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GravityRidesEverything
Emu Egg
Emu Egg

Joined: 19 Aug 2017
Age: 35
Gender: Male
Posts: 2
Location: Tampa Bay, Florida

19 Aug 2017, 12:44 pm

After spending over a decade on my two passions, music and personal growth, I've discovered how my brain works I guess you could say. How I learn. How I grow. Let me see if I can get this to make sense.

When I say music, I mean learning how to play guitar, play piano, and sing. My own way. With singing being the most enlightening.

When I say personal growth, I mean figuring out how to function in society. Becoming more confident, slowing my mind, being in control instead of letting my emotions control me, not becoming defensive in an instant uncontrollably, breaking out of my shell of isolation, anxiety, depression. Just being my true self in all situations. Self dominion.

So learning to sing, and learning self dominion. Totally different things. But there are some similarities. They both are internal. You dont learn by holding something, or seeing something, you learn by feeling.

Both painstakingly long processes. Epiphanies galore! Endless epiphanies. I finally figured it out! Yay! Only to be slammed back into old ways. A taste of how things can be. How effortless. How simple. Only to be taken away. Very frustrating. Over and over.

It felt like I wasnt making any progress with either. But as time went on, I realized I was. All these little epiphanies would soon lump together into an unconscious understanding. The best I could do, only accessable when I was having an epiphanie, suddenly became baseline. Moving up the latter.

But this success was not at all noticeable for years. It was just frustration after frustration. But I didnt give up.

I began to realize that the way my mind was learning was by breaking the concepts of "singing" and "personal growth" into very small concepts. A cell of the bigger picture, say a human. And only through repeated practice was I advancing.

The way I think of it now is like a 100 mile tall pyramid. Starting at the very bottom. And honestly with the most complex parts. Each little block began to fuse to other blocks on the same level, and eventually I advanced vertically. A lot of ah ha! Finally figured it out moments culminated into one big FINALLY FIGURED IT OUT!! moment. But I hadn't. But I had figured something out of course.

As I near the top of the pyramid, I began to figure all of this out. I began to notice that the way I was naturally learning to sing was the exact opposite way a professional would have taught me. As I near the top of the pyramid, I realize that I started with the very very very complex, not consciously of course. I cant tell you what the complexities are or were. And only now after over a decade am I beginning to work on the most basic of concepts. Like breathing and support.

So what I'm experiencing as we speak, is an unveiling of sorts. In both music and my personal development. All the work and complex advancement I've done has been hidden underneath the lack of understanding of the most basic of parts.

I have no idea if this makes any sense to anybody but me.

The interesting part is how learning to sing has helped me with my personal growth. I know how it works now, as evidence of how my voice has changed. So when I'm having a bad day or week, with depression, low self worth or anxiety, I can remind myself, look right there, listen to your voice, how far you've come, it's an exact reflextion of how far you've come personally. You haven't forgotten, you're just advancing even further, going further up the pyramid.

More interestingness I've discovered:

The answer to both is to breathe, relax, and just sing, just live, trust in what you've learned, how far you've come. Stop trying to figure everything out all the time. I'm at a point now where I'm trying to stop obsessively figure everything out. That's my challenge now.

When I listen to my voice, I don't listen to it like other people do. I constantly analyze what I'm hearing. That makes for some very distorted ideas about my quality. When people listen to me sing, they don't do this, they just hear it for what it is, and it's taking me a long time to ingrain that fact, in music and in life. Because it's the same in everyday life. Other people arent aware of all the complexities that I am that are making me feel insecure or anxious. They are TOTALLY UNAWARE of all of this extra stuff that going on within.

I've only just begun to realize that I can sing at the speed I want and add the guitar to that speed. Instead of playing the guitar at whatever speed and then adding my voice to it. Because after practicing for so long, and playing at a slower than normal pace, I'm just used to playing and singing slowly.

I can go on and on. There are so many other tuings things I'm not remembering that could be added. I could, and probably should write a book on this topic.

But I'm wondering if any other aspies can relate to this way of growing and learning, in any medium. Before I was diagnosed I come to the realization that maybe this is how EVERYBODIES minds work, Ive just went so deep and figured it out at such a complex level and found so many connections. But maybe this is just how the Aspie brain works. I'd love to hear any thoughts!

Thank you for reading :)



kitesandtrainsandcats
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 6 May 2016
Age: 60
Gender: Male
Posts: 3,965
Location: Missouri

19 Aug 2017, 1:05 pm

Hey there. Some things wrong with my body are roughing me up today so I kind of speed read your post. The personal growth and the constantly analyzing things do make perfect sense.
The person who knows you best is you, so if it were me I'd trust those insights.


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madrigala
Butterfly
Butterfly

Joined: 23 Sep 2017
Gender: Male
Posts: 11
Location: London

23 Sep 2017, 9:59 am

Interesting I have experienced something similar in my own musical adventures. For me it was getting drawn into the world of sound and bracketing out all the associations such as genre, culture and politics. Russolo's Art of Noise is a great guide to this sort of thinking. The beauty of it is that the world suddenly becomes charged with song, from the monstrous growl of tube carriages to the hoot and squawk of tourists in Trafalgar square.