Donna Williams’ Blog

TR Kelley is one funky woman on the autism spectrum and one of the interesting people listing on http://www.auties.org . Part of a great sounding group, The Raventones, she has two albums on CD Baby and iTunes and is a passionate, humorous, and radical blogger from a world most don’t think about. Welcome to my interview with her.

DONNA:
Hi TR, so you’re an Obama fan. Well he has a wonderful voice, style and manner, seems a gentleman and has that cosy fire feel,… and he seems a born diplomatic, someone who believes in pulling groups together. If you’ve been to my blog before then you know I am one of those foreigners who detested Bush from the pit of my stomach. So want to give me the international version of why the world will be safer with Obama?

TRK
Charisma! Obamania! I’ve never seen anything like it. People treat him like a rockstar. Good thing he doesn’t act like one. He came to Eugene, Oregon, a few days ago, i wanted to see him with every fiber of my being, but a crowded loud auditorium is just not somewhere i can be. I watched the next day on youTube in the comfort of my own home.

Let me say that many, if not most, Americans have grown to mistrust and dislike Bush especially after the Federal under-response to US Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Unfortunately, there seem to be underlying aspects of the majority neurotypical mind that can often present as disabilities. The blind instinct to follow the leader, even to obvious ruin, is a well known pathology. War is a social disease.

DONNA:
Awesome sentence, we should all remember it.

TRK:
However that instinct to follow can definitely be used for better things, and i believe Obama has a fundamental grasp and heart-connection to this principle. He is a true alpha, one who rules by love and respect, not fear; a leader who fans the spark in people so that they coalesce into a fire all their own.

DONNA:
That’s really lovely, I knew that ‘Alphas’ were born ‘leaders’ but I didn’t ever think of that as someone who can rule by love and respect. I guess many people with ASD fear self confident people, we’ve often being used and bullied. So nice Obama is an example that all that self confidence can also come from a really positive place.

TRK:
He is a bottom-up leader, a person who will show you how to do it yourself, not do it for you.

DONNA:
Yes, and Bush has been patronising the whole way, as if the American public are fooling children who need him, in all his wisdom (insert psychopathy as applicable) to help them remember at all times what to fear and that Daddy Bushling is there by the grace of God to keep them from harm (oh yeah, sure, was that a flying pig?).

TRK:
Obama has the tremendous capacity to unite Americans through their own desire to make things better, not by paternalizing and dictating, but by inspiring and facilitating.

This is not only the international reason why he is needed, it’s the meta-spiritual reason that goes deep into our collective unconscious. Whether he can maintain his Light in the Babylon world of Presidential politics is to be seen. He’s young and hasn’t passed some of life’s crueler tests yet. If he can escape asassination, he will be a man to be reckoned with far into his later years, even if he does not win the Presidency this time. Obama is a spiritual catalyst for the people.

DONNA:
That is so shocking as a non-American, to hear that sentence “if he can escape assasination”. So far, in Australia, we haven’t had to deal with that as a presumed potential reality.

Onto darker things though, I’ve been to the US many times. It’s overflowing with homeless people, massive numbers of people have no access to health care, you have people with dental problems from hell who will not then get work and can’t get treatment (we have this part in Australia too as our government waiting list for free dental treatment to low income people can be up to 7 years!). So where do you live and what are the positives of America… come on, cheer us all up.

TRK:
Cheer you up? Here, look at my matching gold molar crowns i got a decade ago from a dentist who arranged two years worth of small payments instead of insisting on insurance. There are still a lot of good people in the world.

DONNA:
Oh, that’s glorious. Who is he, let’s honor him. People like him are the world’s every day heroes. Cool.

TRK:
I live in the coastal mountains of Oregon USA, I have been here since 1966. It’s one of the last parts of the country to be settled by European colonizers and is still quite undeveloped outside the highway corridors. Lumber companies have cut nearly all the virgin forests, what is left are industrial tree farms that some people are fooled into thinking are forests simply because they contain a lot of trees.

DONNA:
Yes, you know in the UK – I lived there 13 years – I went to Sherbrook Forest. I was thinking ‘Robin Hood’, but it was more like Tree Supermarket. Trees lined up, neat as a pin, you could envision their numbers….number 13,567… Fortunately many places in the UK are still beautiful.

