I met Jane when I was very little (in 1996). She has tried to help me speak and then to use a keyboard.
The good thing about typing is that it is a permanent record of your thoughts at a time of something happening.
There is truth in the poetry I write. True words are sometimes hard to get out of my brain. When they scream really loud I have to get them out to the world. When I have thoughts I need to have someone ready to facilitate.
I have to say that I owe everything to Jane.
I started music therapy with Jane and Bec (Rebecca Eager) in my last year at school (2010). The music therapy helps me to find my body and to work on my songs. This is how it works: by giving me rhythm.
Bec is a great therapist and I have also learned a lot about music from her. The drumming exercises are really good for me because I need to concentrate on the rhythm and which drum to hit all the time, while I am walking forward and backward.
The start of my writing songs is thanks to Jane and Bec. Here are some songs that I wrote in music therapy with Jane and Bec.
Free thinking
I find calm in looking at pictures of nice places I have been
I think of the place and when I was there
Just think of the place and the time
Until you learn to have faith in yourself you will get nowhere.
Until you know yourself you will not know the things you need to stay calm.
I think that free thinking can set you free.
Wait for Me
Questions are freely drumming in my head
They sing and yell and wish me dead
Only answers are floating by, saying I am too clever to die.
So ask me questions and wait for me
to catch an answer floating by.
(May 2011)
Hope
Hope is for everyone
Hope is for me and you
Hope is what keeps us in the world and
Hope opens doors
Hope is like a river with energy to flow through life
Under the water is a spring of hope that will come to the surface when the time is right.
Hope is a river that runs through everyone’s life
but like the Murray it is dried unintentionally by ignorance.
The river will only burst its banks if dammed
so don’t damn hope.
The doors will be opened by the person who finds the key
hidden in the depths of the river of hope.
This is a picture of me in my room with a painting by artist Craig Roveta on my wall. Jane asked Craig to paint the picture for me, to illustrate my song "Hope".
Jane told me that Craig had said:
It had to reflect the depth of anxiety, so the darker colours are low bubbling away but the gold represents the hope coming through and surfacing in the end.
Craig has ASD as well. His strength is art. Mine is words. The picture adds to the song and helps other people to understand.
