Posted on September 20, 2020
Given how stressful I was finding the pandemic and the lockdown, I thought it might be helpful to keep a list of what I’d done (achieved, managed, spent time on – whichever word is most appropriate), whether it took a huge amount of effort or was simply something I’d wanted to do, just to remind myself that I was still doing things, that I was still capable of being productive during such a difficult time. Some of them are silly, some of them important, and some of them are just interesting. And I thought posting it would be a good record of sorts when it comes to looking back at this time.
I don’t consider us to be out of lockdown by posting this. It’s just that now I’m starting a new year at university – the second of my Masters Degree – so my life is going to change. I’m doing all of my classes online, rather than going in for half of the classes as is the current norm at uni; I’d be commuting and the risks still feel too high for just two hours a week. So in terms of leaving the house, not much is changing. But it’s a moment of transition in my life and so it seemed like a natural stopping point for this post. I may continue it as a series, depending on how things play out going forward but for now, this is what I did while in lockdown, from 13th March to 20th September 2020…
This one and this one are my favourites.
Films: Hot Fuzz, The Martian, Miss Congeniality, etc.
TV Shows: Episodes, Lucifer, and Nikita, etc.
This is something I did a lot of as a teenager but reverted to during my Masters as a form of stress relief: escaping into another world, a familiar and safe world. My most impressive achievements were reading all of the Ros Myers (Spooks) Fanfiction I could find and reading The Changeling and it’s three sequels (a Harry Potter alternate universe where Ginny is sorted into Slytherin, which totals nearly 600,000 words). Of course, there were more one off stories; these are just my greatest hits.
View this post on InstagramBraved my anxieties to work on something special with the lovely @rsandersonphoto today 🌊
A post shared by Lauren Alex Hooper (@laurenalexhooper) on
I doubt I’ll ever be able to look back on this time positively (from a personal perspective – in the wider sense, it’s clearly been catastrophic) but there have been moments and experiences that I am grateful to have had. As I’ve said, I don’t consider lockdown to be over so this post may become a series but with my Masters to focus on, I will have significantly less time to dedicate to bigger projects like organising my photos or sorting through my possessions. So lockdown continues; I’m just entering the next chapter.
Category: animals, anxiety, autism, covid-19 pandemic, favourites, medication, meltdowns, mental health, music, therapy, university, video, writing Tagged: absentia, activism, agents of shield, anxiety, anxiety disorder, asd, autism, autism spectrum disorder, autistic, autistic adult, autistic meltdown, autistic meltdowns, back to life, back to life music video, baking, blogging, cat, cfs, chronic fatigue, clarity, clarity remix, clarity remix music video, concert, cowriting, daisy johnson, debut ep, decluttering, depression, diary, diary writing, digital decluttering, disability pride, disability pride brighton, disabled student allowance, dsa, ep, family, fanfiction, films, friends, guitar, hamilton, home recording, honest, honest ep, interview, lockdown, lockdown 2020, masters, masters degree, masters degree in songwriting, masters part time, meltdown, meltdowns, mental health, mental health in lockdown, mental illness, meteor shower, movies, music, music theory, netflix party, obsessive compulsive disorder, ocd, online concert, pandemic, pandemic 2020, pandemic anxiety, part time masters student, part time student, photo albums, piano, recording, remote writing session, research, research study, singersongwriter, songwriter, songwriting, sounds like hope, sounds like hope music video, student, taylor swift, therapy, tv show, uk lockdown, university, zoom, zoom calls
Posted on July 21, 2018
Over the last twelve months, I’ve barely been performing at all. I just haven’t been up to it. My depression has been completely overwhelming and has only been compounded by trying to find a new antidepressant, what with all the side effects: at one of the few gigs I have done, I was getting so dizzy that I couldn’t stand up long enough to play three songs. So it’s been a struggle. But in the last few weeks, I’ve had two gigs – and two gigs that I really wanted to do – and so I’ve had to figure out how to do everything that that involves while still struggling the way I am. It was hard work and the heat didn’t help but I managed to do them and do them reasonably well all things considered.