TRK:
Not many people live out here in Oregon, outside folks are frightened off by the long rainy winters. There are very few family-wage jobs since the timber industry mechanized and exported and over-cut itself nearly out of existence starting in the early 1980’s. Eugene is the closest city of any size, 130K people 50 miles east of here, it’s a university town.

DONNA:
Yes, I’ve spoken there. I really liked it. Seriously folks, go to Eugene, it’s lovely.

TRK:
My working class background includes poverty, divorce, alcoholism, lots of moving around. The past ten years have been stable as i have a partner and land and friends, but I have been homeless several times in the past. I have limited cash-only access to health care, and could certainly benefit from dental work not to mention mental therapy.

DONNA:
Well who knows, someone reading this might be inspired to donate to you! I hope at least you have access to online health forums and a bottle of fish oil can be affordable as Natures Lithium if one is bipolar and has no access to doctors, jogging often helps with depression, lemon juice in water and garlic is good for many levels of health and charcoal is the old means by which people kept their teeth clean. Not everything costs.

TRK:
I don’t have any sort of paycheck job but do make a small bit of money from sales of my CDs and occasional live shows. I get no government aid. There is a case pending somewhere, it’s been years. I’m self sufficient in a bare-bones pioneer make-do sort of way, i have my own little restored vintage trailer to retreat to outside the main lodge here. Everything i own easily fits into it, it’s important for me to be independent and have my own space within the larger structure of our intentional community.

DONNA:
Goodness, will you all go check out TR Kelly’s music NOW… she’s starving

TRK:
To make an independent life out of my handful of small pieces, i combine my energies with other people. I share 5 acres and a house with 7 othes (ages 14-54) who all contribute money and energy to the day to day existence of our “intentional family”. All of us are neurodiverse with strong interests, abilities and disabilities and enough income to pay our way on this small scale. We pool our talents to make a unified and functional social unit. Most of us would not be able to live alone unsupported for very long if at all. I’m not the only one with “homeless” on my resume. We live a life that most Americans would probably find materially primitive or deprived, something they sometimes might do for fun on holiday but not for real. We find our way simple, manageable, and sustainable for our skill-sets and income levels.

DONNA:
Very cool. My husband Chris and I live in the hills, in Victoria, Australia. We host autism-friendly dinners at some local cafes where people can come for anything from a cup of tea to a 3 course meal, we try to employ people on the spectrum for small jobs or gardening where we can. I host a social morning for social phobes (seriously) which keeps us all from rusting. A sense of community really matters.

TRK:
So what is positive about America? I guess that depends on perspective, but i will hold up our democracy as a lighthouse even if it is looking a bit fogged-in under the current administration. I look at my own situation globally, rather than by comparing only with the ubiquitous media-generated vision of the American Dream. Comparing my lot and circumstances in life to someone in Iraq or China or even Europe makes me feel very rich and fortunate.

DONNA:
Yes, true, but I do feel that foreigners playing football with ‘money bricks’ from the Iraq coffers and the almost unbeleivable squandering and corruption by the invading forces has lead Iraq to be one of the most appalling demolitions and that is a scar on the image of America, one I hope the new president will face instead of continuing to demonise Iraquis.

TRK:
Sure, i have to chop wood for the morning fire or there is no heat. But there is PLENTIFUL wood all around, windstorm-pruned out of the thick forest every winter, waiting to be sawn and split and dried in the sun. Yes we have to walk a mile pulling a cart of jugs to get safe drinking water, but it’s only a mile, it’s a beautiful walk in the woods, and it’s good water and we won’t be attacked or shot at while doing it. We have good soil to grow food and a house to store it in. We’re blessed with a location free of most human interference, an autie-positive feature for sure.
DONNA:
Goodness, there’s be thousands of people wanting your address in a minute. They’ll want you to put on a cuppa so they can drop over and stay a year or two

TRK:
That i am allowed to even exist, queer as i am and say my piece without fear of police or lynching or burning at the stake is an amazing gift. That i can choose NOT to bear children, that i can even leave my house unaccompanied by a male relative and not be beaten by a religious mob is a privilege millions of females on Earth do not have. This is the terrible beauty of the USA. Even the poor people here are rich, but they don’t know it, because even the rich loudly proclaim that they need more. What’s a poor guy to think?

