It's an old cliché, though one which is frequently disputed, that virtually all of a person's writing is essentially autobiographical in one way or another.
Maybe - and admittedly this is a mere guess - that is especially true for autistic people; here's one instance, among too many to list, of why I believe this to be so:
The people who regularly attend my local church have always been great to me. They're aware of my Condition but, 99% of the time, treat me like any other parishioner. The problem - which nobody criticises me for but which haunts me - is that I contribute practically
nothing, regarding the church's 'welfare', whereas they seem to be either very practical and capable people who carry out voluntary work for the church, while others have semi-official positions (Lectors, for example). I'm not really capable of being like them, due to my difficulties with all manner of often quite basic activities or even with prolonged interaction e.g. counting, manual work, anxiety etc etc. With this frustrating 'uselessness' in mind, I thought I'd offer to write an article or two for the church's website, seeing as writing used to be my pastime and it's also the perhaps the one thing in which I can occasionally at least appear semi-competent. Accordingly, I wanted to write about a famous Rembrandt etching titled
Christ Preaching:
Though certainly no expert, I thought this activity might be the best of both worlds, because art is something I'm interested in, and also because the etching's Christian themes would give me the chance to write something appropriate (and hopefully appealing) for a Catholic readership. This idea seemed Steven-proof, for once, and I so I began to think about the particular artwork, to interpret Rembrandt's possible intentions...and that's when my troubles began.
The scene depicted by the artist is literal: it describes an incident told in two of the Gospels accounts and, aside from tiny nods of homage which Rembrandt included - references to other artists and works which influenced his etching - the picture is simply a straight retelling of a familiar but resonant theme. In other words, no matter how alluring my own ideas about the artist's and artwork's supposed deeper meanings might be to me, my opinions on these subjects are if not actual nonsense then certainly plain wrong. Obviously, it would be irresponsible, presumptuous and an entire waste of time for the readers if I subjected them to my views on
Christ Preaching; and so the 'moral' of this tedious post is that I failed to recognise and acknowledge the reality (of the work and the actual intent behind it) and instead literally spent days in a fantasy world of wish fulfilment - without ever intending to, my mind had decided that a) I knew better than actual experts, those who have 'deciphered' this (actually very straight-forward) etching, and b) I knew of Rembrandt's 'deeper meaning' in his choice of subject and in how he represented this well-known scene. I wish I could state that this was merely hilarious and totally unmerited arrogance on my part but that isn't the case, particularly as I'm ever aware of my limitations; but the truth is that I'd been so obsessive, so intoxicated by my self-imposed task that I had 'created a world' that I actually understood (for once). This had nothing to be with intelligence or any lack of intelligence. It might seem to have nothing to do with autism. Yet I venture that even those here who have zero interest in the ostensible subject of this post - art, art criticism, the pastime or career of writing - might recognise themselves in it...because, despite appearances, it's not really about an autist's limits and frustrations nor even about the kind of immaturity we're often accused of displaying ('magical thinking', addiction to Fantasy/more general fantasy etc) - it's basically about our mental creation of alternative 'worlds', ones in which our thinking explains everything and effectively welcomes our unusual manner of thinking. Perhaps noteworthy too is the fact that I wasn't, in writing that piece, trying at all to be a contrarian or to offer a supposedly new angle on the work;
I was simply attempting to think like the mass of people. I wasted my time and I failed in my set task, but that 'failure' said so much. Maybe the most significant thing is that my language of communication - so often as chaotic as this post surely is...to some - only fails
on the world's terms.
