I developed a very low level, but eternal particular interest in the groundbreaking team of Madchester Content Monday. More precisely, I am perversely fascinated by their antics at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s.
For example, do you know that without, a drug resident/dancer/Maracas Player, he broke his hand three times while creating a studio album from 1992 yes, please! in the Bahamas? The first injury was the result that driving was not mistaken. The second took place during an accident on a boat. Third? His girlfriend was sitting on it. And do you realize that he was still not the most troublesome member of the group during this process?
The singer Shaun Ryder made early gestures to immaculate the recording sessions, but depending on the source either spilled his metadone supply on the road, or absorbed it all shortly after landing. Then he took a novel drug habit and eventually resorted to selling clothes to pay for it. British tabloids claimed that he also sold a studio sofa, but Ryder is rapidly denied to this day. “
His muse and voice were less elated. He barely wrote any lyrics when they were gone, and his throat was too devastated from using drugs to singing. Six weeks of detoxification have passed and two weeks of recording at home to take it again.
And this is a significantly shortened description of events. There is even more where it comes from if you want to get off the rabbit hole.
I am not a massive fan of the excess of a rock star. My opinion in this matter is more in line with the frontman of Gene Martin Rosser, who once said: “If you consider rock’n’roll as some artistic expression and rebellion, throwing a TV designated from the window is the antithesis of rock’n’roll. Some frail turf must immaculate it later.” But for one reason he is forced with the above story: Yes, please! He was finally completed and released. Because the team’s needs have been met.
The Content Monday label financed its Bahama adventure and sent more money when they pissed off. The team manager supervised Ryder’s detoxification. When his health improved, the album producers led him through a series of innovative exercises to facilitate break the block of writers. Even without, he had the opportunity to cure his hand.
Creating yes, please! It is an extreme and particularly absurd example, but it is a pattern that I began to notice as a music journalist on the verge of autism diagnosis many years ago. Many musicians – especially, but not only popular affluent white men – functions and require support in a way that would not be considered “normal” in other areas of life. Regardless of neurology or anything else that could happen. And many people or do not notice, because the needs are met by the traps of their work, or they do not question it, because that’s how rock stars are.
Capitalism plays a significant role in this phenomenon. As many of my other autists noticed, all discrepancy from the norm is more likely that it will be accepted and accommodated if it can be used for profit or other perceived value. But I think it is also an example of how the concept of such things as reasonable accommodation and weight can change depending on culture or subculture.
Sometimes the difference between the eccentric or uncompromising and naughty, repulsive, anti -social or tough can be about whether you can write a catchy melody. But it can also be reduced to the scene in which you are. The need for facilitate in everyday life is more tolerated in our society when this facilitate is helpful in earning money than when it is required to be able to live safely with basic human dignity. But this facilitate is also less likely that it will be stigmatized – and it is more likely that it will be romanticized – if it comes from a combination of managers, personal assistants, colleagues, groups, team facilitate, well -known friends and fans, as opposed to supporting employees and family members. Even if a enormous amount of facilitate involved is not so different.
This support and freedom are not evenly awarded to all who create and perform music. Marginalized musicians can face a much higher level of control than their white men’s counterparts. Fighting and independent artists can get stuck in many roles to stay on the surface. And even the most privileged stars can be incomprehensible and susceptible to exploitation and abuse from the people themselves who support them. There are also autistic musicians who, in a sense, can be supported by a innovative lifestyle and failed.
But the fact that there are any musicians who can and enjoy benefits suggests that our society can be very frosty, that not everyone can exist independently, and that some people will need more facilitate, time, patience and other support in some or all aspects of their lives. And that you do not have to be ashamed or write your hand in any of the above. Our society simply sucks when it comes to choosing who is contained in this concept.
I think that part of my fixation on Mondays and their antics is that I consider them a bit aspirative. I do not dream of going away, blowing money on drugs and breaking cars for fun. But in my lower and more absorbed at times I wonder what I can achieve with a fraction of their resources. If I had someone who was willing and was able to bank my work, even when I tried to produce everything. If I had talented professionals who were ready to protect me through my current innovative crisis/Autistic burnout. If I could afford to rest and recover as much as I need. If I could admit half the grace for flipping the possibility of making contacts because of unwritten social principles, I did not understand, because the team members enjoyed almost everything they did in the first wave of their career.
Each of them would be enough to significantly improve my life. And I wouldn’t even steal any chair.
However, I have a rule when it comes to thinking and writing about autism: if something is tough for me as a white autistic person with low support needs, for many of my autistic people it will be drastically worse. So if any of the above accommodation can change my life, what else could be possible if all autistic people received a little or a rock star treatment?