TOA member Terry Hoffman asked me to write about this topic. I have some familiarity with it because when I worked with the Music Outreach organization in New York with a trio composed of Mike Coon and Brian Gryce, we performed often for disabled children. There was one occasion I remember vividly:
We arrive at the school in the morning, knowing that today's classroom will be composed of autistic kids. Upon entering the classroom to set up our instruments, I notice that one boy is wearing a paper crown festooned with glitter and glued-on stars. I ask the teacher why he has the crown and am informed that it's the kid's birthday. I call the kid over and whisper to him: "I'm going to tell you a secret, but you have to promise not to tell anyone." He looks straight at me and nods.
"It's my birthday today too," I tell him.
See, I have a thing about blabbing my personal information to all and sundry, like most people do, because I have had my ID stolen in the past and someone got themselves a drivers license using my name, then wracked up a bunch of tickets. This took a great deal of time and effort to sort out. So, regarding my birthday, everyone is on a need-to-know basis.
The kid's classmates immediately gather around him, demanding that he divulge the secret. He refuses, smiling beatifically. Somehow I have a feeling that this little boy will keep my secret. I trust him. It's an unusual feeling, because I don't trust anyone, really.
On reading Oliver Sack's book The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat, I'm reminded of other autistic people I've met in my life. I even wrote a book about Eddie Fitzgerald, the autistic skier from Queens, NY who died while skiing in white-out conditions at Grand Targhee. (I wrote the book under a pseudonym, but with his family's permission and access to all the depositions, photographs and medical evidence from the lawsuit.)
Referring to autistic persons as 'disabled' seems a misnomer, though. The term 'differently abled' is probably more appropriate, because even if one isn't acquainted with someone with autism, one still has heard stories and reports about the skills and even miraculous abilities many of these people possess. Drawing, music, dance and acting are all professions that people on the autism spectrum practice. Add to that the fields of science and mathematics. And many other activities, including sports.
In 1983 the book Frames of Mind by Howard Gardner presented the 'theory of multiple intelligences.' While scholastic testing focuses on cognitive abilities like word comprehension and math, Gardner says there are several other modes of human intelligence that are just as important. He gives 9 categories, but there may be even more. According to Gardner, intelligence is “biopsychological potential to process information that can be activated in a cultural setting to solve problems or create products that are of value in a culture” (Gardner, Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century. p.28).
If I were to make a general observation on the often-superior ability of autistic people in various fields, I would say it has to do with a natural inclination towards understanding form.
What is form? We use the noun in a couple different ways. One way is to indicate a codified form or structure, such as sonnet, haiku, symphony, or the elements used to portray perspective in visual art. The second way to use the word 'form' is to indicate the organic shape of an artwork, rather than any codified structure like AABA, or verse 1/verse 2/chorus/verse 3/ interlude/ chorus/ chorus.
Oliver Sacks (1933-2015) notes that psychological testing is designed to pinpoint deficiencies, not strengths. As a young neurologist, he wondered why his mentor Alexander Luria was so fascinated by "defectives." (This is the clinical term, not mine!) Sacks says, "It has to do with qualities of mind which are preserved, even enhanced, so that, though 'mentally defective' in some ways, they may be mentally interesting, even mentally complete, in others."
He describes his patient Rebecca, a 19-year-old woman who, though she had trouble with basic tasks like dressing herself and opening a door with a key, was passionate about stories and poetry. She could not read, but her grandmother (who raised her) would read to her. Rebecca could not express in words any complicated idea, but she could understand complex symbolism in poetry, and in the religious services she attended. Sacks says, "...at some deeper level there was no sense of handicap or incapacity, but a feeling of calm and completeness, of being fully alive, of being a soul, deep and high, and equal to all others. Intellectually...Rebecca felt a cripple; spiritually she felt herself a full and complete being."
As Rebecca is shunted back and forth to workshops designed to get her functioning independently in society, she becomes more and more unhappy. She comments to Sacks, in one of their sessions, that she is like the carpet on the floor beneath their chairs in that she needs a design to follow, or she can't function. He then understands this is why she’s happiest when outside in nature, or when listening to stories or poetry, or religious services–all of these things offer beautiful forms to follow.
On Sacks' recommendation, her team of doctors removed her from the workshops for 'defectives' and enrolled her in a theater program instead, where she thrived. He says that if you saw her acting her roles onstage you would have no clue that she was mentally defective.
Another patient, 61-year-old Martin, was labeled a 'simpleton' yet knew the entire Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians by heart and was an expert in the complete liturgical and choral works of J.S. Bach, knew all the cantatas, and on which Sundays and Holy Days they should be sung . He was therefore a valued member of his church choir. Because of Martin's expertise the church became the only one in his geographical area that regularly performed this repertoire. Yet when Martin was not involved in these activities, he was like a 5-year-old child, having tantrums and wiping snot with his sleeve. Sacks describes Martin while in the act of singing with the choir: "...the stigmatised retardate, the snotty, spitting boy - disappeared; as did the irritating, emotionless, impersonal eidetic. The real person reappeared, a dignified, decent man, respected and valued...All that was defective or pathological fell away, and one saw only absorption and animation, wholeness and health." (p. 182) For Martin, the music of Bach was a whole world; it had a form in which he could immerse himself.
Oliver Sacks
The twin 26-year-olds who could not calculate their way out of a paper bag nevertheless could recite prime numbers to 20 digits. When a box of matches falls on the floor, emptying its contents, during a session, they both cry out simultaneously "111!" This was, of course, the number of matches on the floor. Sacks eventually realized that they were not analyzing or computing anything; rather, they were perceiving the forms of objects and numbers.