DONNA:
Totally true. The sick doctrines of the world which seek to harm the souls and bodies of women, children and gay people is a very real reality for millions. I was recently sickened, however, by a new chant among the militants in the AS ranks of ‘a good NT is a dead NT’. Now what banana brain thinks that’s clever? Using one of the sickest slogans of modern society to rant separatist hate, seriously, grow a brain cell. I’ve been harmed by PARTICULAR PEOPLE, not categories. There’s no excuse for reverse prejudice. It’s the same as any other bigotry.

You’re a pretty radical blogger TR.
I get freaked out at the sexualisation of children and the role models of performers who sometimes basically anorexic porn stars with musical backing. I’m also really tired of the current fixation with the ‘pimp’ thang and the ‘hit me up’ heroin related slang thang and the way the whole society has gone into a sociopathic trend as if whoever can have the sickest values, be most boringly voyeristic, or play amateur paparazzi or online lynch mob leader is the winner. It’s just such a downer. Where are you will all this collective unconsciousness?

TRK:
Tired of it? Shut it off! No, really. No TV, magazines, tabloids or commercial radio at my house.
Sex sells and the music BUSINESS is about selling. Entertainment is about pandering to the commonest interests of the most people for the most money. Sex and drugs are always good for a laugh and a buck. Try not to hate people for being unsophisticated louts. Try not to hate yourself for any waves of jealous anger over such unfair crap. Talent is not rewarded, marketability is.

Channel the frustration. Present an alternative to the sleaze no matter how small or humble. Be the small candle in the darkness, a light that the lost are looking for. The one soul you save may be one who can save one thousand more, and there are people out there waiting for alternatives. Crave not individual glory but the Work itself. Sounds so sweetly cheesy, but it’s an aspiration that still shines through the fog when every other prize has shown it’s rotten core.
Having read your excellent books i can understand how child sexualization is an especially hot-button issue for you as an artist. I agree, most of the the messages of mass culture are awful and sordid. Out of self-preservation, i choose not to participate.

So where will i be? I hope to win the fight with ego and past damage, graduate to the sidelines with my small bright candle, bartering hand-printed maps of my quirky scenic footpath for those tired of the Interstate and the mall.

DONNA:
Well put.

We’re both musicians with albums on http://www.cdbaby.com and itunes.
Tell me about your journies with music, it’s role in your life, about Raventones and being an independant artist.
I listened by the way, great rhythms and cool eccentric vocals. Yay!

TRK:
Thanks for the kind words! As an aside, I’d love to trade CDs with you Donna, or any autistic artist who may be reading this.

DONNA:
OK, privately email me your address.

TRK:
My musical life is a long and complicated story. At the continued urging of family and colleagues, there is a book in the works, I’ll try to hit the basics without getting mired in storytelling and details.

early 1960’s - budding self-taught piano whiz until parents divorce and subsequent long move.

1972 joined school orchestra on cello. started playing mom’s acoustic guitar along with records. first experiments with multi-track recording using two portable cassette players.

1976 switch to bass in orchestra. Can’t read music, teacher doesn’t know i just hear and learn. fooled them for a long time!

1977 mom buys me electric bass and amp, takes me to jams at local bars. I am mostly mute, plainlooking but impressive on bass in a solid dance-band way. This leads to paying job offers in local bands with older people playing old songs. i never played with high-school peers.

1979-88 Directly after high-school i began playing in country and classic-rock cover bands in bars and on the B-hotel circuit in the Western US and Canada, places where there were cops on duty in the bar and strippers between sets. I started singing harmony, then a few leads, but was primarily a bass guitar player and an angry drunk who didn’t get along with anyone.
During this time began to experiment with original music, wordless weird stuff for my ears only, doing multi-tracking on reel-to-reel tape machines at home alone. This became a thread of sanity in a world of artistic prostitution.

