When Charlie was first diagnosed and for many years after, sounds loud or soft, low or high, did not seem to bother him. He was certainly drawn to music but didn’t seem particularly bothered by sirens, loud merry-go-round music, shouts, fire drills. Every time we had to fill out a checklist, or talk to a new teacher or OT, we always shrugged “no, no” about “any sound sensitivities.”

Fast forward to about two years ago, when a motorcycle shot past the black car and suddenly I heard a knocking sound: Charlie knocking his head on the back of the seat and crying.

That was a pretty obvious sign of something about Charlie’s sensitivity to sound. I began to drive with the windows shut (and, on hot days, with the AC fully on). Littly by little, it became apparent that a number of sounds—everything mentioned above—indeed bothered Charlie, who signalled this by sometimes crying out or placing both hands oer his ears.

But was he always seeking to block out sounds? I’d turn on a Barney video on YouTube as Charlie requested, only to see him watching from at least a foot away, hands over ears. Could he not simply be seeking to block out the sounds, but to filter them, screen out some aspects of them?, and to listen better?

We tend to equate hands over the ears with a wish to shut out some sounds when Charlie might be attempting to do precisely the opposite, to listen and hear better.

Just as: Nodding one’s head says “yes” here in the US, but it says “no” in other cultures. Same gesture, very different meanings.

It’s really been about two years that Charlie has seemed so much more sound sensitive and Jim and I think that what might be going on is that Charlie is much more alert and attuned to what’s going on around him, and therefore more in need of filtering out all that stimuli from the world. He’s listening better than ever, that is, and trying to figure out a way to best make sense of it all.

Yesterday, he sat by the side of the swimming pool for 40 minutes: We were at an event we’ve often been to, a swimming hour just for autistic children with numerous friendly high school students volunteering. Desite kindly coaxing from three different kids and Jim and me, Charlie refused to budge until the very end, when he waded in the shallow end and swam slowly to the deep end. Just as he got there, it was announced that it was time to get out. Charlie remained in the pool as it emptied out and the lifeguards replaced the plastic ropes for the lanes, and the very water and air quieted. He stayed there, floating and swimming a bit, in the deep end and middle of the pool, for some 40 more minutes.

Once upon a time, nothing could keep Charlie from jumping (or trying to jump) into a pool as soon as he saw it. Now he likes to think about it and take in what’s going all. No toddler in a tall boy’s body, he’s quite aware of what’s going on; he’s changing all the time.

I can’t prove it right now, but I’m more and more thinking that Charlie may well have perfect pitch.

Though without a piano or cello teacher (I’ve followed a few leads, but with no luck, yet), Charlie has still been practicing, and has often asked to “play cello” in the later afternoon, before he and I go on our usual walk. Last week, after I took the cello out of its case, a few strums on the strings revealed that it was really out tune. As in, really, the D way way too low, the G unidentifiable, the C low, and loose.

With Charlie saying “play cello,” “play cello,” I turned the pegs, just a bit, but with the memory of how I once broke a string on my viola still fresh, I was very hesitant. Charlie kept asking to play and so I brought the cello over to him and opened the music book. “A, D, D, A,” he sang, perfectly in tune—-and the not-tuned cello was distinctly wrong-sounding. Charlie frowned and kept singing out the notes, in tune, before he plucked the flat-sounding strings.

He kept frowning, and singing the notes, and persevered with the plucking. And when he’d finished and I was wiping the rosin off the strings, I told him we’d bring the cello to the music store to get it tuned.

That was over a week ago. Charlie kept asking to play his instrument, most insistently, and so each night I’d try again to tune it, and just hear the C and G and D as they should be (the A was the only sort of tuned string), and then the pegs slipped no matter what I did. After practicing, we’d go for a walk and then when we got back it seemed late and was dark and Charlie wanted dinner. So it wasn’t until yesterday, Thursday that I put the cello in the trunk of the black car and we drove to the music store.

