All Change Please

When me and my brain go to war...

I’ve previously written about the trials and tribulations of touring as a neurodiverse person/autistic musician and opened up about some of the more challenging aspects of life on the road for someone whose sensory needs require routine, predictability and control.

As ever, when I speak about my experiences with neurodiversity, and more specifically autism, I can only ever approach this from the perspective of my singular lived experience - as someone who was diagnosed decades ago with what used to be called “Asperger’s Syndrome” but what we now broadly term ASC (autistic spectrum condition).

As the old adage goes: you’ve met one autistic person… you’ve met one autistic person, so I certainly don’t ever dive into the subject with any attention of offering advice to anyone else who might be neurodivergent but I hope that by lifting the curtain a little on how I experience the world, perhaps it might inadvertently help someone navigating these kinds of things or who has an ND child/partner/friend.

So I’ll start with the positives: I was incredibly lucky to be invited recently to record at the Towshend Studios in West London for 2 days - an absolute treasure trove of vintage synthesisers that brings together a collection of 12 rare analogue synths owned by The Who’s Pete Townshend (the name of the studio might have been a give away…)

As someone who is a self-confessed synth-nerd and recovering eBay late night auction addict, I have certainly acquired my own fit-to-burst collection of synths over the years. But my own synth-stash is nothing compared to what was on offer at the Townshend Studios, especially with their spectacular offering of modular synths, many of which were used to create sounds for the Quadrophenia soundtrack.

So, you might say that I was pretty excited about getting to play around with these legendary instruments for a couple of days and to see how they could contribute to the textures and sonic landscape of the new Anchoress studio album. Getting to experiment with some of these rare models that have been kept in such good condition was an opportunity I couldn’t turn down, despite anticipating that there may be some barriers for me accessing the space.

Most artists might leave it at that and post a gloriously triumphant/smug/happy shot of them working in the studio on Instagram and say no more apart from what a wonderful experience they had.

But not me. No.

You see, I experience the world differently, and for every high and every gift that the universe offers me, I also have to navigate the lows of some really challenging aspects of life that others might just take in their stride.

Like many autistic folk, there are some simple everyday occurrences that pose a challenge and incur a high cost for me on a psychological level.

I’ve written elsewhere about some of the privileges and academic gifts afforded to me by my particular personal cocktail of neurodivergence. But the extent to which this negatively impacts my social and every day life is perhaps less apparent.

Like many autistic girls, I was a champion “masker” growing up. I learnt how to cover up many of my difficulties and differences with the finesse of an Oscar winning actress. But the cost of this was and is still very high. You cannot out-mask your brain and the autistic highwayman will always come to claim his price, just as you think you’ve made a clever getaway back through the relative safety of your front door.

For me, the effects are always both simultaneously physical and mental. I think of them as a physiological manifestation of the overload and over demand on the computer that is my brain: like a laptop overheating or running out of CPU. The physiological endpoint can be summed up by the fact that after I arrived home after the first day at the studio, I felt very literally like I had been hit by a truck.

“I don’t think I can go back again tomorrow”. I cried. I was upset with myself for “not being normal”, at the idea of missing out on a once-in-a-lifetime chance. I took myself straight to bed at 8pm, as soon as my daughter was asleep, and slept for nearly 11 hours, knowing it was the only thing I could do.

The body keeps score.

I’m trying to nudge the scales back in my favour.

Why did I feel like this, you might ask? I had experienced a brilliant day in terms of playing music, exploring the instruments, and soaking in the feeling of being allowed to touch these historic artefacts. And yet I felt truly physically terrible on a cellular level. Unwell, and in pain.

But I wasn’t ill in a viral way. No. That’s just the way my brain works when it’s been forced to encounter an overwhelming amount of newness and change in one ten hour block.

Let me break it down for you:

First, there was the matter of travelling to the studios. I had already anticipated that getting the rush hour train and squeezing myself into the commuter rush was going to set me up for failure in terms of being able to get the most out of the day. So, my manager Sean very kindly offered to drive me there and back, and we pre-booked a parking space on Just Park to avoid any unexpected surprises or lack of parking spaces on arrival, which would have spun me out.