The first performance was part of Brighton Soup. For those of you who haven’t heard of it, it’s a community event where four people (or organisations) pitch their ideas to improve Brighton and Hove. Everyone votes and the pitch with the most votes gets the money from the ticket sales to make their idea a reality. They invited me to play at their next event and it turned out to be such a special experience. I was so moved by all of the pitches and the general spirit in the room.
I was really anxious about performing – more than I have been in a long time – and my hands were actually shaking. I find that very disconcerting, not being in control of my body. I took a deep breath and tried to imagine it flowing through my body, imagine everything settling. That helped a bit, as did trying to really feel every line of each song as I sang it.
Before this unplanned break from performing, I felt fairly confident on stage and although I did get nervous, it all but disappeared the moment I started singing. It took longer this time but, by the time I finished my four songs, I felt like myself again. I’m not sure I could explain the process – from shaking mess to confident performer – but I could feel it happening and that, in itself, helped with my anxiety.
The second performance was at Disability Pride in Brighton. I got to play last year (despite technical difficulties, it’s still one of my favourite performing experiences) and I was SO excited to get to play again. It’s such a special event.
It turned out to be a pretty challenging gig. The acoustic stage was inside an inflatable structure, which needed a generator to remain inflated. The generator was so loud that I couldn’t hear myself at all. I was reassured by multiple people that it sounded great from the audience’s perspective, but I still really struggled with it. Had this happened a year ago when I was performing fairly regularly, it wouldn’t have bothered me as much because the more you perform, the more it gets into your muscle memory. So, if you’re struggling to hear yourself, you can rely on other parts of your body to judge how the performance is going: how your voice feels in your throat, for example. But during this ‘break’ from performing, that muscle memory has faded and so I was relying heavily on hearing myself. So it wasn’t as easy as it could’ve been. Plus it was stiflingly hot and I’ve always struggled with heat.
But having said all of that, it was one of the most supportive and most generous audiences I’ve ever played for and I felt so, so lucky to be there. I wish I could’ve given them a better performance. My sincerest thanks to everyone who made the event possible; I literally can’t put into words (I’ve been staring at the computer screen for an hour) how much it means to me.
The last few weeks have been a bit of a rollercoaster, but one that I’m really grateful for. I’d sort of forgotten how much I love performing but this has really helped to remind me.
Category: event, music, tips Tagged: anxiety, anxiety disorder, asd, autism, autism spectrum disorder, autistic, autistic adult, brighton, brighton and hove, brighton soup, disability, disability pride, disability pride brighton, gigging, performing, singer, singersongwriter, singing
Posted on August 21, 2017
On Sunday 9th July 2017, I woke up feeling very nervous. It was the day of Disability Pride in Brighton, the first event of its kind in the UK, and I was performing on the main stage just after two o’clock. Of course, I was really excited: it was going to be a great event, one I was really proud to be a part of. But my anxiety was very high. Other than the fact that I hadn’t played live for a while (finishing my degree has taken up all of my time), I felt anxious about whether I deserved to be there.
My presentation of Autism isn’t very obvious. I’ve been told many times that I don’t ‘look Autistic’ (a phrase that needs a whole post to itself) and I’ve always struggled with where I fit under the label of ‘disabled’. The legal definition is “a physical or mental impairment that has a ‘substantial’ and ‘long-term’ negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities” (according to the Equality Act 2010 if you want the source of that). So, yes, I am disabled but it’s very much an invisible disability and multiple experiences of that being questioned has made me very nervous of associating myself with the word. But I’d applied and been chosen to play so I tried to trust that.
Everyone was so nice, right from the moment I arrived. I met the stage manager, AJ, who was lovely and got ready to go on stage; I was starting to get back that excitement that I get from performing. But then my capo broke. For those of you not familiar with guitars, the capo is the little gadget you can put on the neck of the guitar to make it easier to play in different keys. It literally sprang apart in my hand. Not good. I needed it for every song (I usually have a spare but since I’d bought this one a week ago, I hadn’t worried about packing one). Half of my brain was desperately searching my repertoire for songs that didn’t need a capo and the other half was trying to figure out where on earth I could find another one. No one else seemed to have one so my parents (major shout out to them) ran off to the two guitar shops close by. I felt like I should be panicking but I was strangely calm.
