Summer is in some ways a time of disruption. As we move out of our academic schedules, there’s a lot of readjustment. The calendar boxes and clock boxes we’ve been in require a certain kind of attention to time, and our bodies align to those schedules. As we step out of those boxes, into a world of having all of the sensory experiences that we’ve been yearning for the rest of the year, there’s excitement, but it can also be a bit chaotic. So I recognize that we are all maybe a little bit outside of the realm that we normally call “our selves.”

As I’ve been thinking about and planning the new emergence of the East Bay Community Music Project, I’ve been doing so with new eyes, so to speak, and so, realize that there’s no going backward and trying to recreate what we were doing before. I also realize that what I’ve been doing all along is just a wee bit different from what I thought I was doing. And that’s a good thing.

In February of this year, I was diagnosed with ADHD, inattentive type, and in my exploration of the boundaries of this predisposition, I have also come to learn about some of my other sensory differences. I have something called aphantasia, or “inner blindness,” which just means that I don’t visualize like many people do. Sensory operations that would take place in the visual cortex of the brain are redirected to other areas. This makes for some interesting quirks. I look at it as a feature, and not a bug. People with aphantasia tend toward the loquacious, and if we’ve ever had a conversation, that will likely track. We also have a predisposition for complex symbolic logic processing, hence my love for poetry, koans, and allegory. I have an analogy for everything, and it’s not my fault–it’s just my way.

I also experience proprioception hyposensitivity, which affects my balance and fine motor coordination. All the years that I have spent playing instruments and never being able to express what my inner ear is hearing finally make sense. I have a frame of reference for understanding why I didn’t thrive in music school, even though my heart was all in and I practiced diligently. The combination of ADHD, aphantasia, and proprioception hyposensitivity create a certain set of limitations that make it difficult for my body and mind to retain maps necessary to achieve a high level of instrumental competence. I am truly an eternal beginner. I have used that term to refer to myself metaphorically, but with my new understanding of myself, I recognize the truth in the metaphor.

Again, I view this as a feature, not a bug, of my particular sensory container, and it has resulted in a particular orientation toward the experience of being together in a musical space, rather than the pursuit of excellence within it. And it is from this place that I am approaching the new chapter of the community I have been trying to nurture all along. In some ways it’s just a tiny shift, but I see it opening up a whole new set of opportunities for connection.

With this new understanding of myself, I have been able to reorganize my expectations, and in doing so, a lot of internalized shame has fallen away–shame for not achieving, while at the same time seeing peers thrive and blossom next to me. Shame for believing that I had a character flaw, that I wasn’t attentive enough, or organized enough, that I was somehow deficient. And letting go of that shame has opened me up to a whole new world of connection–connection that could have been happening all along.

Along with my diagnosis, I have been participating in spaces designed for people with sensory and processing differences to explore these differences. I can’t tell you the joy in people’s faces when their differences are recognized and celebrated. It’s like “these are my people!” And really, doesn’t everyone deserve to have that spontaneous feeling of recognition? Again, that is the place where I want to meet you. In a place of celebration and recognition of our differences, and the connection that results. So as new ideas emerge about how to meet each other, it is from a place of understanding of people’s sensory differences, and meeting their need for connection.

Sometimes a new frame needs a new name, so I am calling this new container imeetswe: I meets we.

As I said before, the musical spaces I have been nurturing for over two decades have been more about the experience of being together in a musical space than about achieving excellence within that space. Letting go of the musical frame altogether allows me (and we, hopefully) to see what else is going on when we share these spaces. Our heartbeats are entraining to the shared interaction with the rhythm; our breathing becomes synchronized as we all take a breath at the end of a phrase. Our nervous systems are doing something called co-regulation.

Co-regulation is an important part of a child’s development. As a baby’s nervous system is growing, it is finding direction from the directions that it’s parents’ nervous sytsems are modeling. It is learning how to react to a loud sound, how to recover from that reaction, how to adjust to the needs of different activities in different parts of the day. Our nervous systems are highly attuned to feel what other people in our space are experiencing, and to learn to interpret experience from the people around us. We are truly a social being.

And it is these connections that are activated when people with sensory differences recognize each other. This is the place I want to meet you. Where the I meets the We.

I suspect that some people, in being presented with this reframing, may want to look elsewhere for more traditional models of musical spaces. But over the years, I’ve noticed, that there are people who keep coming back, who keep checking in to see what I’m up to, what we’re up to. And many of those people experience sensory differences. I’m listening, and I’m here for you, and I hope we can build these new spaces together. But in recognizing this, am I being exclusive?

You may have heard the terms neurotypical and neurodivergent. If we adhere to this binary, it may appear that I’m choosing one over the other. That is not the case. Anyone who loves maps as much as I do will understand that as useful as a map can be for pointing us in a direction, it is a very unsatisfactory representation of a three-dimensional landscape, let alone a landscape, like a musical space, that includes time. No, I can see that there is a place for all of us in this space. This space of neurodiversity. This is where I want to meet you.

If you’re still reading, thank you for reading, and I don’t want to keep you much longer. We’ll have other chances to connect. But how many chances do our kids have to inhabit spaces where their differences are recognized and celebrated, and where this recognition activates their sense of connection? How often are our kids forced to fit into environments and learning structures that were not designed for them?

We need to do better.

This is where I want to meet you.

Thank you for listening.

Visit https://imeetswe.team to see what’s emerging. I hope to meet you there!