Art

I think this is ASD related in as much as if we are interested in a topic then we tend to be 'really' interested in it but if we're not interested in a topic then we don't really 'get' it. 

I don't 'get' art per se. I'm not good at art, it has never been my strong point and like you, if I look at a painting I can appreciate whether or not it looks nice but my understanding of it doesn't extend beyond that. However! In the field of arts and crafts I am very good at sewing jewellery. I can do this to a very high level and I understand it, the skills that are used to create it and the level of craftsmanship that has gone into making a given piece. I can appreciate a piece of sewn jewellery or beadwork at a higher level than simply whether it looks nice or not.

Do you have an area of interest or hobby where you would have greater appreciation of the level of skill that has gone into creating it?

I am constantly bombarded by noise here. Locals do complain, so it's not just me. Not really surprising then that the meltdowns have decreased in public. But I reckon the meltdowns now happen more at home with the family That is often because I think they are just not listening properly. Part of that is probably because they are also affected by the noisy environment, but their chosen way to deal with it is to become noisier and more obstinately vocal themselves. Part of it might also be because cellphone use and social media use are at epidemic proportions. Concentration levels are abysmal. My approach to that is to slow down and work on one thing at a time very deliberately. That makes life more relaxing, and means I don't have to be depressed. But the extreme urgency of their online addiction leads them to think that my approach is totally irrelevant.

Spike Milligan has written some poetry for adults which I find incredibly moving. He doesn't pull his punches when he writes about his experiences of acute mental illness, and he conveys them strikingly, yet without ever losing his sense of humour, in his prose too. He could be a biting satirist at times too, always poking fun at the inanity of so many of the arbitrary rules that we're expected to live by. He was a far more versatile writer than many people would give him credit for, IMHO.

And accent! I love his northerness,  wit and directness. 

John Cooper Clarke has such a wonderful voice

Other than spike milligan as a child I've never been into poetry. However a few weeks ago on holiday I was moved to tears by a rendition of The King Of Rome - about a racing pigeon. This has lit a spark within me, and I've recently been indulging in John Cooper Clarke and Don Marquis. I actually found JCC was good at breaking me out of a cycle of ruminating and obsessive thoughts the other day.  I think it was the rhythm of the beat. His poems don't move me as such but I find them clever and amusing.

A good exhibition will let the audience make its own mind up, regardless of the purpose or agenda of any of the artists. Everyone will assign their own individual meaning to works of art because they are looking at it through their own eyes with their own schema, experiences, thoughts and opinions.

Yes I love it! Thank you for finding that XD

Same with languages - the only one I was any good at was Latin - no speaking/listening. We had cassettes in French, they went far too fast for me, never understood how anyone could hear a word of it! I took a course once (just one afternoon introductary one) on learning Welsh though music, I really need to put some time aside to try it again by myself, lots of Welsh language songs have English translations available online and the ones that are sung slower without too much musical accompaniment I can hear sufficiently well.

Am glad your meltdowns are less frequent now, when overloaded by sound I tend to just shut down completely and can't make sense of anything, suddenly people may as well be talking in an imaginary language for all my brain can process it!

ha ha u used the book

Most lyrics AND all second languages are extremely difficult for me to hear. Even though i really get off on the lyrics, and even enjoy misheard lyrics. Even with languages I truly enjoy; such as Welsh. Especially difficult in my current country of residence, which has a tonal language. (The different script is easy by comparison.) Like you, i seem to find it difficult to separate units of heard language, especially in this very noisy country. Too many competing stimuli! Overload! Meltdowns, in the past! (But very occasionally now.)

It definitely sounds like we all have something we can connect with, I'm itching to figure out mine now! You're not the first person on this thread to mention feats of engineering either.

Yes, music is the one area where I frequently connect emotionally, I've tried to leave it separate from visual art as I feel it's simply more direct - or maybe I feel that way only becasue I do 'get' it! Often it can be as much from the sounds as much the lyrics, it's been particularly interesting for me reading about sensory issues with hearing/understanding voices, that explains why I've always found lyrics so much harder to figure out than everyone else, especially if they're not clearly enunciated. I've struggled to recognise some of my favourite songs live, because even if the music is the loudest thing my brain can't separate it from the surrounding croud noise!

