Aspergers PS

Peter Green is my favourite guitar player, and by a very large margin. He had The Gift, and had technique to die for. But then so did other players - like Eric Clapton, David Gilmour or Miller Anderson.

So what made Peter Green so different ? It was his amazing feel, both for music, and for the instrument. He played sparely, and not especially fast. But every note was exquisite, and he could express emotion with such deft ease. He made guitars speak, and they spoke to your soul and not just your ears.

For a long time he played a Les Paul 1959 Standard which Gary Moore later owned and played. It recently sold for $2m or some crazy sum up in the paintcards. That guitar gave him a really distinctive - and utterly inimitable - tone.

Why ? Because there was something wrong with the guitar. Whether in manufacture or later repair, some of the pick-up wiring was reversed. Result ? The guitar could do most things other guitars could do, but not all. But no other guitar could sound like that badly-wired Les Paul.

After yesterday's post I was thinking that Aspergers is a bit like that guitar. ASD people just have different wiring which makes them distinct from normal people. We don't have the circuitry to be normal, neuro-typical. We behave the way we do - just like that guitar - because we are hard-wired to act that way.

I know people close to us often find us frustrating, and may even think that if we tried that bit harder we would not be so difficult. It's not like that. We are just differently-wired.

After a lifetime of having friends round to meals, I still end the evening talking to Sue to figure out whether they enjoyed coming, whether they were OK. I can't tell because I just do not have the circuits that might let me know. I only find out by analysing what went on, and discussing it. Tedious, for sure. But I just do not have the circuits to do anything else. 

So the 11th thing you need to know is this: we are not being deliberately awkward. We were just made that way.