... and what about Asperger's Syndrome ?

I posted about Hans Asperger a few days ago in my facebook, at the International Asperger's Day on Feb. 18th that coincided with Asperger's birthday in 1906, in which I confirmed and admitted that indeed I am convinced that besides Tourette's Syndrome, I also am an "Aspie" -- the popular term for us who have Asperger's Syndrome. (please read http://andystarblogger.blogspot.com.es/2013_05_01_archive.html for my entry about Tourette Syndrome). It is quite common for a person to have both Tourette AND Asperger, since they both fall under the same autistic spectrum. .............................................................................................................................................. It all began when I was diagnosed in 1996 with a clear Tourette Syndrome and a "high probability" of Asperger's Syndrome. I even don't understand why they put Asperger with an apostrophe "s", which they don't put with Tourette! Oh well, psychologists, they are all full of mysteries. From now on, I'll refer to them with AS and TS only. .............................................................................................................................................. AS remains a controversial diagnosis due to its unclear relationship to the autism spectrum since Mr. Asperger's paper published in 1944. Only in the 1980s that people took interest in it. I have indeed given a clue of my AS in an interview at the Jakarta Post with writer Bruce Emond, back in 2008 during the celebration of my 40th birthday : http://andystarblogger.blogspot.com.es/2010/09/horribly-lonely-in-jakarta-post.html . I quote myself answering Mr. Emond's question: What would people be surprised to know about you?. I answered: I have this strange hormone in me which provokes the feeling of extreme loneliness (even if I am in a crowd). It’s been working inside me since I was a teenager. And that loneliness cannot be cured by just being with someone. When it happens, it usually indicates that I should write music. My best music is written when I am feeling horribly lonely. .............................................................................................................................................. Being lonely, or alone, is a common trait for Aspies. AS, as with the other syndromes in the autistic spectrum, has more to do with social and psychological aspects than a physical one. I won't try to explain everything about AS, since I am not an expert in that, and also since AS is still a mysterious syndrome. The problem is that there are so many speculations about people in the past who allegedly suffered from AS which I find rather disconcerting, such as Thomas Jefferson, Sir Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein. Even Mozart! With Mozart, his Tourette Syndrome was pretty convincing, but how would one know that he had AS too? Anyway, there are similar traits of people with TS or AS. What I would like to say is just that we, people with AS and TS could, and even should, behave and socialize quite "normally". I certainly --and am sure I represent other people with AS and TS-- do not want to be treated differently. Yeah, during the Nazi era, people like us were put into concentration camps, but that was the case of everyone "different", such as homosexuals etc. In fact, it is proven that people with AS usually excel in one or even several fields, since a particular part of our brain is highly activated. Therefore, we get people with AS like Bill Gates or the founder & designer of Pokemon game, Satoshi Tajiri. .............................................................................................................................................. Another thing I would like to rectify is the common belief that people with AS can't be "empathic". That's very wrong. In fact, after talking with fellow Aspies, I can tell you that we are just the opposite: we are hypersensitive people. We just don't know, most of the times, how to express it physically. And I think this is where my music comes from : it can express things which I am unable to express through gestures, words or actions. I found a good article about debunking myths of AS and explaining it better here : http://psychcentral.com/lib/debunking-6-myths-about-asperger-syndrome/0008957/2 . So, that convinced me again of what I always said about music : We write, perform and play music to express, not to impress.

The more things change, the more they remain the same

Now, why do we get to hear the same pieces of classical music all the time? This question is always inevitable before judging at a piano competition, especially in 5 months from now that the Ananda Sukarlan Award will take place. Imagine listening to hundreds of participants, all playing those same pieces of music. Chopin Ballades and Scherzi are on the top of the list, as well as his Etudes. Beethoven's Sonatas follow. My complain is not because that they are boring, no no no. They are masterpieces. But aren't there more piano works? Hundreds more that participants can choose to play, instead of all those same, though great, stuff? .............................................................................................................................................. I borrowed the title of this entry from a phrase by the 19th century French writer Alphonse Karr, and only now that it proves to be more true than ever. That issue mentioned above is, in my opinion, one of the reasons why classical music concerts become so "unattractive". Would you watch the same movie again and again? Would you read a book again and again? I mean, throughout your whole life, like, 50 times. Yeah well, I admit I do, with some movies like WestSide Story, The Godfather or Dead Poets' Society, and Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet or that Metamorphosis of Ovid that I went on and on in my previous entry, but I do watch new films, read new books. It's not that everytime I switch on my DVD player I watch The Godfather. Well it's different if it's an opera or a Shakespeare play, since the actors change, the settings change and there are more extramusical things there. But a Beethoven sonata? Could 2 pianists really, I mean really, give a significant difference in interpreting a Beethoven Sonata that would make it so fresh and compelling? The problem is that we've heard Schnabel's, Rubinstein's, Brendel's version of Beethoven's Sonatas. Now, could we (I include myself) give a performance that is really worth listening to, after those masters? .............................................................................................................................................. Another theme I wanna address here is about concentration span. Yeah yeah, people say that due to the social media etc., our attention span is getting shorter n shorter. You know what? I have received more than a few messages, saying that AT LAST they listened to my Rapsodia Nusantara no. 10, which is in fact the first track of Henoch Kristianto's CD of my piano works. Wanna know their reasons not to listen to it until the end before? Coz the introduction, which lasts more than 1 minute long, is too dissonant. But then they read some tweets or comments of people who said that no. 10 is, for them, my best Rapsy, and that it's based on a Balinese traditional song, Janger. "Eh?" they wondered. "But I didn't hear any Janger there". Well folks, you just gotta wait until about 1.30 minutes when the introduction ends! Instead, after about half a minute they went directly to the next track, which is my Rapsy 6. And oh, how nice it is, with its impressionistic colours and a nice melody that appears in about 2 seconds! .............................................................................................................................................. Now that made me think. Would Beethoven have done his Eroica Variations like that if he were alive today? You know, Eroica's theme didn't appear until like 2 minutes or so. The beginning of that piece is just so, so absurd and baffling. For people who listen to it for the first time today, they might not discover how great a piece it is! .............................................................................................................................................. And as a whole, some people complain about concerts being too long? You can’t sit through a 20-minute sonata? Believe it or not, sitting still and concentrating for extended periods of time are actual, important life skills. Grown up skills. If you can’t concentrate on something for 20 minutes, the problem may be with you rather than with the music. That doesn’t mean that the longer the piece of music the more it is a masterpiece, but maybe you could take the time to find out. And frankly, these composers wrote about some pretty serious things in their piece: life, death, (unrequited) love, faith, desire, war. Those things can’t always fit into a 3 minute song. Sorry. .............................................................................................................................................. Finally…if the music is too long, then it's boring? Excuse me? Boring, did you say? Listen to Shostakovich. The guy lived with a bag packed, looking over both shoulders, waiting to die a long, painful, horrible death in the frozen land of Siberia for, not wanting to call a violent, erratic sociopath (Stalin) the greatest guy who ever lived. Good ol’ Dimitri defied official orders time and time again; he was brave, and he was honest: this fear (and his love of his homeland) found its way into his music. Listen to his 5th symphony. Go, ahead, do it -– then tell me that this music is boring. .............................................................................................................................................. C'mon guys. Time's changing fast. WE are changing fast. And classical music should change with time and with us. To be better, of course. Be more creative. "Classical" doesn't mean "old", "pedantic" and "stale". There is a huge world to be discovered there, not only by the average audience, but by us too, musicians who deal with it every day.