What’s my name ?

We answer.

What’s my brother’s name?

We answer.

What’s my Mummy’s name?

We answer. 

What’s my Daddy’s name?

We answer.

What’s my pet vacuum cleaners name?

We answer. 

This ritual has been a constant waking up refrain for the last few weeks.

Ritual plays a heightened role in my son’s life. Not the typical rituals of hand shaking or eye contact or waving or using cutlery - no, the rituals of an inner life and, I imagine, a fabulously rich world that I have only glimpsed access to.

Pico Iyer in his Guide to Japan writes:

“...During the war, the Japanese referred to B-29 planes as “B-san,” meaning “Mr. B.” As if the planes had minds of their own. Deferring to forces larger than oneself is a large part of how Japan carries itself, seeing the advantage of waiting to pushing ahead. • “Now, Life Is Living You,” says the large sign in English outside the big temple that greets you as you proceed one block north from Kyoto Station. • On Naoshima, my wife and I had to ride a private train up to our room; within moments, Hiroko had dubbed the vehicle “Tom.” Suddenly the green six-seat contraption that rattles up and down a hill, a single lamp at its front, had as much character and warmth as a beloved train-set, and we were being careful with it and looking out for Tom’s arrival as fondly as if we were awaiting a small nephew. • Returning from our trip, I noticed that the photos Hiroko had taken of stuffed animals were far more full of feeling and poignancy than the pictures she took of friends and family. The humans, after all, always flashed peace signs and put on smiles, as if to render themselves generic. • My neighbors think nothing of flocking to a station to wave to a train that’s being taken out of service, bringing flowers or presents for the carriages—or sending a teddy bear on a journey if they can’t make the trip themselves. A school of local thought holds that “mountains and rivers, grasses and flowers, can all become Buddhas.” 

What do you see when you enter a toilet ?

What do you deeply see?

I’d venture. Not much. 

Before my son, I’d not see very much either.

Now I see a different world. Of course, it is the same world. It’s not parallel, if anything it’s reverse.  Or contradictory. 

Again, Iyer quoting Wilde:

“Nothing is so dangerous as being too modern,” we read in An Ideal Husband. “One is apt to grow old-fashioned quite suddenly.” • “Consistency,” Wilde declared in an essay, “is the last refuge of the unimaginative.” • “Life is far too important a thing,” we hear in Lady Windermere’s Fan, “ever to talk seriously about.”

This is part of the world we see. 

Not an invisible roof - but circles and shapes and details.

Patterns and colours.  

Shapes out of place. 

The makers of taps. The logo of hand dryers. 

Such items some times to be covered up. 

The colours.  The lines. 

Form trumps function such that we never get beyond the threshold if the forms can not pass the impossible tests.  

Some of our most expensive artists of all time expend effort to place items such as a toilet in a space - on a pedestal - for us to view.

Part provocation part joke part philosophical engagement  the art-ification invites us to view these items as something other.

My son feels these objects and patterns deeply. 

“Take care of things,” as the Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki said, “and things will take care of you.”

If you were to transport my son and me or my wife on stage as we about to enter a toilet it would qualify as provoking Performance art.

Critics may cry that this makes a comment on the state of performance art.

I would gently suggest our performance would reach heights of comedy and tragedy that would be deeply human.

What is it…? What is… it? What…. is it?

It’s a - it’s a - it’s a

Dysoooon.

Let’s dance back.

Let’s dance forward. 

Let’s shut our eyes at the intensity of reality. 

Let’s flap our hands.

Switch it off.  Switch it off. Switch it off.

Take a photo.  Let me take a photo.  

Make a video. 

What sound does it make?

Brrrr-shrvvvbbr-brrrrr.

The visceral blast cooks our brains

Excited and repels us.

Let’s wash our hands.

Is it automatic?

Where’s the soap….?

Is it a Gojo or a Mr Soapy Soap !

It’s a Deb!

Pause. 

.

.

.

.

An unexpected crack.

A sticker out of place.

A dispenser crooked.

Let’s observe and reflect on the enormity of unrightness.

“Zen is what remains when words and ideas run out. • What we see and smell and hear is real, it reminds us; what we think about that is not.”

No one else I’ve ever met has looked - really looked - at this hand dryer with such intensity

As if the answers to world problems would spill out if only we knew how to unlock it.

I only glimpse and dance around my son’s world.

But it feels the same to me - if only I could properly see, I’d understand.

We can share the will to share 

Seeing us dance you can share 

In our humanness but we fail to share

The meaning of the hand dryer

We can laugh or cry at it all. 

“When one of his Western students was having trouble cleaning toilets, Zen teacher Suzuki suggested she speak to the toilets as if they were her friends, telling them how happy she was to get the chance to look after them. It worked.”

And so our performance ends only to repeat. 

What’s my name ?

We answer.

What’s my brother’s name?

We answer.

What’s my Mummy’s name?

We answer. 

What’s my Daddy’s name?

We answer.

What’s my pet vacuum cleaners name?

We answer.

More on autism here:

5 lessons autism taught me