'People with autism have stronger connections between brain cells'

Another thing is music.  As a younger man, and essentially throughout life, I used to be really infuriating with music.  I'd keep stopping and rewinding a particular section - a guitar riff or drum solo - and play it over and over.  Or I'd put a song on, play a bit of it, then put something else on, then something else - never getting the whole way through.  I used to work in a shop that sold stereo equipment, and I'd pre-record tapes of my favourite music and just play them all day until someone else would say 'Haven't we heard this enough already?'  I get stuck on particular bands or singers (or authors) and will listen to (or read) nothing else.  I don't like getting used to new music or literary genres because I like to stay with what I know.  It takes a long time to move on to something different.

Working with autistic people has made me recognise a lot of my own habits and routines.  We have people who will simply play the same piece of music over and over for hours on end - and keep going back to favourite parts before the whole thing has finished.  I'm very much like that, at a different level.

Another thing is music.  As a younger man, and essentially throughout life, I used to be really infuriating with music.  I'd keep stopping and rewinding a particular section - a guitar riff or drum solo - and play it over and over.  Or I'd put a song on, play a bit of it, then put something else on, then something else - never getting the whole way through.  I used to work in a shop that sold stereo equipment, and I'd pre-record tapes of my favourite music and just play them all day until someone else would say 'Haven't we heard this enough already?'  I get stuck on particular bands or singers (or authors) and will listen to (or read) nothing else.  I don't like getting used to new music or literary genres because I like to stay with what I know.  It takes a long time to move on to something different.

Working with autistic people has made me recognise a lot of my own habits and routines.  We have people who will simply play the same piece of music over and over for hours on end - and keep going back to favourite parts before the whole thing has finished.  I'm very much like that, at a different level.

U2's 'With or Without You' and 'Where The Streets Have No Name' are two songs that get me that way.  I play the opening of the latter and the final riff of the former repeatedly - sometimes without bothering with the rest of the song.  Something about Edge's guitar playing just hooks into me.  It's quite a distinctive style.  Not really grandiose and flamboyant, but quite simple and chiming.  Similarly with Peter Buck in REM (miss them!)

The music thing is so familiar to me - in the car I will replay one song on a CD over and over again for a few weeks before shifting into something else. I like certain sections of songs too. I knew someone who wore out several vinyl records of The Sound of Music - she had Down Syndrome but I now wonder if she was autistic too. Another man I worked with played a few lines of a Barclay James Harvest song over and over again: "we will survive beyond the grave and while we sleep we will be saved". I remember puzzling over what he was trying to communicate as he never explained his fascination for this lyric.