Somehow a capo was found and then I was on. I’d originally had time for four songs but that had to be cut down because of the capo problems. But I didn’t mind. The atmosphere was so nice, so friendly, that I just wanted to get out there and play.
I’d agonized over what songs to play. I write a lot of songs about my experiences with mental health – it helps me process them, helps me make sense of it all – but I didn’t want to upset or trigger anyone. On the other hand, I wondered whether it was a good place to play them, somewhere where people might relate to them. In the end, I decided to play two of those songs with two more upbeat, positive ones. But with the stress of finding another capo, all coherent thinking disappeared from my brain and I was playing a song before I’d even decided to play it. Oh well. That first song was called ‘Bad Night’, about a particularly bad night where I couldn’t imagine how I would ever feel better. The second song I played was called ‘Invisible’, a really important song for me because it’s such an honest account of asking for help with my mental health and being repeatedly turned away. As I introduced it and told the story behind it, I could see people nodding and that actually made me well up a bit. Writing it was so hard that I hadn’t really thought about what kind of reaction it would get and so, to have people connect to it, connect to something that was so personal, it kind of blows my mind.
I’d hoped to play another song, to end my little set on a more upbeat note, but there wasn’t time. That was a shame but I was so happy to have played at all. All my anxiety had disappeared and I remembered exactly why I love performing so much. And I have never played to such a friendly, supportive crowd. It felt safe to sing those songs about difficult things and it felt safe to be exactly who I am. I hadn’t expected that and even though it’s now several weeks later, that feeling still almost brings me to tears. I don’t often feel safe outside my home but I did feel safe there.
It didn’t hit me until later but my favourite moment of the event (apart from the adorable little girl who stood right at the front, watched both my songs, and waved at me afterwards) was something someone in the audience called out between my songs. With all the stress beforehand, I hadn’t checked the height of the microphone stand and so I discovered during the first song that it wasn’t high enough. I made a joke about that as I adjusted it, about being too tall for the microphone, and someone from the audience called out, “the microphone’s too short for you!” It’s simple but it meant a lot to me. I often automatically put myself in the wrong, assume that I am too much or too little of something rather than looking at the situation for what it is. Here, it was simply a case of adjusting the microphone stand to match my height and it’s a little ridiculous to put all of that on myself, to let it reinforce a negative view of myself. I mean, it’s a microphone stand! But it shows how easy it is to get into a pattern of always seeing yourself as ‘wrong’, even when there isn’t a right or wrong.
Of course this isn’t always the case, but it was a good little reminder to be aware of my thought processes and be aware of what I’m telling myself. (I think it’s pretty easy to pick up that way of thinking when it comes to a disability or mental health problem, because you’re often different from the norm and you end up adjusting to fit into that. So it’s easy to feel ‘wrong’, simply because it’s not the same as everyone else. At least, I feel that way.) It’s often hard to remember that different isn’t wrong, especially when the way everyone else does things is praised as the ‘right’ way or the ‘best’ way. I regularly have to remind myself of that.
Anyway, I had a really great time at Disability Pride and I was so grateful to play. It really was one of the loveliest, most supportive crowds I’ve ever played for. I wish I could’ve stayed longer and explored more but my physical health hasn’t been great lately and even that little amount of time had completely exhausted me. But the little bit I got to see was incredible and I am so, so proud to have been part of the event, even in the smallest way. I really hope that this event can become an annual one. Thank you to everyone involved – you are all complete stars!
Category: music Tagged: actuallyautistic, asd, autism, autism spectrum disorder, autistic, autistic adult, brighton, disability, disability pride, event, performing, singersongwriter, songwriting
Hi! I’m Lauren Alex Hooper. Welcome to my little blog! I write about living with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), ADHD (Inattentive Type), and Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (hEDS), as well as several mental health issues.
I’m a singer-songwriter (it’s my biggest special interest and I have both a BA and MA in songwriting) so I’ll probably write a bit about that too.
My first single, ‘Invisible,’ is on all platforms, with all proceeds going to Young Minds.
My debut EP, Honest, is available on all platforms, with a limited physical run at Resident Music in Brighton.
I’m currently working on an album about my experiences as an autistic woman.