I mentioned this thread to my OH and he reminded me that when we went to Iceland I was really in love with the sculpture by Einar Jónsson. 

I also really feel moved by the Lovell telescope at Jodrell Bank. Technically not art I suppose!

I love music and as you say, it will often bring out emotions deeper and stronger than any events in life.

I've had songs I have listened to hundreds of times and I have been really surprised to find out what they're actually about. 

Without a doubt, music has often succeeded in inspiring my strongest emotional moments. it has to be said those emotions are stronger than if (say) a bereavement happened in the family. This is no exaggeration. It's not that I don't feel emotion at such family events, but that the emotion does not emerge so suddenly, forcefully and spontaneously as it does with music. I would add that the sort of music that does this for me was probably created by musicians who were experiencing being in a flow state at the time of recording or performance.

A professional musician and former colleague recently explained to me the feeling of creating music while being in a flow state, and how it was often synchronized between players on the same stage or in the same studio. This came as no great surprise to me, as I have observed stage and studio musicians whilst acting in a support capacity. Frequently, I would drop into flow just watching. By making that comment, my former colleague effectively communicated to me that he had some understanding of my self-identification. He almost self-identified himself, when young. But, he has had a successful musical career, and I imagine that success was enough for him to forego diagnosis.

My father could be considered as a semi-pro musician. In one of the more striking 'family' poems, the author described my father as a person easily lost to the rest of his family by his total absorption in music. I first heard that poem decades ago, before he was diagnosed with dementia. Even on first hearing, it struck a very strong chord with me. The author obviously felt cheated by that absorption, and I suppose I might also have been cheated of something in a similar fashion. He was often a rather unemotional person. I have obviously inherited some of that. Others in the family haven't. They can at least now probably appreciate some of my issues, but the author is still perhaps unaware of them.  But as the author continues to occasionally read that poem in my presence, one wonders if the author is actually observing my reactions for some slight flicker of unmasked emotion. The author has always emoted strongly in poetry.

I’ve never got the whole art thing.  The only thing I find impressive is also if a painting/drawing resembles the real thing, because it’s amazing someone can produce anything so realistic. 

As for poetry, I like the way some poems sound, there’s some poetry audiobooks I’ve tried and I’ll listen to the same couple of poems over and over just because I like the persons voice and sound of the words.  But I have no idea what they mean. 

Art such as poetry,  music, paintings,  sculpture.!!!  And it's appreciation.!!! 

Don't worry,  You either get it or you don't. 

Some art, I understand and appreciate and it's good to meet like minded people who understand what I feel.

Other art is a total b l O O d y  mystery. 

The reticence that you wrote about strikes a chord with me, and as you say "not just in art". Insinuations that my tastes are merely an affectation or that I'm just deliberately obtuse are no strangers to me, either.

I would guess that most people would think of me as having very little say, holding few strong opinions, and rarely being passionate about anything. On a good day, I can do a pretty good impression of being an agreeable person; but bland, two-dimensional, a visitor from the uncanny valley (and usually too agreeable; I wouldn't want to slander doormats by comparing myself with one.)

I don't mind at all anyone holding a different opinion to me, and I can enjoy comparing notes with them, but I bail out as soon as there's any sign of neutral statements being taken for passing judgement; honest questions being taken as asserting a position; taste or emotional reactions being used as shibboleths. Besides which, the conversation will have been driven to pastures new by the time I've run all of the options through my faux-pas filter; so I usually settle for making myself acutely self-conscious by ruminating about how one might convey mild enthusiasm or disapproval without having to say anything.

Wow, everyone, thanks so much for all your responses! It may be that we find it rarer than NT people to feel emotions through art at least of a visual nature, though is clear a few of you have deeply connected with certain styles/pieces so I think it may be my next project to find mine.

Having spent a long time trying to force so many aspects of my personality to match up to society's expectations, it's going to take a while to figure out which are autistic (I have to work with as they are) and which are experience-based and can be re-learnt. Am so glad to have you all alongside on this. :)