where 9000 bands can play & none of em are good

chats with my mom

‘’The unplaiting of the hair’’ 1997, 100x100, oil on canvas - #AndreyRemnev #Russia

blowing up at my insecure cheesemaking wife. “yes. i wish the curd was tighter. of fucking course i wish the curd was tighter”

can't help but think that a lot of the issues with how insular online communities conceive of neurodivergence stem from how the discourse necessitates the imagined existence of a mythic group of ‘neurotypicals’ cogently and unambiguously free of the social knottiness that certain neurodivergences can entail (“all ‘neurotypicals’ experience X,” “no ‘neurotypicals’ experience Y,” etc) rather than understanding neurotypicality as an enforced social norm to which we are all expected to comply and fall short of to varying degrees

I have a friend who is a med student of neurobiology and she said that there really is no such thing as a "neurotypical" and the term is extremely unhelpful. There is no "typical," but there is an average, however it's very rare for somebody to embody that average. To put it another way, if one person has 4 apples and another person has 6 apples, the average is 5 apples, however neither of these people has 5 apples. And considering that the brain has millions of factors going on, it's unlikely that any individual would be average along every single one of those axis. What we consider "neurodivergence" is being outside of the commonly accepted range of deviation from the average. What nondisabled people think of as mental disability is when that deviation from the average impacts other people. What disabled people consider disability is when these deviations cause personal distress regardless of proximity to the average and would be distressing even with environmental changes.

She went on to say that even people who fall within that neuro average aren't the ones making the rules for what is typical, and unofficially dubbed them neuropowerful. Once people have power, they can impose their ideas as the standard regardless of whether it's the average or not. They're outliers whose experience (both internally and externally) has been allowed to set the standards by which many (even most) people fall short, even those close to the "average." The same is true for physical characteristics. If more than half the population is "overweight," who determined what the acceptable weight is? Because it definitely isn't *average* to the population. I know a lot of disabled and neurodivergent people flock to each other, but sometimes you realize everyone you know has some kind of major divergence, and nobody is in fact "neurotypical."

This isn't to say that all a "neurodivergent" person needs to be okay is a different environmental/cultural/societal structure. For some, ADHD/Autism are disabling, but for others, it isn't, even if it's the same level of deviation in the same environment. For me, personally, it's a bit of both. I would benefit greatly from shifting cultural expectations as far as being able to meet my obligations, but my ADHD would still hurt me in moments when I want to do something for personal enjoyment and executive dysfunction will not let me get off the couch. I would benefit from a world that is not so depressing all the time, but I would still have days when I struggle to get out of bed because my brain is physically not set up to do serotonin.

tl;dr, human brains are way too complex to fit into categories like "neurotypical," "neurodivergence" is simply a more extreme deviation from the average, and we do not even use the average as the actual standard of what our brains are expected to be.

Makes me think of the 99% Invisible episode about averages, and how they mess with our sense of what averages are.

I’m gonna have to sit with that for a minute.

X

ID. a blog post titled, "Are you willing to make bad art?"

text of the post reads:

You say that you only want to make "good" art. Who can blame you? The only problem with making good art is that sometimes, in order to make good art, we have to be willing to make bad art.

Styles mature spasmodically. Sometimes we write poorly on our way to writing better. Sometimes we paint poorly-- on our way to painting better.

We must not deny ourselves the dignity of growth. I keep a sign posted in my work area that reads "I am willing to make bad art." Sometimes visitors read that sign and are appalled at me. I have to parse it out for them. The sign does not say "I plan to make bad art." It merely says I am willing to make bad art. By being willing to make bad art, I am free to make any art-- and often, art that is very good.

Willing to make "bad" art, what we actually are is willing to make progress.

End ID.

This also applies on more than the individual level. Like I constantly see people being genuinely offended by mediocre and even bad movies being released. "Ew, everything is trash these days." No, you are just expecting every single movie you see to be a masterpiece, which are by their nature extremely rare. Individual artists grow by trial and error. Genres also do that.

You genuinely have to be willing to see bad art because that's where all masterpieces come from.

And of course your "bad art" may well be someone else's masterpiece.

no those people are actually right

I Bless The Rains Down In Africa

Gorna Take Some Time To Do The Things We Never Had...