The composer Ernst Toch came to the United States after fleeing Nazi Germany in the mid-1930s. He was employed by Paramount Studios and was responsible for many of their film scores. An unusual ability of Toch's was that he could memorize a long string of numbers after only hearing them recited once. He did this, he explained, by assigning a melody to the numbers. In other words, he gave the sequence of numbers a form to which he personally related.
In his book The Shaping Forces in Music, Toch says that form doesn't refer to a specific structure, but rather a balance (and not a 50/50 balance either!) between tension and release. This may be the best definition of artistic form that I've ever heard!
"A piece may be written in any one of the classified forms to its minutest detail and still may exhibit a pitifully poor FORM. And a piece may reveal not the slightest affiliation to any of the traditional forms, and yet may be a prodigious masterpiece of FORM."
–Toch, The Shaping Forces in Music, p.154
The greatest thing about musical form is that, because true form can only be discerned by listening and feeling the music in question, it is actually formless, in the sense of having no physicality. Music itself obviously has no physicality. You can’t touch it….but it can touch you! Its true form (in terms of impact on the listener) is established not by analyzing its structure, but by perceiving its form as it unfolds in time.
"From the metaphysical point of view there is nothing that can touch the formless except the art of music which in itself is formless. There is another point of view: that the innermost being of man is the Akasha, which means capacity. Therefore all that is directed from the external world to the world within can reach this realm, and music can reach it best. A third point of view is that all creation has come from vibrations, which the Hindus have called Nada; and in the Bible we can find it as the Word, which came first of all. On this point all the different religions unite. Man, therefore, loves music more than anything else. Music is his nature, it has come from vibrations and he himself is vibration."
–Music, Sufi Inayat Khan, p.29
If seemingly superhuman abilities can be reached by intuitive perception of form, is this something that can be cultivated? If we could train ourselves to do it, would we even want to? Maybe to acquire such perception requires a trade-off. Maybe we would have to give up our “normal” interaction with the world in order to comprehend such totalities.
Form isn’t something that is seen. Rather, it’s something that is perceived. It’s a gestalt, an intuitive understanding of a totality. It’s the big picture.
In jazz we have an interesting phenomenon: experienced players are so well- acquainted with the traditional structures like 12 bar blues and larger forms of 32 measures, for example, that we don’t need to count the bars of rest when we’re not playing. We can even be distracted by something happening offstage or on, and literally still feel where the song is in its structure during the distraction. Even if there’s nothing going on but percussion, we still feel the space of those big sections of 12, 16, 32 bars.
I liken it to a blind person having a sense of the space they’re in. They can’t see the furniture, the walls, but they feel them. Feeling the space.
Or perhaps it’s like a scientist who has a sudden revolutionary insight that didn’t come at the end of a calculation, but rather at the beginning of a spatial perception of a form. Feeling the whole.
The internet is full of formulaic advice telling people how to do any number of things. Successful structures are analyzed up the wazoo, then you’re supposed to copy that. But real creativity, as Toch notes above, doesn’t work that way. In fact, analyzing forms may have the opposite effect of dividing the thing up so much that we can’t even appreciate the form anymore.
You know, like when you go to the doctor. Doctors focus on the part that hurts and ignore the rest of you.
Once I was at a rehearsal and the guitarist passed out an original composition for us to try. Afterwards I commented “it sounds like it needs another bar right here.”
“I had another bar there at first, but I took it out,” said the guitarist.
“Why?”
“Because then the tune wouldn’t have been 32 bars.”
There’s only one possible reply to that, friends. Let us reference Miles Davis (the jazz world’s equivalent of Jesus), who said:
###
I could have been practicing Giant Steps, but instead I wrote this article for you, dear readers. If you find value, inspiration and motivation here, please consider upgrading to a VIP subscription, either annually or monthly.
Thanks for your valuable time and attention. I appreciate all of you!
*unless otherwise indicated, all the Oliver Sacks quotes are from The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat.
If you were practicing Giant Steps, you'd be running up and down scales instead of writing this piece of important insight.
My former wife taught music at a school for developmentally disabled children. (a horrible label)
There was a boy, Harold Sakamoto who drew a picture of the school and it's grounds from an aerial view. It was a precision drawing. Harold had never been in an airplane. The Downs kids were the best dancers and the children who had difficulty speaking were the best singers.
Thanks so much for this, Su. You've given me some new insights!
I have been playing music for a dozen years with school kids and adults who have a variety of mental and physical disabilities. Many are on the autism spectrum. I've also been playing, via Zoom, for a young woman who has autism. She was in a class I played for a half dozen years ago. Her sister/guardian contacted me at the end of '23 asking if I could help. She was in a lifeskills class in a high school, but was not doing well. She was hitting herself in the face, causing injuries, and now wore a helmet with a face shield. It looks like a football helmet, and does not look comfortable.
I play for 30 minutes, everything from Beatles to Bobby McFerrin to Wheels On The Bus. For the first 4 months, she ignored me, and spent time colouring. And one day this past spring, she began to sing along to She'll Be Coming Around The Mountain. The next week, we added another song to her repertoire. Then, her helmet was removed, replaced by a ball cap. She finally responded to my greeting with "Hi, Terry."
These days, seven months after we began, she sings along with most songs. I often stop in the middle of a phrase, and she supplies the lyric. Two weeks ago, singing This Old Man, I got to "he plays eight" and then jumped to ten, realized my mistake, stopped and confessed it. She began to giggle. Another first!
It isn't easy to know what's going on from her point of view, and I allow intuition to take over on my end. I have no training in this, and am careful to call myself an uncertified, unregistered music therapist.
It has been quite a ride! Throughout my years of doing this (my final "career", as it began when I finished the daily work grind), my understanding of what it means to be a human has deepened and broadened.
All the while I have been playing and learning to play jazz guitar, a seemingly endless pursuit.... of form.