Oh hello, would you like to have a three to four hour conversation about organs? Did you know that Laurens Hammond wasn’t even a musician and wasn’t in favour of combining the organ he invented with the iconic Leslie Speaker? What’s that, you’re busy? Oh that’s fine, we will continue this four hour discussion tomorrow, we can talk about how organs are over two thousand years old. What’s that, you’re moving to another country? Don’t worry, I can explain about the history of theatre organs via Skype. Wait, the country you’re moving to doesn’t have internet or even a proper postal service? Oh, well I’ll just have to communicate my thoughts on the hammond organ’s place in the progressive rock genre via a message in a bottle.
So autistic people have these things called special interests, which means we are really really passionate about things. The stereotypical special interests would be things like Doctor Who and Star Trek. While I love both of these shows, a special interest can be in pretty much anything. Name anything, whatever you have named there is an autistic person who has a really intense interest in it. It could be cooking, fashion, geometry, or something like, I don’t know, sand. And as the title indicates, my main special interest at the moment is organs, pipe organs and hammond organs mainly, but I find any type of organ interesting. It’s something I love about being autistic, that I can develop really intense interest in things to the point where I can think of nothing else, like nothing exists except the thing I’m interested in. But it can also be unpleasant at times, sometimes when you’ve learned the general information on a subject, you find you want to learn about more specific things, and if the information is hard to find, you get frustrated.
Sometimes a special interest can be mostly about finding new information, I’ve gone through phases where I’ve spent more time learning about video games than actually playing them, other times it can be more about finding examples of the specific thing you are interested in, so for example I love finding cairns when I’m by the sea or in the mountains. Other times it’s more about simply doing, for me this is the case with cycling, though I have gone through phases of collecting loads of info on bikes. Sometimes you can become a collector. I have a fairly substantial collection of guitar pedals, not just because I like the sound of them and they improve my guitar tone, but also I really like collecting them.
One time I became absolutely fascinated by double neck guitars, and from this I became very fascinated by when one neck is a guitar and the other a bass. I wanted above all else to find out what was the first example of such an instrument being recorded, and when I couldn’t find out I was really disappointed. Sometimes language barriers are an issue, there’s a lot of nerdy stuff I want to find out about Scandinavian folk music but the relevant info isn’t in English. The double edge sword of special interests is that when you can’t find any new information on them, you tend to get frustrated!
It’s kind of hard to explain special interests, I think it harder to explain than any other aspect of autism. If someone asked me, why do I like organs? I would say because the pipe organs, even those from hundreds of years ago, were marvels of engineering, the size of a building, and so incredibly versatile a case could be made that they were the first synthesizer depending on how you define a synth.
I would say in the Hammond organ you have an instrument that rivals the electric guitar for how much it rocks, and these days I often change things up by recording organs instead of electric guitars in my music. What I would not say is, “I like organs because I’m autistic.” So that’s why it’s hard to explain, in one sense, an autistic person is more likely to develop intense interests, but on the other, these kind of things are intensely interesting, so people of all neurotypes are likely to find them fascinating or entertaining. While many autists are fans of Doctor Who or Star Trek, most people who are fans of these shows are NT. So, what’s the difference? How is having passions for things in life different for autistic people? Take away my guitars, or my bike, or my telescope, and I’m devastated, but I’m sure it would be the same for a non autistic person. So what’s the difference?
Special interests can serve as a refuge when we find the world chaotic. I find the world too loud, too fast, and too unpredictable, so it can be really nice to go out the back with the telescope on a clear night, and look at a galaxy, or a globular cluster, and it’s so calming and peaceful, and for a while I forget the chaos of the world. I have very bad travel anxiety, so for me music is liberating. I will probably never see Iceland again, or Greenland or Canada or many other places I wish to see, but when I’m writing and recording music, I can go anywhere. Progressive rock in 13/4 time, microtonal metal, putting an organ through a wah pedal (you knew I was going to come back to organs!), I can go on any exciting adventure I wish without being afraid. I’m getting emotional writing this just thinking about how much it liberates me. And the same goes for astronomy, I will never see the ancient wonders of the world, but I’ve seen some of the ancient wonders of the galaxy, I’ve seen the globular cluster Messier 92 which is more than 12 billion years old.
But on the other extreme, I have other special interests that aren’t a refuge from my anxiety, but rather cause me an anxiety I am willing to tolerate because I love them so much. I love cycling despite severe travel anxiety. I will often have bad anxiety the day before I cycle to the Nagle mountains. But cycling the beautiful country route, with its lovely woodland, and then walking to the top of the mountains, fills me with such wonderful emotions. The amazing view. The peacefulness. The fact that if you’re really lucky, you’ll see a deer. The northern part of the Nagles in particular is so beautiful sometimes I think I will cry. I love these mountains so much it is worth that terrible anxiety I feel the day before going there.
Have I answered the question of what autistic special interests are? I honestly don’t know, and I hope that hasn’t been a disappointment, because in writing this post I was also trying to figure out the answer to this question myself. I see people of all neurotypes who have great passion for life, so at times I find it hard to answer the question of how it’s different for autists, but I hope this read has been entertaining even if it offered no definite answers. Oh and if my obsession with organs has piqued your interest, you’ll be glad to know I’m going to write a blogpost on organs at some point, but for now, I hope you find these videos interesting.:
Ponderings Of An Autist 