Metaphors Are Important: An Ethnography Of Robotics
First, a story. (A little Christmas story. I call it: the story of Schmuel. Tailor of Klimovitch.)
*****
(The best part of the story is what I leave out.)
*****
I met a mini!Kurt the other day. He was very blonde, with intense brown eyes, but he was very particular about his hat, and his dad was Burt Hummel in all the ways that counted. I’d guess he was about four–his voice was still all exclamation points.
“I’M MATT!” he said, hiding his face from me, and then trying to run out of the waiting room. It was cool though–I don’t know if I even managed ahi.
He was at the stage where he was still mainly echolalic, but he was learning how to store and recombine and modify phrases to work for him. I was excited for him, and almost proud, because he’d mastered two essential skills for that–swapping pronouns, and prompting other people to remember their lines. His dad, trying to bundle him into his coat, was not playing along at first.
“I’M SO CUTE!” mini!Kurt reminded him, trying to make his arms go into the right sleeves. “I’M SO CUTE!? I’M SO CUTE?”
“Yeah,” Dad sighed, wrestling with the zipper. “You’re cute.”
“SO CUTE?”
“So cute, that’s right.”
Mini!Kurt, satisfied that everything was going according to plan, was ready to leave. “BYE!” he called, waving his hand backwards at me, a perfect mirror image.
I waved. Had my mind been more together, I would have flapped.
*****
Echolalia is metalanguage.
*****
Echolalia is an unexpected treasure hunt. You can be watching a bootleg musical you never thought would be any good, but turns out to be beautiful, and suddenly they’re going up the scale singing hot hot hot hot, and you’re back with Kimba, and he’s saying hot hot hot hot–only he’s got this elaborate metaphor about fire and anger going on right now, and here it means I think you’re mad at me, so I’m mad at you, don’t touch me.
And then you’re back at your laptop, wondering when he started watching musicals and rethinking half the things you thought you knew.
*****
Echolalia is what you use when language is too much. It’s just also what you use when it’s not enough.
These things are not opposites.
*****
Walt knows my name, but he’d rather call me Mulan. We’re on the swings, trading movie titles.
“101 Dalmations?” I offer.
“Mulan no thank you!” He chides. Considers. “Rio, with Jesse Eisenberg?”
I grin. I’d only said that once, but he’d picked up on my crush, and he offers it back to me when I am having a hard time with the conversation. I try to remember his favorite, as a peace offering. “Kung Fu Panda II, in theaters now?”
I get it right.
Months later, it will still be the best conversation of my life.
*****
Echolalia, from Echo, of Greek mythos, cursed to speak only through the words of others.
We make it work though.About the cursed: opinions aren’t the same as facts, and no one ever asked Echo.
To be fair, no one would have listened, either.
*****
As much as I can hate words, I delight in them, too. When I’m echoing, referencing, scripting, riffing and rifting, storing and combing and recombining, patterning, quoting, punning, swinging from hyperlexic memory to synesthetic connection, words are my tangible playground.
Make me talk like you, and you’ll get a bunch of syntactically sophisticated nonsense. Let me keep my memories and connections, my resonations and associations and word-pictures, and if you slow down enough, you might hear something ringing true.
These are the words I’m using right now. It’s okay if you can’t see the picture yet; I can’t either. It’s coming together though, the more I practice them.
Ethnography of robotics.
Neuropoetics.
Girls like you always get to see Ireland.
Send my love to the leprechauns.
Please don’t special-episode me.
Why don’t you trust me? Because, honey, you keep setting things on fire.
The first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club.
I think they might be four separate pieces. The joy is how they come together.
The bestworst part is no one ever knowing.
*****
(The best part of the story is what I leave out.)
*****
I don’t trust my words on my own.
That’s not why I echo though.
I know it’s tempting, but, listen.
*****
Or maybe I’m lying, because I’m not brave enough to explain.
Don’t worry though. I know that Kimba loves musicals now, and Walt named me after a warrior.
We’ll get there.
Today was a bouncy day for my son; school complained he wasn’t listening. I think perhaps they weren’t listening to him. He needed to bounce, on the way home he wanted to skip; I skipped with him and he was happy and by the time we got home he was calm and happy. He only sometimes does the echolalia sometimes, but if he does I don’t try to stop him, I try and listen. I love my wee boy, so much and autism makes no difference to that. Sorry, I rambled a bit then.
