The Song in the Mind

For me it happens nearly every day. For others it may just be once a week or every now and then. Nearly everyone I have known or met, inevitably gets a song on his mind that won't seem to leave. In fact there are techniques used for getting songs off the mind including singing Jingle Bells or watching a sports show or going to sleep. For many people, however, the song returns to haunt our thoughts and responses. Although usually pleasant, occasionally a song stays in our head that we may not even enjoy. Most songs in the mind are rather simplistic or "catchy" or memorable and may include folk songs, broadway, Christian, rock, country, or even classical themes. While the song on the mind may be maddening, in many ways the song is also cathartic and keeps our emotions in check. The power of music as an abstract art form is still to be completely understood.

Driving down the road with Joel in the passenger seat, I found myself singing the Lusty Month of May from Camelot. The melody is catchy and the pure joy of the song is infectious, causing an expressive response of happiness. I was humming, tapping, singing, and shaking when Joel said, "Dad, I have never had a song on my mind."

This quieted me considerably as I pondered his statement. Joel's autism causes a significant lack of creative ability. Jacob and Jordan both experienced imaginary friends as small children and Jordan especially had an imaginary world of which we found to be very entertaining at times. Yet Joel never experienced an imaginary friend thereby implying that he either does not express his imagination or he does not have one.

For music to be in the mind, imagination is required in some form or another. Without an imagination, the abstract art of music cannot lodge inside the mind. Joel's autism prevents the creative spark generated by the imagination resulting in a marked lack of conceptual thinking, leading to the missing song from his mind. This does not mean that Joel is deprived of the beauty and joy of music but it does mean that he is perhaps missing both the burden and the liberation of emotions that music can provide.

Ironically we learn something about ourselves from autism. We are dependent upon our imagination and we benefit from what is inside our brains, conceptually and creatively. Yet it is not an essential part of our lives. In the way that a blind person compensates for his blindness, autistics compensate for the missing creativity. And in the way a blind person does not necessarily miss what he has never had (maybe he doesn't miss but he certainly does wonder), and therefore leads the fulfilled life he knows, so also does an autistic lead the life he knows--a life without imagination (at least from our perspective).

While it may sound like a rationalization to a point, I contend that in some ways, Joel's never having a song in his mind is actually liberating and strangely prevents him from the extremes of emotion or at least the range of emotions we normally experience. There is no song but that does not mean there is no joy. His joy is expressed in other ways and his emotions are dealt with apart from what is inside his head. This makes for an unusual existence but one worth trying to understand.