I was writing the last post and saw my current Twitter name (Agitated Spiders for Human Rights), which reminded me that I wrote a song once about my autism. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was absolutely about the surprising and often confounding ways I show up in relationships with my social quirks and finicky approach to tenderness and wild emotional rollercoaster.
So I’m posting it here. It’s called Spiders.
(Pretend I said something charming about how bad my production values are. It is what it is. It’s a cheap ukulele and amateur Garage Band stylings. Enjoy only if your own sensory sensitivities don’t ring you like a bell when you hear it.)
I wrote it in the early months of a tumultuous relationship that ultimately ended badly – mostly because neither of us had any clue about our individual neurodivergence, so we just kept failing at the neurotypical things we thought we were supposed to do, like planning dates and managing logistics and communicating about our feelings. He was a good guy, still is. We just hurt each other a lot.
I find it applies to my current relationships as well, and everything in my past – friends and partners and lovers as well as coworkers and doctors and fucking everyone else.
The central metaphor – “I’m a bag of agitated spiders” – comes from a conversation with a friend I miss with a deep and painful longing. The friendship was a casualty of my undiagnosed-autism-trauma. One day I just couldn’t talk to her. I may never be able to explain it to her in a way that makes sense, but I’m hoping for the strength to try some day.
Yeah, so that’s one of my old songs. I’m writing more now, and I have a song I hope to finish this calendar year about what being in love is like with ADHD, about the endless now of hyperfocused desire. Wish me luck on that one – finding the right words has been difficult but it’s getting easier.
Have you made music about neurodivergence? Made art? Built a thing? Links in the comments, please!
/autistout
SPIDERS
This is not what I expected, your warm eyes taking in what looks like beauty to you, still, your hand cups my chin like a bird, like a simple little word you whisper softly, like it doesn’t hurt at all
But don’t you see the storm? But don’t you see the storm?
I’m a raging nightmare of a person A gallery of curtains hiding unforgiving knives I’m a churning ocean full of wreckage I know I can’t protect you from my cyclone of my life
I am not what you expected, Someone sweet taking time to learn the language of your body Someone easy, somene cool to the touch, like the back side of the pillow On your wrist, like a glass of lemonade
Can’t you feel the fire? Can’t you feel the fire?
You’re a man of consequence and honor, You pride yourself on kindness but I think that you’re naive. I’m a bag of agitated spiders. I’m kerosene and lighters and signs that you should leave.
I don’t know what to do with patience. When you lie there tracing fingers on the landscape of my fear Waiting quietly until I catch my breath, kissing soft behind my ears Until my skin reveals a roll of old barbed wire
Unfolding in your arms Unfolding in your arms
I’m a raging nightmare of a person A gallery of curtains hiding murderers and thieves I’m a bag of agitated spiders. I’m kerosene and lighters and I think that you should leave.
If you’re following me on Twitter, you’ve probably seen me post about stimming.
The late-diagnosed autistic experience of figuring out I had stims that I didn't know were stims, and learning to let them OUT so they can BREATHE…
Yeah, that's a thing I'm feeling a lot right now.
(She says, while rocking impressively side to side.)
— Agitated Spiders for Human Rights 🇺🇸🩸🦷 (@HorriblyJane) July 27, 2022
This is how you can tell I’m a baby autistic: I’m 56 years old and I just discovered stimming. Like, stimming as a source of pleasure, as an emotional regulation tool, as a place to put the overwhelming weirdness of me that flows from me in gouts.
I’m learning that I don’t have to suppress my physical weirdness. I can use it, feel it, enjoy it, live in it, savor it, nurture it, and let it fly. (And I can choose to let it be visible or not, depending on who I’m with and how much ambient weirdness tolerance there is in a room.)
I have, and will have, loads and loads of ideas about stimming as I explore it, but to start I just need to let it happen.
Primarily right now, stimming wants to happen when I’m alone at home. And it wants to happen to music.
I’ve consulted with my bones and they tell me they want deep bass, twangy guitar strums, deep or passionate voices, and lots and lots of drums. Is it a handjive or a Prima-style bass-drum drive? Even better. If a drummer or a bassist is working up a sweat somewhere, I want to stim to it.
What kind of stimming? Big, deep, full torso rocking. Back and forth or diagonal if I’m distressed. Side to side or up and down if I’m happy. Shoulders/arms optional. If I’m super happy and the music is the B-52s, it’s the Peanuts dance. (Huh – maybe I should add Linus and Lucy to my stimming routine?)
I’ve learned that if I’m melting down, or about to melt down, this kind of stimming (rocking and bouncing) makes a huge difference in how quickly I recover and how much damage I do. Heavy stimming can break my focus on the distress and it definitely acts as a valve to release the pressure of intense emotion. I get so into it I forget to be angry.
If I think to turn on music, the effectiveness of stimming as distress-reduction gets even better.
And if I stim/rock/bounce when I’m happy… man that’s just fucking delicious.
Because I know that distress makes my memory fail (which is why I can’t think of distress-reduction techniques when I’m upset) and my tolerance for complex steps evaporates, I made myself a stimming playlist. With a playlist I can pull it up from my phone, laptop, or TV with just a few steps.
