Good News on holiday at home with the autistic musicians

It is a holiday period in France, but the school stays open to help harassed parents and carers.

My students are aged between 18 and 22 and some of them have gone home. Those who are still here work to a more relaxed timetable. They get up and breakfast when they fancy it. I wandered to the kitchen to get a cup of tea and see who was around. Noone…

I went to the music room and set up my instruments.

Imagine my delight when the red headed boy stepped right out of a taxi into my music room. He was back to his old self; at last they have got his medication right! He had just returned from hospital.

We sang the good morning song, made up his story and he shouted RAP joyfully at regular intervals while we sang the RAP blues, the RAP folksong and RAP pop. He was with the boy who is eager to please, who is non verbal and relatively passive, but sensitive to music, often filtering the volume with his fingers in his ears. There was an outbreak of dancing and then we had to stop for the next group.

Group two were perhaps infected by my enthusiasm at seeing the return of the prodigal red head. The story I made up to sing for the girl who leaks music had me walking in St Brieuc market with her and her singing, and the director of the theatre coming out to ask her to sing in the opera there. It was necessary during this song for me to demonstrate operatic trills and runs. She laughed and trilled like a canary. I turned to the boy who just says oui. He does not usually have any speech, but is capable of squeaking oui sometimes. I said that the opera also needed a tenor and lowered my voice to make a series of ahs in a fog horny sort of voice in lower range. I can’t tell you how surprised I was when he sang the ahs back to me. The boy who makes a noise like a chainsaw did just that. We know how to have fun, and we do.

Happy holiday to everyone.