The band, Elwood!; introducing Donna and the Aspinauts
A fellow autie was chatting with me about the autism spectrum and how categories of Autie and Aspie aren’t as clear cut as many imagine. We were chatting about those with features of each. I talked of Aspie-Auties and Autie-Aspies. She then jokes about Aspinauts, that this could describe those with features of each.
I have been singing since age 3 and long long before I developed ‘functional speech’ I could sing in any singers voice and had a huge range of stored songs and music. I’d been composing in my head since I was about 4 and I’d play the musical intervals on the air with my fingers but didn’t know these were musical intervals until I found myself playing them on a piano over ten years later. At age 14 I sat at a piano for the first time and played within minutes and composed my first classical piece. Caught playing, Exposure Anxiety ate me and my future as a musician was ended there for the next 5 years. At 19, after a stint of homelessness in which social welfare messed up on payments and left me destitute, they back paid me. Now with a charitable roof over my head I had money in my hand, more than I’d ever had, around a whole $500. So I bought a piano. Within weeks I was composing classical music and by age 22 I had my first album full of compositions.
Years later, I went on to record two albums, Nobody Nowhere (named after the book) and Mutation with two tracks from the Nobody Nowhere album going into the international TV series, Things You Taught Me and my albums began to sell internationally. But other than three performances with a collaborator, I found myself terrified by public performance. I simply couldn’t stand people looking at me. I was happy to sing to my reflection, to the wall, but not to people, not directly. Finally, frustrated by the desire to do something Exposure Anxiety restricted me from doing, the GP suggested I could increase the medication I take for mood, anxiety and compulsive disorders. Finally, I began to sing on my international speaker’s tours. I sang in the US, then the UK and finally Australia before regular audiences of 100-300 people supported by a slide-show and using gestural signing through my performances. At first I just felt triumphantly daring, then I began to not mind the audience, then I began to like giving to them, finally I surprised myself in actually enjoying performing for them.
I met a cabaret singer with autism, Belinda Mahony, who wanted to expand her opportunities to perform. Seeing how I could help her out, I formed a meeting with those interested in performing but she missed the meeting.
At the meeting, an eager bass player, Earl Woolf was there, who had been trying for around 2 years to get me to jam with him, to no avail. Then when I conceded I could be a singer in a band with him. Next, my husband Chris met a keyboard player, Russell Edwards, at one of my presentations where I sang. He had been in a Melbourne band for 3 years and was currently band-less. A meeting and jam session later, The Aspinauts was a real possibility. Andrew Sherman joined us as lead guitarist and we acquired a fab drummer, Will Cole.
On June 12th we had our first gathering and began trying out songs and the Aspinauts began to launch into a quickly developing ARTism. As I told the guys, the big issue now is whether they can get me out of studio space and into performance space without evoking the ol’ demon of Exposure Anxiety. Time will tell. I’m certainly the type to want to climb Everest if I can. The biggest trick is to learn to want. I’ve begun to. All I can say is watch this space.
author, artist, singer-songwriter, screenwriter
http://theaspinauts.wordpress.com
http://www.myspace.com/donnaandtheaspinauts