locust-breakfast

the bravest little toaster

  • them

thirtyish!
.
pfp is a small friend I found on my car one night.
.
bye cohost! thank you cohost.


I just spent 20 minutes reading and jotting down some of sam keeper's old-school dr. who recommendations; the post ends with a link (and a positive tone) to the trailer for the newest series. I opened the link, looked at the thumbnail (on my phone! itty bitty!) and immediately said NOPE. fear! get that big ol face away from me! I loved david tennant's original run, those eps were a refuge during a rough year. why am I instantly bouncing off this trailer the way I bounce off almost everything?

it makes me wonder if part of why I like older and/or campy and/or bizarre media is actually because those qualities hold the whole thing at arms length. they feel more like watching a play than dunking my head in a bucket of ice water.

most stuff made today feels more like the bucket of ice water. definitely and for sure an all-consuming sensory experience; sometimes, very rarely, this might be exhilarating! mostly, it is not my idea of a relaxing night in. this is not a critique! I'm curious about why my experience is like this.


this is not a sensitivity I've heard of in others, or at least not to this degree. what's going on here? how could I accommodate myself?

I know for example I'm hypersensitive to music! I love music, but the volume most people seem to like to dance to, or hear at concerts, is totally unbearable to me. earplugs bring it down to merely "nonverbal". so I accommodate myself by politely asking hosts to turn the music down at small gatherings, or heading out for a long walk at big ones. I only go to concerts with people who can handle me at "nonverbal".

I love people too! I'm deeply invested in people. friends and coworkers describe me with words like intuitive, perceptive, or insightful. (this is probably why nobody clocked me as autistic.) but as I'm doing all that intuitive listening, I'd rather not look at you! it's too loud.

so, like, are feelings a sensory input channel? can you be differently calibrated to that stuff in an analogous way to noise?

to watch tv - when I can get myself to watch tv - I have to turn on subtitles. not to understand the dialogue, but so that I can intermittently mute the audio. sometimes I mute the audio and block the screen with my hand, and sometimes even then I have to look away and let the moment pass. the images are too loud, the delivery is too loud, even the script as inferred via closed captioning can be a bit too much. to reiterate: I love stories and find media deeply interesting!

ironically, the thing that makes tv more bearable is to make it social. I can handle tv if I am with someone who will allow me to holler and shriek and comment my way through the episode. barring that, though, watching analytically as if I'm going to tell someone about it - even if I'm only saving it to drafts - also helps. it gives the loud bucket of screeching feelings some context: jamming my head in this bucket feels overwhelming, but it is in a place and time, and so am I, and when it's over there will be a world in which this experience I've had was real and mattered and meant something. and then maybe I feel safe enough to enjoy it as it happens.

I do wish most of the things I enjoy didn't happen at the very outer threshold of my sensory capacity. o well.

I don't really know how I would research this, and I don't have the time or the bandwidth to do so either! but I can bash out some paragraphs about it and mail them to the universe.


You must log in to comment.