I write infrequently on this blog these days because I’m working seriously on a book. But I was thinking with affection about my parents as I started this post.

It was my father who requested that I number the posts, and, after I began doing that, he would occasionally text me to say which number post he appreciated. And he would sometimes mail me cuttings from Singapore newspaper articles about issues affecting autistic people.

As I started numbering this post, I remembered that 319 used to be my father’s work phone extension at the old University of Singapore. You had to call and speak to a human operator, and she would transfer you. I have such a strong memory of my mom calling and saying, “Hello? 319, please?”

Truth be told, I’ve thought about 319 a lot every time I number my posts. How would I feel when I got to it, especially when my blogging grew infrequent, and my father did not live to read this one? I know it probably doesn’t matter, and I’m making meaning where perhaps none exists.

But meaning making is important.

I thought about my parents a lot this week, as R graduated with a Bachelors degree in Music Education. I reflected back on his hard work, and also my own undergrad journey, which constituted the last few years I lived with my parents. Both R and I had many adventures, but we made it, and with beautiful friendships to carry forward.

Looking back at R’s entire school life also made me emotional. He has put so much heart into his education, getting back up every time racism or ableism knocked him over. Mummee Proud, as I like to tell him, and every time I say it, I feel a fog in my throat.

Sometimes I have to laugh when I consider the people who inadvertently serve as learning tools for us about who we do not wish to be, and who isn’t healthy for us to be around. Conversely, they would not see themselves as being ableist, for example. They might see it more as holding the same standard for every student, and maintaining the pristine environment which, say, a music conservatory is meant to embody. And they might see disabled students as, what? Polluting that environment? Not worthy of being present there? Undeserving of mentorship?

The same happens in Indian classical arts training. The scoldings, the cutting remarks, the constant shifting of goalposts—none of those can truly encompass and respect disability accommodations without some serious focus on what that means.

When I was teaching, sometimes fellow teachers would say that some student was not really college material. And now, I wonder if what was sometimes happening was undiagnosed or undisclosed learning issues. I still hear many teachers speak with a lot of disdain about disabled kids, or they sigh over how draining it is to work with them, and have to deal with their parents.

This attitude, combined with the gutting of disability rights and the Department of Education, form part of the whole picture, which aims to erase disabled people from large swaths of public life and funding. But the shitty thinking exists outside of the US too, and one cannot blame America for every bad thing, regardless of how apt the nation often is as a target!

Anyway, it makes me proud and grateful that R will be a different teacher from some of the people who trained him. He had amazing mentors during his student teaching in public schools. And I am thrilled at how those elders, and also the kids in the schools, became part of his heart. We watched him turn into a teacher as he worked with them.

I must give a shout out to Dr HsinYi Tsai, his childhood piano teacher, whom I wrote about in a very long ago post*, when I interviewed her about working with autistic students. Her approach was just what R needed, and she was the one who said “You could be a music teacher,” which sparked this whole journey. She set the bar really high for how a teacher can have standards without being Ableist Cruella. You have to accept that people learn and express differently, and not expect every student to be a mini-you.

There is a novel which I keep urging R to read, called “Goodbye, Paris,” by Anstey Harris. It’s about a former music major who endured a lot of traumatizing stuff while training, which caused her to leave the path of being a performer, and become a repairer of instruments instead. What a perfect symbol of healing! There is a lot in this book, and I still have hope that R will pick it up and finally get why I’ve been after him to engage with it. Heh. But even if he doesn’t, books like this are an encapsulation of a certain kind of reality.

What I mean by this is: musicians and audiences alike have specific ideas of what a musician should be. Discipline has to look a certain way; so does stage presence; and eccentricities of adaptation of a piece of music also have preset expectations.

I have often transposed these thoughts onto what it would be to train as a Bharatanatyam dancer (which I did) but as a neurodivergent person. How every movement would be scrutinized and found wanting. How ideas of abhinaya would be called on to suppress “unacceptable” expressions, stims, etc.

As if autistic people don’t fall in love, feel everything achingly, or use their bodies to tell stories!

There are more and more autistic people in the world. At some point, we must allow for performances that center their identities and self expression. They will wish to see people like them on stage, not people cosplaying them (ugh). They will not wish for abled indicators of fluidity and grace to be the measure of whether they find a performance magical or not. They already have their own worlds, which we can only visit by invitation. I think this is just the first step towards us gaining understanding of how to interpret artistic work by autistic people.

It’s sort of like queerness, isn’t it? We have a choice to make about ending the gatekeeping currently so in vogue. But with or without us, these amazing humans have always, and will still, make art which transforms the world with its exquisite pain, and unashamed dishonoring of binaries, and they will free us all, if we let ourselves be taught to see the world without the perfectionist shackles that constrain and haunt us all.

Who is really mentoring whom, hmm?

Radha.

*https://autismduniya.com/2017/09/20/74-out-and-about-part-3/