A young man, his hair as close shaven as Charlie’s and a stud in his ear (and about the same height as Charlie) immediately took the cello and starting working on it. Charlie stood at the counter, eyes wide open under the two hoods (sweatshirt + winter coat). The store has several soundproof rooms for lessons off to one side and there were parents and children, and instruments and racks of music books (A Charlie Brown Christmas! the entire Bastien piano series! sheet music for “In My Life”!) everywhere. Charlie briefly raised his voice, then stood with his hands over his ears. Looking in a rack, I found a beginner’s piano book that had some of the same songs that Charlie’s piano teacher had adapted for him to play and it occurred to me, why not have Charlie learn to play these slightly more complicated versions of songs he already knows?

We left the store with a tuned-up cello and Charlie carrying a new piano book. There were Christmas trees for sale across the parking lot and the piney smell was distinct in the cold air. Adolescent girls walked by us with guitar cases and their mothers calling out, and younger siblings trailing.

Charlie hummed “Winter Wonderland,” all the way home, and every note was in its place.

34-year-old Charlene Sawyer has a “rich and dark mezzo soprano voice,” today’s Charlotte Observer notes. Sawyer was not diagnosed with autism until she was 17 years old. She started piano lessons and performing with school choirs at the age of 12, and has been taking voice lessons since she was 14. And

Around this time, she says, her peers made fun of her because they knew she took special education classes. Instead of the socializing she might have enjoyed as a young teen-ager, she immersed herself in her budding gift, learning pieces in Italian, Latin, German and French.

Sawyer has written an outline of her autobiography and now lives in a group home run by the Enola Group, whose director, Fredda Monroe, “says she wants to market Charlene to perform at weddings and to perhaps cut a CD of her singing.”

Heidi Thompson, a friend of Charlene’s who accompanies her to see opera performances in Charlotte and works with her at Studio XI, says Charlene told her she wants to “tell the story of what it’s like to be an artist with a disability.”

“Most autistic people can’t feel or express emotion,” Charlene says. “I do.”

It’s not stated clearly in the Charlotte Observer article: Is it through her singing, through music, that Sawyer is able to “feel” and “express emotion”—usic certainly seems to be such a medium for my son Charlie, from the days when him singing “Frere Jacques” signified that he was upset.

(No, he wasn’t singing that song tonight!)

Sunday I wrote about singer Pip Brown aka Ladyhawke, who has Asperger’s Syndrome; a profile of her in the Independent noted how having Asperger’s is one reason that live shows aren’t the easiest for her.

Another musician, singer Craig Nicholls of The Vines, was diagnosed with Asperger’s four years ago: It’s been reported in Reuters via the Calgary Herald that the band has had to cancel their upcoming shows “due to a deterioration in the mental condition” and the “erratic behavior” of Nicholls. Some news sources refer to him as having a “mental illness” though what he has is Asperger’s syndrome—-the singer was diagnosed with Asperger’s after “abusing fans and assaulting a Sydney photographer.” Asperger’s shouldn’t be conflated with “mental illness”—doing so suggests that someone on the spectrum is “crazy” and that’s not the case—  and hope that Nicholls can get the care he needs.

“Young, gifted, and autistic”: That’s how the November 16th Independent profile describes New Zealand-born singer-songwriter Pip Brown of Ladyhawke:

recently, she revealed to a British newspaper that she has Asperger’s syndrome (a form of autism) which suddenly shifted media interest from her music to her autism………

But it’s not the story that the singer wants to be defined by. “I really regret talking about it,” she says. “There’s a kid with Asperger’s who wrote to me on MySpace, saying I was a liar. It was really hurtful. I was like, you have no idea what I’ve been through. Yeah, I’m a bit weird. I do weird things. I’ve been really wary since then.” Not that it shows. Brown is chatty, warm and sincere; in many ways, the opposite of the autistic stereotype – which goes to show how far the stereotype is from reality, and how far she has come. Slouched on a sofa, she talks breezily, in her thick Kiwi accent, about her overwhelming and exciting year as a rising star.

Brown talks about her trouble in school as a child (”‘I wouldn’t go to school when I was younger, and when I did, I would just stare out the window. I didn’t like anyone touching me and I didn’t like people coming near me’”) and how she started playing piano at 8 and drums at 11 and “‘that was it for me. I loved it,’” as she says.

