Mirror from Those With Lucifer Zen Zen Zo Physical Theatre (c) Morgan Roberts 2008

Dear Reader

I have looked in the mirror rather a lot over the past few years. Many times it has seemed as if the person I saw there was was not the person I thought I was. I'm more comfortable now but there are still surprises and a few too many unknowns, which other people might be able to answer - or I might go looking a bit more when I (and my family) recover from the Doctorate. This dissertation in publication will be an open document as well as a living one.

So the questions I want to ask next are these:

• Do I really not feel music, or do I not recognise that I do? Is alexithymia overriding cognitive empathy?
• Are those "over the top" musical feelings that some other people describe real?
• What is really happening when I become "fascinated" by music, my own or that of others? Is that arousal triggered by emotion or intellect? If it is emotional, can I access it?
• What is the real relationship between social empathy and feeling music?
• Do other Asperger composers share my experiences?
• Is oxytocin really a factor in studios?
• How can I take my "music-making empathy" out of the studio?
• At my age, how do I improve my eye contact? Will it help or overwhelm me?
• How many others make their own Virtual Heart? Will they share it with me?

Related Posts

1. Being there: Families and friends stand or fall by their unity.
2. Aspergation: Sharing music with my muses.
3. You don't know what you don't know ...: Giving a label of "different" to an experience that is "normal for me" results in a re-evaluatuion of a whole life.
4. Knowledge is Power: It is possible for someone with alexithymic traits and difficulties with empathy to learn the skills, especially with music as a catalyst.
5. The Virtual Heart: the Brain of my Heart is broken.
6. Evoking Anxiety: Are evocative autoethnography and an impairment in empathy an impossible combination?
7. Exposure: Exposing the self to scrutiny.