1990 - radical life shift. left the bars and all the people in them. Lots of changes.
i begin writing original songs the week after the birth of my first child, and at my husband’s urging, ventured out to local coffeehouse open-mike nights. My promo then says that my “…

subsequent discovery by ex-NYC folkscene fixture Tom Intondi let to a slot on a nationally-released “Fast Folk” CD sampler in May of 1993. My contribution, “Clearcut Disillusion” was described by the Eugene WOW Hall Notes as a unique twist on the 1980’s Northwest timber wars delivered in “…a voice that can be chilling, grounded, haunted & soaring, all at the same time.”
The Fast Folk project is available the Smithsonian Institution. I am honored to have been able to contribute a political snapshot of our local reality here in timber country to the national archive.

That project led to Babes with Axes, formed in late in 1993. It was a unique format, four women singer-songwriters who had been part of the Fast Folk project coming together to take turns in the spotlight while the other three rotated through back-up vocals and additional instrumentation. We produced two live albums that received national and even international airplay on public and college stations. We were the favorite local act, played all the big local festivals, were on TV and in the paper and all over the radio, but several of us being working-poor moms without resources we were unable to fully pursue higher levels of exposure or go on long tours. One of our members then had to move to follow a husband’s job, that was the end the band. Our albums still enjoy airplay on college radio folk and women’s music programs, even on a few stations in Australia.

Before, during, and after BWA, i was concurrently continuing my solo work. i released three albums on my own label, sold several hundred of each at regional coffeeshop gigs and at BWA shows, typical small-town stuff.

After the demise of BWA and my marriage in 1997, i met Randy Hamme at a music store opening. He started as my guitar and sound tech and support person, then recording engineer, then drummer.

The Raventones is our current project. We have one album (odd birds) out and another in the works as the Raventones, and i am currently working on several solo projects as well. The internet has radically changed the way an artist can connect with an audience. We’re acquiring more technology for self-production. Always new avenues to explore, and now a record deal is basically irrelevant.

DONNA:
Yes, being able to produce our own albums and making a record deal redudant is a great thing. Of course we have to stay ‘visible’ in order to sell music, and that’s so crazy as an autie. Part says, get ‘out there’, no way. The other part says, ‘its part of the job’.

In the autism world you are quite a culturalist (autism as a culture, as ’self’). What’s your own autism story? Where are you on the spectrum and how do you see the relationship between selfhood and condition?

TRK:
I’m not completely sure of the last part but i’ll blaze away with some words and see what happens:

Being born in 1962 makes me part of the so-called “hidden horde”, people who never received a correct diagnosis because the extent of the autism spectrum was not fully understood.

DONNA:
Yes, I think people don’t really realise we had our own ’stolen generation’. That those with autism in 1950-1970 were often institutionalised around age 2 and left to rot. Others were bashed into submission, were hidden or ended up on the streets (ie the books For The Love of Ann or A Blessing and a Curse not to mention Nobody Nowhere).

TRK:
In school i was definitely a problem child. My dad confided to me on his deathbed that he had suspected autism.

DONNA:
Yes, similar. My father finally disclosed to me about the ‘A’ word during a suicidal phone call in my 20s. He knew that if he didn’t tell me ‘what kind of mad I was’ that I’d kill myself. I learned that around 1973, a teacher who had taken me home after a family brawl (I’d been in my Pjs in the street, around age 10 in the early hours of the morning and the teacher and her car salesman fiance were escaping one of our house parties that had crumbled into domestic violence). Anyway, on returning me the next day she’d apparently told them I was autistic (I’d been assessed as psychotic at age 2 in 1965 then labeled disturbed). Anyway, he had apparently wanted to tell me for years and I do remember when I was 13 and my parents fought because he had wanted to tell me something she was adament he would not. What people today don’t realise is that a mother today will often get sympathy for having an autistic child, but in those days the very WORD autistic was a direct stain on the mother as having ’caused it’. Mothers were allergic to the word. Hence I hear again and again that it’s often the fathers who finally disclose.