A couple of years ago—after locking herself in her house for three months—Brown got a diagnosis and felt much relief. It’s noted that live shows still aren’t the easiest for Brown, “partly due to the syndrome, partly due to nerves.”

Music, as I note a lot here, is a big part of Charlie’s and our lives and Pip Brown’s story resonates.

When Charlie was taking piano lessons once a week (from this teacher), he practiced almost every day. In the beginning, when he was just learning to identify the keys and read the notes, practices were 10 to 15 minutes and sometimes less. Charlie’s teacher emphasized that he hoped that Charlie would enjoy playing the piano, and not see it as some chore that he had to do, so we always (well, we always tried) to end on a good note. (I was not trying to pun.)

After about 9 months, when Charlie was clearly learning to read the notes and starting to play with both hands, he often barely had to look at the sheet music to play “Spinning” and “Oh Susanna” and the other short little songs in his book—-it was quite apparent that he’d more or less memorized many of the pieces and looking at the music was just an afterthought. As we practice less now — partially because Charlie’s also got to practice cello and also because he’s not taking piano lessons with a teacher anymore — Charlie has to pause and focus on what the notes say, so in some ways the piano practice has also been a good way to reinforce his reading skills. He can read the treble and bass clefs and a full octave of both starting from middle C.

I started taking piano lessons when I was six years old and played all through high school. I had weekly lessons, daily practice (with summers “off”—there was many a time that I detested nothing so much as practicing the piano), and a few entrances in the tryouts for the Junior Bach Festival in Berkeley. (I never made it past the tryouts; always had a memory block in the middle of the fugue I had so meticulously played a thousand times over.) I also started playing viola in the third grade and played in two youth orchestras.

To be honest, I often wished I had stuck with the violin: Charlie’s hands are already bigger than mine and because I’m 5 feet tall, I couldn’t use a bigger-sized viola that made a bigger, deeper sound. Charlie’s got long, slender fingers. I’ve always had to strain a bit to reach a full octave; Charlie can do this with ease. I figured cello would be a better match for him, plus he wouldn’t have to hold up an instrument on his shoulder. And, he definitely prefers low-pitched and deep sounds, so higher tones and sometimes squeakiness of a violin might not appeal to him at all (and especially as he’s been in a very sound-sensitive phase for the past year).

My goal for the next year is to try to teach Charlie to play sheet music—-to play music from a piano book bought in a store. Right now, we’re still using the songs his old teacher left us with. Those sheets just have the bare essentials on them, the notes of course, the clefs, some rests (though Charlie doesn’t really play them), sharps, maybe a time signature or some slurs. Too many distractions on the page tend to, well, distract; just on Sunday evening, Charlie sight-read a new song which had some measures in which the right and left hands play simultaneously. He paused at those measures and played the right hand part first, and then (following me pointing) the left hand.

And yes, I can’t be more glad that I had to practice piano and viola, every day, for all those years

“Only a Fool,” an online recording posted on MySpace by a friend of the parents of hacker Gary McKinnon, is in the top five of MySpace videos watched——McKinnon allegedly hacked his way into 97 computers belonging to NASA, the Department of Defense and several branches of the military, and is facing, and fighting against, extradition to the US. According to the Scotsman:

Despite struggling from depression, McKinnon posted his self-penned track on MySpace and within 48 hours it had been viewed by more than 100,000 people – taking it to No.5 in the video charts.

McKinnon’s melancholy ballad is a tale of survival in the face of great adversity. The chorus features the lyrics: “Don’t stop, don’t say it don’t matter/If it ain’t easy try harder/Only a fool would let it go/Don’t stop, don’t sit and do nothing/If it ain’t easy say something/Only a fool would let it show.”

The equally downbeat video features youngsters trudging around a bleak inner-city location.

McKinnon could face as much as 60 years in an American prison.

8 to 11 year olds who studied either piano or a string instrument for a minimum of three years outperformed children with no musical training in auditory discrimination, finger dexterity, verbal ability and non-verbal reasoning. Science Daily reports on a study published in the October 29th PLoS One.

Yes, Charlie has been practicing……….

