Speaking and Listening

And the stupid things I do with my free time.

I did something really stupid, friends. No, I did not try to cut my own hair (though I’ve taken great liberties with my poor children’s bangs). I did not buy this $5000 leather and wool Bottega Veneta trench coat (though I’m thinking about setting up a GoFundMe page). I did not accidentally masturbate on Zoom.

The stupid thing I did was waiting nine full months after its release to finally watch the highly acclaimed documentary Crip Camp. Despite being one of the only things my parents agree on (they both emailed separately, to tell me how much they loved this movie), right in my wheelhouse, and available FOR FREE on Youtube thanks to the people who made it being dope, I wasted months of my life doing things other than watching this movie, such as gently stroking an image of an admittedly perfect trench coat on my computer screen.

There are a lot of things to write about after watching this film, the loudest of which might be “why haven’t we seen this film before???” In a review for Forbes, the disabled writer Andrew Pulrang writes:

Crip Camp had me grinning from beginning to end. But I am upset that I knew nothing of all of these events until 10 and 20 years later, even though I grew up with disabilities at exactly this time and attended a “crip camp” of my own. I blame myself and my own internal ableism as much as anything. I might have turned away if anyone had tried to tell me these stories in my youth. Maybe someone did and I’ve forgotten it. Maybe it’s something that each of us has to discover on our own, on our own schedule.

Nope, Andrew, I don’t think someone tried to tell you these stories before. They were not told to me when I got my special education teaching credential, and until Crip Camp, I embarrassingly only told them to my students in the span of a few Powerpoint slides.

Watching this movie, after years of working with disabled and neurodivergent kids, the thing that struck me most were the scenes of speaking and listening that were depicted. This short scene, where disabled teenagers discuss their complicated relationships with their parents, is so simple and normal and incredibly moving for just those reasons. A group of teens talking shit about their parents, and even having shrewd insight into their parents’ perspectives, is nothing to write home about. But watching several teens with different levels of communicable speech have this discussion is riveting. At one point, a camper named Nancy weighs in, and no one can understand what she is saying. But they let her go until she has made her point, more than a minute, which is a long time on the “humans listening to other "humans who are seemingly unintelligible” clock. Then another camper, who is also difficult to understand, takes the time to explain what he thinks she was trying to express, and she confirms that he got it right.

Click to watch the scene I’m obsessed with

To many neurotypical people, having people stop talking while you’re talking, let you say what you need to say, and even clarify and add to your thinking, is an everyday experience. But how many times have you seen a disabled person listened-to so thoroughly? How often have you listened like that?

One of my favorite students of all time, an autistic boy who I will call Caleb, used to express himself mostly in stories. He would tell long, repetitive tales that mashed-up his favorite movies or characters with daily events from his life. This drove a lot of people crazy, and of course, one can only take so many retellings of the same story (trust me, I have told my son the tale of the time my dad took me on a road trip to Vermont and we saw the movie Doc Hollywood no less than 400 times and if I have to do it again, my brain will explode).

In case you don’t remember, or had the good fortune of never seeing it, there are boobs in this movie. Not appropriate, dad.

But Caleb wasn’t just speaking, he was communicating. For his brain, expression didn’t work in the ways we’d come to expect. He told us about his fear of jokes and pranks through a story about Ebenezer Scrooge, but on April Fool’s Day. He shared his feelings about change, school, and family through a tale of a snow day that never happened (at least not in the San Francisco Bay area). One time I passed Caleb in the lunch line and casually said, “Hey Caleb, what’re you thinking about?” “Nothing” he replied, and then, with a double take and a smile, he shouted “Indiana Jones!” Caleb wasn’t accustomed to genuine interest in his communication. I can’t say I always expressed it, or let him say everything he needed to say before redirecting him to an unnecessary task or sneaking off down the hallway.

Last week, thanks to the fact that I subscribe to the Listening World newsletter, I attended a poetry reading featuring non-speaking autistics, put on by the RCAH Center for Poetry at MSU. (It was virtual, obviously. I think it’s really cute that whenever someone says they went to an event or saw a friend, they feel the need to make sure people know they did not violate COVID norms). Over the dinnertime din (screaming seems to be the best way to make sure you are listened to in my family), I heard four incredible young poets share their work (through text-to-speech tech and readers). In many ways, the poetry felt like any poetry, especially poetry written by young people - passionate, edgy, self-divulging. At one point, I had the thought “Is this poetry good?” and then went down a rabbit-hole about that question, why I would ask it and what it means.

Does language have to be good to be heard? I’ve listened to a lot of people say a lot of worthless shit in my life, primarily, myself. I’ve heard a lot of terrible poetry, seen a lot of awful plays, sat through many a boring anecdote. And also, what is good communication, especially if communication has, like most other things, been mostly presented to us through the lens of a neuro-normative, capitalistic, patriarchal society?

I’m trying to listen more. To the people who don’t talk fast enough for my silly, productivity-driven brain. To the subtle, somatic signals that tell me I really only want half of this enormous meatball sub. To the stories people tell and why I try to judge them based on my experiences instead of based on theirs. And I’m gonna ask my dad what it was like to take an 8-year-old to a movie and then all of a sudden realize there was nudity in it. He probably has a good explanation. Everyone does.

More:

-You can view a video of the poetry reading I described here. Skip to minute 9 to see the poets start reading.

-You can follow the Listening World newsletter, which shares the poetry of non-speaking autistic poets here.

-You can buy gorgeous chapbooks from non-speaking autistic poets here.