LOST IN SPACE
Leonardo Lewis
Lee Bul, Untitled, 2003, National Gallery of Victoria. Sculpture: polyurethane, enamel paint, stainless steel, aluminium wire. Photograph by Leonardo Lewis.
Strange ridges line the fragments of what must have been a grand ship, vicious white tentacles sprouting from every end and crevice of these artificial asteroids, reaching, flailing, yet frozen in time. I stand in that void of black, lights overhead illuminating the devastation around me.
Chunks of white structure float about me, suspended in space, alien in detail. As I stood amongst the structure, it was easy to forget I was in an art gallery. I turned myself slowly in place, drinking in the surrounding fragments against the black, formless void. The arms seemed to be reaching for me, desperate, or maybe even hungry. Vicious tentacles stretched out to lash at me, frozen in time, caught in an eternal agony of its goal, its prey, just out of reach. There was something sad about it, almost relatable in a way.
Lost in space, I moved adrift the debris, striding across the black nothingness. This creature lives in a shattered, broken space, its tentacles like neurons, shredded and separated. It struck me, as I moved from fragment to fragment, that just as much as this may have been a spacecraft of some sort, it could also be a brain, scattered and torn. At this realisation, I feel a strange sensation overcome me, a resonance unlike anything I’ve known before. Since I was born, I’ve had a very, for lack of a better word, atypical mental experience, so this idea of a torn and shattered brain I found spoke to me in a strange, almost indescribable way. Standing at the outer edge now, looking toward the center, I could finally picture it, like a puzzle coming together. A shattered brain, a broken mind still clinging together, an image I found all too relatable.
Since I was young I exhibited many signs of autism spectrum disorder,what was once at the time called Asprger’s sydrome. During my first diagnosis, I was originally going to be labeled as what they then called low-functioning, which in today’s language we now refer to more respectfully as non-verbal.As I look back on my near misdiagnosis, whilst standing amidst this shattered alien-brain, I almost get the feeling that my mind is an unknown subject these doctors were studying, one which was being discovered and identified, like an artifact from a long gone civilisation, or a strange lifeform living beyond the stars. My self, my very being, was under their precise, razor-sharp analysis, like the medical professionals diagnosing me were more scientists trying to learn about a new life form, rather than doctors diagnosing a disability. This aspect of myself, it’s inner workings, has always left me feeling like an outsider, like I’m some thing, an alien child that didn’t fit in with the kids around me. Like Lee Bul’s statues, I felt as if I must not be from this planet, as silly a notion as that may sound.
To be within a loud environment was always something I found especially difficult. If I did not seem to outwardly suffer in the moment, it was the memory and recollection of events that would. Back in my old primary school abroad in England, we used to have these discos, strangely enough. While in most instances in my life I have had trouble being in a loud environment, I do not recall outwardly struggling as much back then. Maybe it was my age, maybe the DJ they hired played the music at a quieter volume, but I don’t recall suffering in those kid-friendly discos to the same extent. However, what has suffered is my recollection. While I’m certain we had multiple of these strange disco nights, they all blur together in my head, and they feel more like a vivid dream than a real memory. All I remember is this feeling of dissociation, a sensation I would become more familiar with in life, being more absent minded than usual, all while the other kids around me had their fun dancing along to the music and being silly kids having fun. I couldn’t feel that. I did not get that experience, and even still to this day I can not bring myself to engage in a loud party environment like my friends can.
I remember my first year out from high school, I went to a friend’s eighteenth birthday, held at a function room. I’d never been to a function before; I had little idea what to expect. I’d bought him a gift, figured out an outfit to match the dress code, and with my parents' help I got to the place on time. Everything was set to go just right. Yet, I can only look back on that night with sadness. There I was surrounded by my friends who I had survived high school with, around people I loved and cherished, and yet while all of them were having fun, dancing in the little disco section, singing the song lyrics, chatting over the loud music;I couldn’t engage. I felt myself drifting out into space, unable to properly engage or form sentences for long. Multiple friends of mine tried to get me to dance, and I had to invent excuses for why I didn't want to. A lot of my night was spent standing around downstairs, just below the room, looking out at the city night and breathing in the cool air. Sometimes I’d have a friend volunteer to go with me, which only brought feelings of guilt, as I felt I was dragging them along with me, like some sort of tentacle monster. Repeatedly, I’d return to the room, and then repeatedly, I’d leave the room to, as I told those I didn’t know as well, to clear my head. Despite there being people and cars, the downstairs entrance area was quiet, peaceful even. Being surrounded by these walls of black as I looked upon Bul’s art piece, I found myself remembering that night sky, not a star in sight, just a void of blackness. The bright yellow lights above me were less like the sun, and more the pedestrian lights of city streets past dusk. There was my home, in outer space, away from most humans, isolated and alone aboard my broken ship of a brain.
