POLITICAL CORRECTNESS IN 3 DIFFERENT AUTISM WORLDS – By Donna Williams.

Whilst there are many political roads one can go in the autism world, I see there are at least three quite BASIC ones : Read the rest of this entry »

  I was asked some questions by Elaine Meyer, a freelance journalist and student at Columbia’s journalism school, who was writing an article about autism as a metaphor in literature.  She explained that a literature professor at Cambridge named Andy Martin recently came out with an article comparing the writers Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus in which he said Sartre’s writing and personality exhibited autistic tendencies and Camus’ exhibited what he considered opposite empathetic tendencies.  She said he cited Simon Baron-Cohen’s work as an influence and asked if she could ask me a few interview questions on the topic.  Here’s our interview: Read the rest of this entry »

Katherine Kasper is a reader on the spectrum who read the third book in my autobiographical series, Like Colour To The Blind.  When she emailed me about the book I offered her the opportunity to send me 10 interview questions about it.  Here’s that interview. Read the rest of this entry »

This month’s art work is The Gadoodleborger.

In  Nobody Nowhere I had thought of the world as having ‘The Worlders’, which were those who were ego driven and geared for appearances and ‘My Worlders’ who were those who valued ‘beingness’, had and valued a world of their own, and for whom image, ego and appearances were only secondary.

Then, in   Somebody Somewhere, in 1994, I first wrote of another category of humans; Gadoodleborgers.   Gadoodleborgers weren’t ‘The Worlders’, nor were they people necessarily on the autism spectrum.  But what was special about Gadoodleborgers was that they were natural translators, bridgekeepers able to cross between worlds, diplomats, anthropologists interested in the wonderment of social difference and diversity.  I wrote a fable about them best captured in the poem, The Gadoodleborger:

GADOODLEBORGER, copyright, Donna Williams, Aug 2008

He spied her in a magic wood, a sensing creature in need of none

And dreamed of how he’d join her there, his partner she would soon become

He lured her back to the place he knew, a world of hierarchy and of power

And there she then began to die, as surely as a wilting flower

His heart began to break inside, he knew only one thing to give

Return her to her sensing world, that she might find the will to live

And there as she began to bloom, she saw something he’d never seen

That he was not of that world either, a Gadoodleborger, he had been.

That he walked between two worlds, he now had finally understood

And so they made their home in neither world, at the edges of the magic wood.

So for me, The Gadoodleborger is a source of faith in humanity, a reason to shun opportunities for reverse prejudice against non-spectrum people, a reason to believe that neurodiversity exists amidst human beings in general and in not reserved for those with diagnostic labels.  I have found Gadoodleborgers in the non-spectrum and autism spectrum populations and many many people in those populations are not Gadoodleborgonian, but I think I just may be rather Gadoodleborgonian and so I share this something with all other Gadoodleborgers throughout human kind, a something which defines me beyond being ‘an autistic’ and something which connects me to personhood more than labels.

The painting, The Gadoodleborger, was painted in Woolongong in 2002, the year my Gadoodleborgonian husband, Chris Samuel (who features in the book Everyday Heaven ), migrated to Australia from his UK homeland, allowing this homesick Aussie to return to live in Australia after almost 13 years away.   In this sense, it is our marriage, that of an autie with an Aspergerian Gadoodleborger, which is captured in this painting, something of the essence of Chris’ inquisitive interpretive mind and world of meaning, and mine as a place of sensing in the reality of someone partially meaning deaf, meaning blind and face blind.

The butterflies in the painting were originally rosella parrots, indicative of the return to Australia.  But they were turned into butterflies a few years later, symbols of change, transition, adaptation, perhaps just as I was changing, transitioning, adapting from a world of autism into a world of ARTism.

The painting was done in acrylics on stretched canvas and the grass is full of rainbows.  The colors capture the summer of Australia, and yet the lush dark green foliage across the water is perhaps the characters memories of the climate of the UK.

I hope you like the painting and feel free to visit my many other paintings in my online gallery at my website.

Warmly,

Donna Williams,

author, artist, singer-songwriter, screenwriter.

http://www.donnawilliams.net

  Belinda is a student doing the last year of a professional doctorate in clinical psychology. She has already completed a bachelor in behavioral neuroscience and postgraduate diploma in psychology. Her research project is investigating relationships and attraction among individuals with an Autism Spectrum Condition (ASC). The focus of her study is to explore attraction between those with an ASD and non-spectrum people to establish:

– What non-spectrum individuals find attractive in partners with an ASC
– What differences exist in the ratings of initial attraction between non-spectrum individuals with an ASC partner versus non-spectrum individuals with non-spectrum partner
– What individuals with an ASC find attractive in non-spectrum partners

I’ve invited her to send me 5 questions based on her research interest.  Here’s that interview: Read the rest of this entry »

  Noise TVis a music TV show on Channel 31 in Melbourne.  They produce music related programs</a> and also film and screen acts playing at Noise Bar in Brunswick where Donna And The Aspinauts are playing this February, Sunday the 8th.

Noise TV is run on a limited budget and is largely filmed and edited by volunteers who have gained experience in camera, sound and editing work at the TV station.  Read the rest of this entry »

    Around 80-90% of adults on the autism spectrum have no full time employment.  Even of those whose only spectrum issue is having an obsessive-compulsive personality, being a mono-track or details oriented type thinker, or having social emotional agnosia so they struggle to read facial expression or body language, one of the only easier places they get employment is in the geekville of I.T.

I directly employed spectrum adults where I can. Over the years, 9 of them, 2 of them in full time Read the rest of this entry »

THE BUTTERFLY CLUB
presents…Donna & The Aspinauts play at The Butterfly Club, Melbourne’s swanky home of camp kitsch, in an evening of irreverent avant-garde poetry and flamboyant musical surrealism with a satirical bent.

Dare to be there.

Wednesday 4th March 2009
8pm-9pm
Cost: $22

The Butterfly Club
204 Bank St, South Melbourne

For bookings, email: info@thebutterflyclub.com
other enquiries: phone (03)9690 2000

http://www.thebutterflyclub.com/

   OK, so you’re face blind, a little meaning deaf, maybe you have social-emotional agnosia and can’t read facial expression or body language to save your life or are as literal as a real life Mr Spock.  Would you be a little socially phobia?  Have a little social anxiety?  Struggle socially in the mainstream?

Well, how do a bunch of autistic people with this stuff rock up to a popular live music venue in the inner city and hang out among a crowd of potentially largely non-autism-spectrum people?  Read the rest of this entry »

  A forum recently started a thread called ‘I hate’.
I went on a bit of a bender but I can promise my ‘I love’ list is much longer than my hate list. Read the rest of this entry »