get to
the words
lacking the social skills on this evening
please accept this transcript from that June night of what I was preparing
in my head over and over again every time I walked up to him:
Thank you, Chella Man,
for imagining this
for being able to do this
for making it look so fluent
so effortless
so smooth
so natural
for centering joy
for bringing the diversity of voice
the diversity of expression
of medium
of worlds
walking away
the distant echo
like a low hum
reflecting so many of my thoughts
how do we actually understand
who we are
that we’re not finished
we can choose who to be
give space to ourselves
to unfold us
to trust in our internal being
to recognize where we are reacting from
to have grace with ourselves
and understand
others are also just figuring out.
as a friend once told me
to grow up is to understand that there are no adults in the room6
no one knows what they’re doing
so reach out
in whichever way open to you
for support
for help
for community
to know that you’re not alone
that there are so many wonderful people
deep thinkers
incredible artists
working alongside you
there are conversations happening
there are others
this doesn’t just have to be just a monologue
constantly running in your head
as you circle a room
the streets
your life
speaking about self-actualization
here’s Chella Man in his pocketbook “Continuum”7:
“Most of these conversations were one-sided. I quietly followed and read the perspectives of others. Instead of directly speaking to them, as one would in person, I held conversations with myself, ignited by their words. The relationship that developed there united me with my community as well as my own identity. I finally had a front-row seat to the dialogue happening within my own cultures.”
On that June night, I witnessed the fruits of his work, building a community around him. And realize that my own journey into a community here has only just begun. And so as I circled the room, not able to participate, just taking it all in, all the beauty, all the smiles, all the laughs, all the gestures, I slowly realized that this exists out there, and I can find it, I can seek it out, I too can one day join in.
Notes:
- Savarese, Ralph James. “More Than a Thing to Ignore: An Interview with Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay.” Disability Studies Quarterly 30, no. 1 (2010). https://doi.org/10.18061/dsq.v30i1.1056, as quoted in Erin Manning. The Minor Gesture. Duke University Press, 2016. p. 160.
- From “Throw Away the Master’s Tools” in Nick Walker. Neuroqueer Heresies. Autonomous Press, 2021, p. 16.
- From “Throw Away the Master’s Tools” in Nick Walker. Neuroqueer Heresies. Autonomous Press, 2021, p. 21.
- Remi Yergeau. Authoring Autism : On Rhetoric and Neurological Queerness. Duke University Press, NC, 2018, p. 2.
- Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera, as quoted in Remi Yergeau. Authoring Autism : On Rhetoric and Neurological Queerness. Duke University Press, NC, 2018.
- Thank you James Reeves for helping me see this.
- Man, Chella. Continuum. Penguin, 2021, p. 38.
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About the Author
Troels Steenholdt Heiredal (b. 1984) is an Autistic / neuroqueer artist and architect examining the differences between explaining and exploring disability. He currently lives and works in Taipei, Taiwan. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in PLAT 13, arq: Architectural Research Quarterly, Star 82 Review, Vallum, ANMLY, Taipei Poetry Collective, and Otherwise Magazine. Visit his website at www.troelsheiredal.com; follow him at @theiredal.bsky.social on Bluesky and @t.heiredal on IG.