As I’ve grown older, I’ve only discovered more neurological differences between myself and the perceived standard brains of the average human. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, was something I got diagnosed with much, much later in life, after I left high school. On reflection, it explained a lot about my own inability to focus in classes I didn’t find interesting. I spent hours, period after period, just sitting in mathematics, waiting for the bell to ring. No matter the concept, I could not grasp the formulas within my mind, or read any of the more advanced equations, like they were all written in some long-dead, far off language.
For so long I thought that was the typical experience with math for most people, but turns out I could not have been more wrong. I recall that those around me were, in fact, internalising the methods, understanding the equations, learning the language. I was not within the same world as many others around me, but from an outer space, in another world in comparison to my classmates. Perhaps this structure I stood in, one that Lee Bul had crafted, was secretly my old spacecraft, the ship that had brought me to live among the human minds, broken in a crash.
It wasn’t until I got my ADHD diagnosis that I also received a more formal obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) diagnosis, despite knowing I had some variant of it for at least two years already. For a long while, I struggled to do simple things, such as be on public transport when around others. I had some perceived fear that I may somehow hurt those around me. My brain would flash thoughts and images in my mind’s eye, depictions regarding the different ways I may pose a danger to the people around me. These intrusive fears lashed at my psyche, my brain’s own neurons feeling as though they were ripping and shredding into itself with every dark thought or distressing what-if scenario. It was only now, looking at the artwork in front of me, that I could picture what it felt like my own mind was doing to itself, vicious tentacles sprouting from the brain-like matter of the ship as it lashes and tears itself apart.
I spin in place, looking around me at all this torn grey matter, all these neuron tentacles grasping and lashing. It is like a spiral, a cyclone, twirling round and round. My obsessive thoughts are reaching toward the center of this cyclical motion, lashing, grasping, a full blown whirlpool of OCD, with my self, caught in the middle. I remember how it felt, every day, to have my own thoughts against me, trying to drown me in my worst fears as I sank deeper into this spiral of negativity. My own mind, attempting to convince me I was some kind of monster, a dangerous individual who should not be allowed to exist outside of prison. Maybe, just maybe, it was that prison I stood amongst now, as tendrils reached to grip me and pull me into the now shattered hull, to lock me away in my own mind, as it once did.
As I stop my spinning and stand in place, I breathe in deep, exhale, and move to sit myself on the side of Bul’s work. I take notes on a small piece of paper, trying to summarise my ever-expanding thoughts on this artwork, a herculean task. What to note? What aspects to call attention to? Do I note the alien, rigid texture all along the models? Or, would my point be served better in noting the space itself, how it consumes the room as it surrounds me, circling as though it were a beast, stalking its prey?
In my own experiences, there are so many differences between my brain and what is commonly understood to be the normative brain. There are things, tasks and skills, many are able to perform without a second thought that I struggle to do or understand. Whether it be reading social cues, maintaining eye contact, focusing in class, being in a room full of loud noise, no matter what it is, I can not perform as well in those fields as others can. I often feel like my mind is shattered, much like Lee Bul’s artwork. Being around that work of tendrils and space tech brings me to remember this reality of my existence. When I socialise with others, I feel like I’m reaching for a goal I can't attain, something just out of my grasp. To be in high school classrooms felt much like standing amongst the broken space-ship, surrounded by reaching monsters waiting to pounce on unsuspecting prey, waiting for any sign of difference to lash at, a scary thought my own mind would not let me forget, trapped in that cycle. At times, when I would feel overwhelmed by a lot of people talking, shouting, even throwing random objects in class, I had thoughts of thrashing and flailing at those around me, like a sea beast, just so I could get some peace and space. I was stranded, lost out in the cosmos, slowly tearing apart my tenuous hold on myself.