Early Hours

Flowers

Last week in our deep dive into pockets…

…we briefly swam past Marie Antoinette and talked about her affinity for adorning her hair with boats or babies* as a way of commenting on the events of the day. Participating in the discourse, without having to say a word.

I just started reading Visual Thinking by Temple Grandin who talks about the three types of thinking among people with autism:

Visual thinkers who think in images and are often poor at algebra.

Verbal specialists who are good at talking and writing but they lack visual skills.

Pattern thinkers such as Daniel Tammet, who excel in math and music but may have problems with reading or writing composition.

Verbal thinking is our most celebrated communication style and Temple is pushing for more hands on classes in schools to cultivate the minds of the visual and pattern based thinkers as well:

I often get asked what I would do to improve both elementary and high school. The first step would be to put more of an emphasis on hands-on classes such as art, music, sewing, woodworking, cooking, theater, auto mechanics and welding. I would have hated school if the hands-on classes had been removed, as so many have been today.

100% A-GREE.

As an artist, I definitely prefer to communicate visually rather than verbally. Growing up, my mum told me that I always asked for a book by its colour and pattern, rather than its title. Realizing that verbal communication wasn’t my thing, she found me other avenues to express myself - she encouraged me to draw my bad dreams as a form of catharsis, and I first got into animation as a way of expressing my interior life through pictures rather than words. It didn’t change the fact that I lived in an almost constant fear of being called on in class, but it did help me realize that wasn’t the be all and end all of existence.