TRK:
I was eye and touch-avoidant, preferred to be alone, stared at shiny rotating things and played with water and pebbles instead of toys, was highly sensitive to sounds but not voices, a toe-walker and hand-flapper.

It was such a terrible thing for parent to contemplate at the time (because mothers caused autism according to the “experts”) and supposedly girls didn’t “get” autism.

DONNA:
Yes, people forget that part too. That was one of the reasons I got those other labels. Because I was a girl, my family were uneducated, I was hyper, I could sing and recite whole TV shows and all the advertisements. I didn’t fit the stereotype of silent, sullen, middle class boys. But what amazes me is how I’d be introduced as ‘that’s Donna, she’s disturbed’ or ‘that’s Donna, she’s psychotic’, yet the ‘A’ word was so unspeakably shameful. My father, however, used the word ‘feral’…’that’s Polly, she’s feral’ (he called me Polly). I don’t think people can imagine today the pathology of shame of that era.

TRK:
The clincher was that I talked, therefore i couldn’t POSSIBLY be autistic, right Doctor? In retrospect, i recited a lot of facts and spelled big words over and over again, but i did not converse. I mimicked TV and radio and teachers. But i was so good at it that it fooled the adults into thinking everything was OK.

Donna:
The 1960s was a time when parents were busier too. They had to cook, sew, walk, discuss, go places. There weren’t mobile phones or home computers and internet. There weren’t the range of throw away packaging and packet meals. There weren’t the cheap imports so people repaired things, recycled things. And parents often had 3-5 children, sending them outside to entertain themselves. Today children are indoor beings, there’s often only 1-2 in a family if that, many meals come from packets if that and people don’t walk and don’t have to go out so much. There was less opportunity to stare pathology in the face but if they spied it, they were more motivated to erase it from view or pull out all the stops to inhibit it even if that meant ‘disappearing’ the child. And the murders of autistics today which we think of as a modern new thing, well Caiseal Mor’s book, A Blessing and a Curse, as does Nobody Nowhere, demonstrate these dynamics have always existed toward autistic children in some families.

TRK:
Because of hyperlexia i was diagnosed as “gifted” though i couldn’t do simple arithmetic until i was well into my teens. Being a small rural school, there wasn’t much facility for special instruction, i was bored and bullied, very clumsy and uncoordinated. I also was thought to be partially deaf (it is now understood to be central auditory processing disorder) and had daily special speech classes with the two other deaf kids in the elementary grades to try and improve enunciation and stuttering.

DONNA:
Yes, I have meaning deafness – Language Processing Disorders (akin to CAPD which can contribute to it, but LPD also involves difficulty reading passages of text). If you do gestural signing, I’d love to ‘converse’

TRK:
When i was 8 my dad began a blatant affair with another woman. My mom abruptly packed me and my brother in a car with one toy each and drove us 1700 miles away to live with her family in the central US state of Iowa. You can imagine the impact of a total wrenching change; instant poverty, radically different climate, new food, strange people, no animal friends and deprivation of all familiar things, clothes, toys, records, piano. It would be difficult even on a typical kid. To this little autistic, the world had just ended.

DONNA:
Yes, I know of a man who when aged 5 who had some minor PDD and when this happened to him, within weeks he became incontinent, mute, lost the use of his hands and stayed that way ever since. I think he had a breakdown with Catatonia which presented as ‘autism’.

I was already pretty physically ill from 6 mths old (I had primary immune deficiences) but at age 4 and a half my grandfather died and my grandmother was sent away the same week, so I essentially lost my carers in one week. It really broke something deep in my soul. I think it really upped the attachment disorder, PTSD exaccerbations of the issues which were already there.

TRK:
I went mute, vacant and even more withdrawn. My mom dealt with rage and bitterness in a time-honored way, she drank. Emotionally shattered, she tried as best she could, working two jobs. She was never abusive or mean, just bitter, maudlin, unpredictable and unreachable. My father had abandoned us. He mailed a court-ordered pittance almost on time every month. There was little voluntary contact, his new obsessions and playboy life were all that mattered. We kids were discarded along with the first wife.