Clever planning I thought and patted myself proverbially on the back. Avoiding public transport meant that the balance sheet fell plus one in my favour by 9am and I congratulated myself on avoiding a nearly 2 hour train journey in favour of 45 minutes in a calmer environment. I’ve got very good, so I thought, at navigating and anticipating what will help me to manage.

But then the person who was supposed to be meeting and greeting me was running late.

My brain hit the first obstacle because I am NOT GOOD at managing (understatement of the year) unexpected change or when things don’t go as I have played them out meticulously in my head (something I have to do before any event).

I didn’t know which entrance to go to and I had planned the timetable for the day down to the half hour to make the most of the room.

I was losing time. I was lost. This threw everything off.

Next up is the challenge of meeting new people. Do not let Radiohead fool you that for everyone “Meeting People Is Easy”. While I can be very good at this, it’s a high masking activity for me and requires a lot of energy as I try to remember the “script” to not appear too weird or say THE THIING THAT YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO SAY.

Try to remember to make periodic eye contact. Smile. Laugh when you are supposed to.

This is why I prefer to work alone or with just one other person. It frees up so much more of my bandwidth to focus on the task in hand.

Unfamiliar spaces and buildings are also a huge challenge (and for this the second day was much easier from the off, having got the hang of the basics). It’s always really helpful if you can get a visual of the entrance, or even better, as video of the route to and from the space you are working in. I had done some research and viewed the space as best I could online, but as a newly opened studio, there was limited footage available of what to expect.

Next daily challenge: hyper focus vs remembering to eat.

With synths and music-making being one of my special interests, its very easy for me to become so immersed in a task that I forget to do the things that humans need to do, such as drink, eat and go to the bathroom. No, this can be really handy when you’re on a deadline or needing to steer a project forwards really quickly, but the physical effects are no doubt pretty obvious, and this was further exacerbated by needing a key card to get in and out of the studio to find the cafeteria and bathrooms.

Because I tend to choose to work in commercial studios spaces that I am already familiar with, I had underestimated just how much of an impact I would feel juggling all of these new elements on day one.

I am very happy to say that I woke up on day two ready to face the challenge again but found my second trip so much easier because I had accumulated some familiarity by now with the journey, space, people and environs. But I really wish I had better anticipated the challenges that walking into this new space was going to pose for me

I guess I had just got a little cock-sure of late because I have felt so newly comfortable on tour, due to assembling a crack team of people around me with like-minded neurospicy ways and assembled in a way a mobile constancy and consistency in the form of my incredible touring band and technical team.

I still need to think a little more about how I might translate this into other contexts. I would like to be able to attend award ceremonies where I’m nominated (I’ve missed three of the MPGs now where I was up for a gong), and had to turn around last year on my way to the prestigious once-in-a-lifetime invite to The Ivors (which I helped judge) after having a panic attack on the train there.

I miss out on so much and there are so many times where I just think WHY CAN’T YOU BE NORMAL?

I’ve had lots of conversations with good folks about strategies that work for them like buddying up and bringing a chaperone (something I’ve done myself where it’s practical and permitted) but this isn’t always possible where you’re only gifted one award ticket as a nominee, and an additional guest would set you back several hundred pounds.

I hesitated to write all this down for fear of being judged or misunderstood. But I also feel that it’s important to be more open about some of the invisible work that goes on when you’re autistic and just trying to exist or do your job.

I’m very lucky in that I have carved out a life for myself that means I have mostly worked in isolation in bespoke environments that suit my sensory needs like studios and libraries since I embarked on my PhD at 22. But there still always will be times when I am forced very much outside of my comfort zone.

I often ask myself how many opportunities I have missed out on because of the things that I find myself not able to manage. How many events have I ended up standing outside of? Or not even made it to in the first place? How many people might I have met if it didn’t mean navigating a busy, noisy room of people?

We can torture ourselves with the “what if” of if we were just entirely different people…

I am so glad that I was able to remind myself that second days are always so much easier and I really hope to return again to Townshend Studios in the future. Because while people and places might always be overwhelming to me, I can be sure that some things never change, and that me and the synths will always be firm friends.