I’ve been teaching some of my Latin students how to scan Latin poetry—-how to figure out the meter by identifying long and short syllables, elisions of vowels, when there’s a pause for a breath (caesura). One student commented that he likes scanning more than translating and it is a different sort of way of dealing with a language, looking at the sounds and syllables of words and not so much their meanings.

I talk about scanning as attending to the music of the poetry, to its sounds, more than to its sense. I’ve often noted that Charlie’s always had an affinity for music. That’s the impetus behind efforts to teach him to play the piano and the cello. While Charlie’s long struggled to learn to read words, he figured out how to read notes and the basics of sheet music (for both instruments) quite easily. He and Jim have an ever-growing repertoire of call and response songs and I’ve often been able to figure out what Charlie is saying (he doesn’t always fully articulate his syllables) by the intonation, pitch, and rhythm of his voice. I’ve also noted that he often seems to figure out what we’re saying based as much on those musical qualities.

The October Scientific American has a brief overview of a Jaunuary letter in Nature, on ultra-fine frequency tuning revealed in single neurons of human auditory cortex. It seems that human’s brains are “wired” to hear fine discriminations of sound, down to the 12th of an octave.

The study revealed that groups of exquisitely sensitive neurons exist along the auditory nerve on its way from the ear to the auditory cortex. In these neurons natural sounds, such as the human voice, elicit a completely different and far more complex set of responses than do artificial noises such as pure tones. In this mixed environ ment humans can easily detect frequencies as fine as one twelfth of an octave—a half step in musical terminology.

The vexing question is: Why? Bats are the only mammal with a better ability to hear changes in pitch than humans do. Predatory species such as dogs are not nearly as sensitive—they can dis criminate resolutions of one third of an octave. Even our primate relatives do not come close: macaques can resolve only half an octave. These results suggest the fine discrimination of sound is not a necessity for survival.

It’s been several months since Charlie had his last piano lesson when his teacher moved away and we don’t practice nearly as much as we used to. Nonetheless, after a little warming up, Charlie’s pretty much back in sync with reading and playing. One of the last things his teacher taught him was to read and play sharps; Charlie caught on easily to this, and often correct himself if he plays a natural note when there’s a sharp, and quickly moves his finger to play the black key a half-step up.

There’s been a lot said and studied about the effects of studying music and playing instruments on children’s learning and intelligence. I don’t have any hard data, but certainly music’s been a key tool for communicating, teaching, and understanding with Charlie, and he with us. I know he can hear a 12th of an octave and this further leads me to note that Charlie hears everything said around him, and that (as we constantly have to remind those who don’t know him) understands most everything he hears. He’s a much better listener than some might think.

(And, perhaps, than many of us who don’t have any “communication disabilities.”)

No, we don’t “got milk” here; my small family all got sick this week; we’ve always got hope.

• Got Autism? (asks PETA)
  PETA puts up a billboard in Newark NJ and takes it down.
• Is That a Tattoo With……Your Mom’s Cell Number?
  Of Safety Tats and other ways to keep a child safe.
• McCarthy’s, Er, “Autism” Pole
  Jenny McCarthy puts a stripper pole in her son’s room.
• What! No Hoodies?!!!!?!!!?!
  Imagine life without a hoodie for warmth and to block out noise—no thanks.
• Beware Jenny McCarthy and Her Angry Mob
  She’s got a mob (of “mother warriors,” presumably”—quite an image.
• Autism Genes, Math, and Music
  The genes that are thought to cause autism may also give mathematical, musical and other skills to those without
• Mental Health Parity Bill Passes
  Included in the economic bailout bill signed by President Bush last Friday, October 3, was a new law requiring equal coverage of mental and physical illnesses.
• Here We Go Again: Family can sue vaccine maker, Georgia court rules
  e decision allows Marcelo and Carolyn Ferrari to proceed with a civil lawsuit against vaccine maker American Home Products Corp.
• An Imitation Deficit
  A study by researchers at the UC Davis M.I.N.D. Institute suggests that autistic children have “impaired imitation skills” because they spend less time looking at the faces of people who are modeling actions or skills.