DONNA:
Yes, my father was ravingly bipolar. He would hang out the car door squealing and drive the car into the local park and around the trees at high speeds. He took our fish from the fish pond and threw them into the pool to swim with them. He had times he would proclaim he was Jesus and Elvis. And he would have sex with most every and any woman he could.

As a kid I took his mania for granted (he WAS medicated but clearly it didn’t ‘work’ or didn’t work enough). But he would come home pretty much to get his clothes washed, get a breakfast and check we weren’t dead. I do remember liking seeing him mowing the lawn and playing with the cat. It sort of told me I ‘had a Dad’ and he was mostly wonderful with me, like having Robin Williams, Gene Wilder, Jim Carey, Eddie Murphy for a father. He was more a cartoon than a person. But his behaviour was really bad modeling of relationships and the domestic violence he received during the week, he’d give back in the most appaling abundance on weekends. In the end I couldn’t stand either of them. But I retained some bonding with him. He died at age 59, about 14 years ago.

TRK:
We were just more poor people on the wrong side of a small midwestern city. I was a bully target. There were no accomodations at school, because i didn’t have any named major disability, i was just clumsy, weird, mute and hated.

DONNA:
Wouldn’t have been any better if you’d had the labels of the day – psychotic, disturbed.

TRK:
i was beaten up, sexually assaulted, my possessions and projects ruined, i was terrorized and picked on and made fun with every single school day for five years by students and teachers. but i bore the treatment in silence because from my point of view the only other option was death. I considered it daily. Adults in my clan said toughen up and get over it, that’s the way thing are. Fight back. I had no idea how to, but if i’d had access to a handgun i believe i would have used it.

DONNA:
I TOTALLY relate. By the time I got to adulthood I was so damaged. Even once I thought I’d escaped all that by going back to education, I then ended up entrapped by someone with power over me and it took all my skills and nerve to stay flighty enough not to end up too abused and actually come out the door with my degree.

TRK:
This is when i could not bear to be without an instrument any longer, and we were not getting another piano any time soon. I borrowed mom’s guitar and began teaching myself, playing along with records and my beloved radio, afraid to leave my house because of bullies.

DONNA:
Talk about music as best friend. That’s why I’m a Taoist. For me, there’s so many GREAT things that developed to extremes BECAUSE heavy, crazy, awful things also happened. Don’t get me wrong, PTSD is not an easy friend.

TRK:
We lived in a low-income housing project that we could afford, close to mom’s main job. On weekends we would drive out to the dirt-road country to be with her large extended family at one of the old farmhouses. There would be lots of drinking and storytelling and music playing. The adults let me sit in on banjo, guitar, bass, let me listen and learn, didn’t banish me outside with the other kids. I was humorously teased as the family geek, the weird kid who liked science and couldn’t ride a bike. No one had any proper name for it other than that.

DONNA:
er… Dyspraxia, AS, CAPD, Selective Mutism… autistic fruit salad

TRK:
Many relatives whispered that i was probably a lesbian, since i surely wasn’t a proper girl. I looked up the word in the dictionary and knew it was wrong, because i only got crushes on boys, shy boys like me. I hated girls. But i heard the disgust in their tone, the loathing of energy they accused me of and i felt very alone and worried.

DONNA:
That is really sad but also endearing. I also really struggled to identify with girls. That was really hard because I couldn’t stand the emotional push-pull thing, the striving for appearance/facade so much stronger in girls than boys. I tended to be adopted by the strays. Kids who couldn’t speak English, kids who had been sexually abused, just moved to the school and didn’t have friends yet. One of the kids who adopted me thought even at age 11 that she was a lesbian. She was scared to death at the idea. I didn’t know what one was but once I did it didn’t seem very scary to me. I was indoctrinated into sexual abuse and sexploitation and ultimately trained in how to do it. So I didn’t really get to develop my own thoughts and feelings about sexuality until my 20s and by then I had massive repressed rage. I found that whilst I found fall in love with males, I could protectively care for females. So it was like I was female with males, yet male-ish with females. Hence I declared I was gay when I was 23 (figured that’s one way to indicate to men that I’d had enough of sexploitation) and then when that all floundered (she stood me up on the first date my next proclamation of being gay was in my 30s! After 3 years in a gay relationship (this is in Everyday Heaven, by the way, have you read it?) I was burned out and fell for a wonderful shy, snuggy man, who I proposed to and married… we’ve been married almost 8 years now.

