Here is the Help Musicians UK website:
https://www.helpmusicians.org.uk/
They do support work that changes lives and careers. If you are a musician in the UK needing advice on something, maybe they can point you in the right direction. They don't just provide lip service. They do real work, where they can, of course - no one is a miracle worker.
They try to help out with many things. One being:
Health & Wellbeing
Advice on staying well and getting help and treatment for illness, accident and physical or mental performance problems. Help for disabled musicians.
Disabilities come in many forms. Some are 'invisible'. Autism Spectrum Disorder can range from barely perceptible to needing serious support. And all the points inbetween. Usually those most far along the spectrum get the most support, while those just touching on it usually get abuse. There's a couple of reasons for this, and let's not get in to all that here, for the moment, at least. Hopefully it doesn't need to be stressed that this is not a competition.
There are many aspects of Autism Spectrum Disorder which are counter-intuitive. Many people are not diagnosed at all and many who are, are only diagnosed later in life. While they try to make sense of the bombsite their life has become. Often quite intelligent people, rarely breaking the law (honesty is of paramount importance to autistic people) and with only the best of intentions, they try to piece together the bits of their life that went before to make sense of their present, and hopefully, make a plan for their future. They, like most people, don't exist in a vacuum. Though social isolation/exclusion is very common.
What most people don't realise is that it's not a case of the 'autist' just being a bit sensitive. It's neurological in nature and affects the senses on the deepest level. Loud sounds seem LOUDER. Bright lights seem BRIGHTER. And quite often the condition is 'co-morbid' with other conditions such as Dyspraxia. But also many other conditions which may exist on their own and need understanding in their own right due to their extreme complexity.
These are just my words. I'm not a professional in any sense. Though I do have a better than average layman's understanding in a 'general' sense with regard to all of this 'stuff'. Don't listen to me though...
There's a few people on this site who post who are on the spectrum. Whether they realise it or not or have been diagnosed or not. I imagine a few have, and like to keep it quiet, not least because of the stigma attached. That's ok.
There's no shame in having a neurological condition that is through no fault of your own. It would be like blaming someone for being born without a limb, or being born blind. It just doesn't make any sense logically, if nothing else.
But people will judge you, they will look down on you, they will shun you and they will take advantage of you. This is the game. It's beyond the scope of this post. But no harm in 'keeping it real'.
Yeah, 'keeping it real' - whatever that means.
One person that has been 'keeping it real' in the truest and most profound sense of the phrase is Kris Weston (Yeah, ex - The Orb - last time we'll mention that now you got the reference).
Kris is a musical genius. He's got some serious credits to his portfolio. He's produced/engineered/played on some of the greatest records in recent history. He's not a blow-hard. He's not a braggard. But he doesn't suffer fools. And this is just my personal opinion (not knowing him very much) that maybe even if he did read that book 'How to win friends...' it still wouldn't have helped him very much. He's a straight-talker. Theres no BS with him. At all.
And that offends some people sometimes when you are expected to play the game. Quid pro quo. I'm just going to stop here. Little of what I say has any value, other than to lay a bit of groundwork, hopefully.
So Kris got in to a bit of a tight spot, and he reached out to Help Musicians UK. And it was from here that he finally got someone to give him a bit of help and finally get a 'diagnosis'. Seems like the old lightbulbs went on in the old 'gulliver'. But I won't regale his story or tale more than that. He does it so much better himself. With rare honesty and much personal insight (autistic people are not supposed to be self-aware, though many are, painfully so) he patches out his recent strange journey. And he does it with wit and not a little bad language. He certainly does it with humor. And most importantly of all - with no self-pity. He is just a man trying to understand himself and this crazy mixed up world we all live in.
You should go over to his blog:
https://krisweston.com
You can skip to his autism diagnosis here:
https://krisweston.com/my-autism-diagnosis/
It's all out there. Without shame, without pathos. Always with the foul-mouthed wise cracks.
I've been studying autism for many years, and without doubt, his portrayal and 'laying all the cards on the table with it all', is probably the closest to the bone and most elucidating erudition you will find. Go read it for yourself. Whether you suspect you might be a bit on the 'spectrum' yourself, or maybe someone else that you know or love. Or just for the hell of it, to realise that there are people wandering around out there that think differently and act differently to YOU. In psychology it's called 'theory of mind'.
This post is getting long now, and we haven't even got to the good stuff. I'm going to grab another beer...