(If you’re an Amazon Music customer I’m told you will be able to see and play this playlist*. My apologies if that doesn’t work. I’ve included the songs below.)
There’s some refining to do. I had a shit morning today and I used the playlist to great effect, but I skipped a few songs (not sure if Ballroom Blitz will have the longevity I thought it would). I also found that I needed to start big (heavy drums and base, driving beat) and end small (slower beats, more emotional resonance, more personal), so I rearranged the songs into the current configuration (below) to get something like a workout arc that grabs my energy and helps it settle after a while.
So yeah, that’s a thing. A stimming playlist. I’m especially happy that I thought of this because these kinds of repeatable, accessible-anywhere, modular tools are what I need so that the natural chaos of my ADHD doesn’t defeat my efforts to care for my more sensitive and brittle autism.
Do you have stims you use? Do you use music or other media to enhance/inspire stims? Or emotional regulation? Do you use a playlist for this? Am I even using the terms right? I dunno. I am just starting to figure all this out.
/autistout
Jane’s Stim Playlist (Wind Me Up)
Song
Artist
notes
Wind You Up
Jarles Bernhoft
Norwegian R&B – honest to god technomage
I Like to Move It
Los Colorados
Ukranian – accordion, marching bass drum, and other embarrassing instrumentation
Danny’s All-Star Joint
Rickie Lee Jones
Rats & Raccoons
Jarles Bernhoft
Calamity Song
The Decemberists
WHAT APOCALYPSE NERD DOESN’T LOVE THIS SONG?
16 Shells from a 30.6
Tom Waits
I cannot have a playlist without Tom Waits in it. It is ordained.
Peaches (1996 Remaster)
The Stranglers
That bass line is pure sex.
Sing Hello
Jarles Bernhoft
This Year
The Mountain Goats
Since 2020, this is America’s theme song.
Lift Me Up ‘Till the Morning Comes
Bernhoft
Oh My God Yeah Fuck It
Mike Doughty [feat Moon Hooch and Miss Eaves]
Mike knows.
Are You Gonna Be My Girl
Jet
Come On Eileen
Dexys Midnight Runners
Cmon Talk
Jarles Bernhoft
Arrow Through Me
Paul McCartney and Wings
The Lovecats
The Cure
The perfectly crafted pop song.
Us
Regina Spektor
We Have a Dream
Bernhoft
O Children
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
She’s a Genius
Jet
I’m not.
She’s Thunderstorms
Arctic Monkeys
I am.
I Wanna Be Sedated (2002 Remaster)
Ramones
Valerie (Version Revisited)
Mark Ronson [feat Amy Winehouse]
Funk #48
The James Gang
Joe Walsh is an oldschool guitar mage.
Ballroom Blitz
The Sweet
Pardon Me
The Blow
If you don’t know The Blow, change that now.
Swing Baby!
Big Rude Jake
My best friend and I used this as the theme song for our stage and cable access shows. Jake was a Toronto punk-influenced jazz dude who sold us the rights for $1 American. He died this year of cancer. RIP, my friend.
Powa
Tune-Yards
This song lives in my root chakra, if root chakras exist. (Yeah, they really don’t. But it feels like they do. You know?)
Private Idaho
The B-52s
Cold Steel Hammer
Big Rude Jake
Sister Needs a Settle
Say Hi
This song marks a transition from (mostly) more driving beats to softer, more emotional, more focused songs. This is my cool-down, if I need it.
Torn
Natalie Imbruglia
Singing harmony with Natalie is a stim.
Seven Day Mile
The Frames
This song’s lyrics kind of don’t make sense and also kind of exactly make sense. It’s an encouragement to keep going. It taps a vein for me.
Riot Van
Arctic Monkeys
OLD PUNK BOYFRIEND MEMORIES. And that descending chord progression in the chorus is so smart and sly.
Far from any Road
The Handsome Family
Have you seen the first season of True Detective?
Sofisticated
Stereo MC’s
Cool in a bottle.
Somebody That I Used to Know
Elliott Smith
I like songs that play with measure or phrase lengths, and this one does it masterfully. Good strum, too. I feel it in my chest.
Sometimes
Walk Off the Earth
The acoustic mix on this cover, combined with ethereal and fluffy guitar strumming
Fragile
Paperboys
Best cover of this song, even better than Sting’s original.
Jane
Ben Folds Five
A SONG ABOUT ME BEING ME. This one will get featured in a blog post soon I’m sure.
Go Into the Night
Gabrielle Papillon
More play with measure and phrase lengths.
Paper Mache World
Matilda Mann
If you’ve watched Heartstopper, you recognize this one.
Why Am I Like This?
Orla Garland
Same as above. Also… I swear to god it’s about neurodivergence.
If the World Should End in Fire
The Handsome Family
It’s weirdly reassuring.
*I’m not a fan of Amazon Music – or of Amazon – but it isn’t Spotify so it has that going for it. I used to work for Amazon, so most of my stuff is just up there in Amazon’s cloud and it will take me more executive function than I currently have to collect and migrate everything… which is how companies like this make their money. It is what it is.
CRACKMEATJUICE 