TRK:
I just played guitar and bass and got better. I kept to myself at school. By the time i was a senior in high school i was playing in local dance bands with men a decade older. Sex and drugs and rock and roll, etcetera. I was naieve. All i wanted to do was play bass.

Years rolled by. i’ll spare the details with just a few words. Anger, anxiety, poverty, abuse.
Then marriage, motherhood, more anxiety, failure, mental breakdown, divorce.
Then medication, counseling, an understanding partner and a move out here to the woods.
Still anxious, depressed, angry, but less so. Resigned to live out the hard life. Think about death often. Wonder why i am such a fuck-up. When people hear me on the radio and go “Oh TR you;re really good why aren’t you famous? Why don’t you play out more?” i have no answer but sick balled up rage. It’s because i can play, but i can’t interface, schmooze, socialize, network, flirt, emote, cooperate or play well with others. I know what the lack is. I have no idea why it’s there. I still must not be trying hard enough.

DONNA:
That’s what the internet is for
And as for suicidal, we certainly lived with enough madness to pattern it.
2000-4000mg Omega 3 fish oil by the way is pretty cheap and may just save your life as ‘Natures Lithium’. I sure hope you don’t dance with death by volition. The world needs funky people.

TRK:
Oh……. not to mention i’m not pretty, i talk funny, i walk funny and i dress like a thrift store explosion before that was a cool think to do. But this ongoing exclusion is mysteriously beyond that, it’s something fundamentally different. I relate to animals. Humans frighten and confuse me, especially females.

DONNA:
Well, I bet I don’t.
And I love that phrase, you wild wordsmith you… ‘like a thrift store explosion’.
Yes, wild that the same look which once made us bag ladies now sells in the fashion stores.
But autism is becoming the new ‘dolphin thing’ so soon everyone’s gonna wanna say they are into this autie or that autie, so hey, here we are autie musos… come buy our CDs, we’re cutting edge dag-cool

TRK:
It wasn’t until February of 2003 that i encountered the word “autism”. Randy happened on an article in a Sunday newspaper supplement about kids with ‘Asperger’s syndrome’, and he thought it sounded eerily like my early childhood. We went online and within ten minutes, i had the long-hidden and ironclad answer to the sad angry puzzle of my life. What a meltdown that caused, along with understanding of my father and why he was how he was………

DONNA:
Yeah, I went to a family reuinion for my father’s mother’s side and found there was a cousin diagnosed with autism who had tics, two others diagnosed with Asperger’s, and around 1/3rd of those present were artists, writers, musicians and seemed every other person had a sibling or cousin with coeliac, ADHD, dyslexia or bipolar. It was pretty funky. but this grandmother was the product of first cousins who were also he product of first cousins and went back to the work house slavery days were the most destitute were imprisoned in work houses to pay off debt. Reckon that would have had it’s share of auties. I met a cousin on my father’s father’s side which also turned out to have several people with autism and AS in it and went back to a convict who was sentenced to death then commuted to transportation. He’d been trying to free his sister also trapped in the work houses because of family debt. My mother’s side apparently doesn’t have any ASD, just a lot of agoraphobia, suicides, addiction, alcoholism, asthma and eczema, incarceration. When you see autism in such an historical context, I sure hope people give auties a break real soon.

TRK:
Later after i understood it more and came to terms with it, I presented the information to my family who promptly applied me for government benefits. Out of that i received diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome (and other related things) at age 41. Despite my spectacular record to the contrary, the government insists i am employable and don’t need any benefits.

DONNA:
Gee, that’s good news. So the 96% of adults with ASD who have no ongoing employment can rest easy. Hope is surely on the horizon

TRK:
At this point i really don’t invest a lot of time into that whole avenue, my mother and a lawyer continue the appeals process. For me, i got a diagnosis out of it, and i have since been strengthened and enlightened to share information with others like myself, people who may not have heard of “neurodiversity”, or the autism spectrum, and are lost, full of self-hatred and confusion, easy targets for 2-legged predators and exploiters.