Rachelle Sewsable Crosbie
February 16, 2012 at 1:49 am
My niece has been
echoing and copying
everything lately. She copies
words from
upset teens on TV-
“My life, my family no
one cares about my life!”-
when she is
upset and
Bounces across the room
in joy joy joy
with words from
Lilo and Stitch on her lips.
But she’s 3, and
so it’s normal for her
at that age to echo
echo echo echo
words.
I can’t find the words
to say everything and
so I send her, him copied words
of my self
doubt- Fast as You Can
run free yourself from me-
and cite, cite, recite the words
from songs
saying I
Love “Something”, “I Want
You, you so bad”
bubbling the beatles and
Fiona and Adele and raging
Rise Against As I
“Pulled on these
bootstraps so hard
that they broke.” at
24, it’s a pathology.
Savannah Logsdon-Breakstone
February 16, 2012 at 11:29 am
I love this post. Thank you 🙂
Marsupial Mama (@MarsupialMami)
February 22, 2012 at 9:51 am
I don’t understand everything you said here, but what I did understand was beautiful. I love listening to you even when I don’t understand it all.
sanabituranima
February 22, 2012 at 3:30 pm
This …
As much as I can hate words, I delight in them, too. When I’m echoing, referencing, scripting, riffing and rifting, storing and combing and recombining, patterning, quoting, punning, swinging from hyperlexic memory to synesthetic connection, words are my tangible playground.
Make me talk like you, and you’ll get a bunch of syntactically sophisticated nonsense. Let me keep my memories and connections, my resonations and associations and word-pictures, and if you slow down enough, you might hear something ringing true.
I love this.
Thank you.
jess
February 23, 2012 at 2:20 pm
[…] would be a squid if I didn’t mention Julia Bascom’s post on the subject of echolalia. It’s a lot more evocative and less analytical; I think […]
I’m an echolalia « World Enough For Me
April 5, 2012 at 3:59 pm
[…] Metaphors Are Important: An Ethnography Of Robotics (juststimming.wordpress.com) […]
Words words words | autisticook
July 20, 2013 at 8:02 pm
After two years of getting my head around it, this is still the best text I’ve read on autism. Thank you thank you thank you. And also, also. Also.
usevalue
January 15, 2014 at 1:07 am
Wow, how often do I forget I’ve commented on this?
usevalue
January 15, 2014 at 1:07 am
[…] https://juststimming.wordpress.com/2012/02/16/an-ethnography-of-robotics/#comments […]
a playground of words | a diary of a mom
January 16, 2014 at 6:20 am
[…] Amythest Schaber’s video about echolalia, and a post by Julia Bascom about using echolalia as […]
11/18: Echolalia | Some Open Space
July 3, 2015 at 9:23 pm
My 10 year old son is Autistic. He didn’t say a word until he was two. Then he started echoing. The doctors told us that it wasn’t “real speech”. They told us he didn’t understand what he was saying. Then he began to combine the words from different sources to express himself. They still said he didn’t understand. We didn’t listen, because it was clear that THEY didn’t understand. Then, at 3, he taught himself how to read. His vocabulary exploded because he could “echo” the words that he read as well. They told us this wasn’t “really” reading. He was hyperlexic. He didn’t understand.
Of course, they were wrong. I always knew that they were wrong, but didn’t really understand how he felt as he was learning language. Reading this post made me smile because it reminds me of his exquisite little 3 year old self.
He still echos. Except now it is about facts he’s picked up over the years about dinosaurs or transformers or my little pony. He puts them all together and draws their stories. His world has given him a voice, and it is beautiful.
Lauren Pope
October 28, 2015 at 1:56 pm
Reblogged this on Autism Candles.
Autism Candles
April 15, 2021 at 2:50 pm
“Echolalia is what you use when language is too much. It’s just also what you use when it’s not enough.
These things are not opposites.”
I’m crying my eyes out reading this. Yes, especially this part, yes, yes and yes.
Thank you for this!
voicesofdepth
May 19, 2022 at 2:36 pm