Life makes me laugh sometimes, and it’s all good when it does. March 2018, at age 50, I learned I might be on the Autism spectrum – meaning I had been my whole life and didn’t know it. I began looking into it and the more I did, the more figurative light bulbs came on. I also began making the music for a new 6 Sucks Sex album, Open Head Artism. The album cover art is adapted from self-revealing (psychedelic) Open Head Art that I began in June 2017. Scroll way down past the blogibberish to get to the advance-release song and video – Faster Slowness.
I got a formal Autism dx in Nov 2019, and continued to research autism and work on this music until around March 2019, when my Dad, Harold Grokunort (pseudonym), who i’d been staying with and increasingly taking care of as he got older, got sick and then passed not long after.
The music and video were recorded at his house in the woods, which he’d filled over the decades with his amazing art, some of which you can see in the video. He liked reading and making art. He never exhibited or sold any, and never cared if anyone else saw his collection of well over 100 unique sculptures and paintings, though he was usually polite when those lucky enough to see it gave him compliments. Any genetic influence for my autism or art likely came from him, Love bless him. He was a cool Dad, mostly loved and accepted me and let me be. Sometimes I freaked him out. I am a freak. We would regularly hang out in silence, reading, and sometimes making each other laugh.
My Dad and his house are gone. I’ve moved and kept his cat and all the art I could for posterity and the People. The Open Head Artism album and Grokunort art exhibition projects have been on the shelf since then while I focus on other work. The future full-finished forthcoming album will have at least 6 songs. The music is already recorded, but lyrics and vocals, which are especially challenging for me, remain to be done on 3 songs.
You can see from the Faster Slowness video – Youtube that my own standards for what qualifies as interesting art worthy of making are relatively easy and low – even found art can be out of this world, imo. Even so, I find my own lyrics and vocals generally dreadful, hard to produce and harder to listen to, though I do enjoy my own music – maybe how some guys like the smell of their own farts.
For a taste of my lyrics and vocals, check out the first 6 Sucks Sex album, Sick Twisted Loving Jesus, 1.5 years pre-Dx. It includes takes on Bible passages and the US Constitution & Declaration of Independence. And, if you’re interested in hearing the full still-undone Open Head Artism album, lmk – public interest may motivate me to finish it. And if you’re interested in promoting or exhibiting anything in the Grokunort art collection, lmk. I contacted over a dozen museums and none were interested cuz he was unknown, though some wished me well.
Anyway, long story short, this first song to be released in advance of the full Open Head Artism album, is called Faster Slowness – Soundcloud. It’s an ‘instrumental’; 15″ of nonsense groove drums with junk riffs played on literal junk. Wait til the end for the secret guitar feedback surprise – if you can stand it. Music to funk loudly to. Trigger warning – may cause overload of senselessness. I do it for the art.
For many reasons, I believe my autism dx is credible. Not least is that it’s made my life and myself make sense. I’m different, and most people can tell, immediately or after awhile – except most doctors. Many on the autism spectrum can’t talk or take care of themselves, but others with brains classified as autistic blend invisibly into society, supporting themselves or finding enough to survive and sometimes reproducing. Though I’ve needed and gotten help sometimes, I’ve also worked to take care of and improve myself and help others as I could, throughout my life. I can be verbal – even verbose. I work at different things, and I’m capable of seeming ‘normal’ in circumstances that might send others on the spectrum into uncontrollable meltdown or shutdown, due to sensory or social overload.
Anecdotal and scientific evidence makes the case that Aspies are disproportionately represented in STEM, arts and academia. Personally, I’m fascinated by God, sci, tech, history, people, society, life, the universe & everything, but I suck at math and languages. I’m interested in what humans and other animals do, and I’ve been told I can be charming, but I’m not a psychopath. A third of those on the psychopath spectrum may be in prison, but a significant percent are in powerful public and private offices, and some are also in the arts and religious institutions.
6 Sucks Sex 