Everyday is a new challenge. It’s easier when you know why you are the way you are and can make intelligent accommodations or explore new strategies and pursuits instead of continuing to “try harder” at things you were never designed to do. That is the beauty of knowing about ASD, even at a late age.

DONNA:
TOTALLY agree.

If you could help advance the autism world in 3 ways, what would they be?

TRK:
Me personally right now in real world time with available resources? I do what i can and share words & music & noises of all kinds and talk to people about neurodiversity, write letters, show shy kids guitar chords, etc. But if i had SuperPowers and a team of specially trained people who could actually organize and DO things:

1. Reform the education system to eliminate compulsory schooling and offer more educational options not age or peer-based, aimed at fostering individual excellence rather than group conformity and social order.

2. Help facilitate new models of self-administered DIY intentional community tailored to Autistic sensibilities and patterns, rooted in the sacredness of human expression, environmental sustainability, and voluntary simplicity.

3. Help catalyze and disseminate an accessible vision for the world that explains Our Autie People as necessary and needed with Spirit and Purpose. Neurodiversity is an undeniable part of the Design.

DONNA:
I can understand that. But I also think that those with crippling co-morbid neuropsych or gut/immune/metabolic disorders should have a right to treatment for those bits of their ‘autism fruit salad’ without these being mislabeled ‘the autism’ per se.

What do you find to be the most non-autism-friendly aspects of society at present?

TRK:
On a strictly personal level, human generated noise and smells cause me way too much grief! I don’t think i’m alone in that, but here are some larger issues as i see them:

The education system in the US is fatally flawed and often fatal for auties. A complete rethinking and rebuild of education; the how and why. Age discrimination and lack of civil rights for young people that they may opt out of systems they find dangerous and soul-killing. Socially mandated incarceration of young people in institutions against their natural will and instincts is cruel and brings out the worst in adolescents. Just say no to school.

Lack of suitable housing for autistic adults and families. Type, location, affordability, sensory issues, transportation, etc……. there is very little autistic-friendly housing available in a price range we often underemployed geniuses can afford.

Lack of support and skill building for meaningful self-driven economic activity. Getting people menial jobs and putting them in sheltered workshops wrapping soap is not the same thing, which is a usual “solution”, too many warehoused slaves who don’t know of any other options. I like to see career guidance and mentoring based around special interests, it’s a natural flow of energy.

Assumption of language, hearing and speech skills in basic business and civil interactions. Able-ism. In this age of the internet every business should have a web page, easily located email, and knowledgeable people answering it promptly. Every critical public service should be explainable and accessible by picture icons. Self-service kiosks and automated things make my life MUCH less anxious , I actually prefer to interact with machines over people in commercial, governmental and business situations. Machines are never illogical, cranky, prejudiced, distracted, etc……

DONNA:
Sounds pretty sane to me. See folks, this is why you should go and hear TR Kelly’s songs.

Anything you’d like to say or add?

TRK:
Perhaps in making up for years of muteness i have become an unstoppable ongoing monologue, but i think i’ll stop for now!

DONNA:
Thanks for the interview and all the best with your blogging and music.
Where can people find further information about you or hear samples?

TRK:
People can keep up with my writing and various musical and creative projects through the variety of links at

http://www.trkelley.net

Thank you Donna for inviting me to use up some electrons on your corner of cyberspace, i appreciate the opportunity to reach a wider audience of people who may find my art useful on their journey. Good luck in your own artful path, you have done so much to help our emerging culture, i wish you the strength and clarity to continue!

love your website, BTW. Gorgeous art, makes me want to try painting!

Grace and Peace to all Beings,
TR Kelley
http://www.trkelley.net

DONNA:
Well, if you do start painting, then you can add those to your site of get a free blog gallery at http://www.wordpress.com . You can also upload your lyrics onto T Shirts, badges and mugs for free at http://www.cafepress.com where you can also self publish. I hope your book works out for you.

Warmly,

Donna Williams
author, artist, composer, screenwriter
http://www.donnawilliams.net
http://www.auties.org