I recently discovered, while stumbling, a man by the name of Stephen Wiltshire. Stephen is an artist who draws by memory, his specialty being aerial views of cities. What’s most amazing about these drawings is that they are drawn completely by memory, without the aid of pictures or previous sketches. Now as if that wasn’t hard enough he also remembers these aerial views from only an hour helicopter ride in which he views the city below, taking a mental snapshot of each building, each street, down to every window of each building.
What struck me was his childhood however. Stephen is autistic, and growing up was a mute child, unable to relate to people, and until the age of 5 was incommunicable to the world. He found his voice through art. I take a drug cultures class at the New School and this stemmed a thought of whether children are possibly missing their true calling, being prescribed a medicine that makes them socially able, but removes an intrinsic part of them in the process. Are we too quick to prescribe drugs to children when they have a problem, without taking other paths of action, like in Stephen's case of going to the right school. We seem to be taking the easy way out by prescribing children.
This quick fix is explored in blogs such as Kevinmd and the issue of children and prescription drugs is rising, with parents and doctors preferring to use pharmaceutical means as opposed to psychotherapy. Are we taking away what makes kids, kids? Or are we taking away the part of people that might be their nature or their gift? These questions have to be asked and the epidemic of over medicating children is spreading.
interesting topic, Ross. I know about this guy and find him fascinating. I have some questions about your links. For example "helicopter ride" takes us to a story about your protagonist. And the "right school" takes us to a story about how hard it is to find a good school for autistic kids. Would that not perhaps have been better handled by you, as the writer, raising the issue of how hard it is to find schools and then saying, hey check this out...
ReplyDeleteAlso, you go into this very interesting drug issue, but you haven't said anything about him being on drugs before. So that needs a better set up.
It also feels like you're just skimming the surface. I'm not sure if I didn't already know who this guy was that I'd have been that interested. Do you feel you really drew out what's interesting about his story? How little we really understand about people, etc.
I'd like to see you dig deeper in your writing.