Tony Mantor: Why Not Me ? - Andee Joyce: Unveiling the Beauty and Strength in Autism Through Music

Episode Date: December 13, 2023

Send us a text What if you had a unique way of seeing the world, but didn't know why you were different until you were 44? That's what happened to our extraordinary guest today, Andee Joyce. Diagnosed with autism later in life, Andee shares her compelling journey of self-discovery and acceptance with us. Struggling to maintain relationships and jobs became a part of life for her, as she grappled with her unique mind. Instead of letting these challenges hold her back, Andee found strength in her difference and began to find her place in the world. Music and spoken word became a solace for Andee, a way for her to express her experiences and navigate through her unique mind. She reveals how her one-woman show, 'Rhythm and Autism', was born and the stories that inspired her touching song, 'Tracy's Tambourine'. Not just that, we also get an exclusive sneak peek into her upcoming sensory-friendly performance at the Walters Center next April. Andee's art is a testament to her resilience, showing the world that autism is not a condition to be fixed, but a different way of experiencing life. Venturing into Andee's past, we explore how her sensory sensitivity during her childhood paved her way to the creative arts. From being a hyperlexic student in an era where neurodivergence was a misunderstood concept, to her choice of attending an alternative school, Andee's early life experiences have shaped her into the inspiring individual she is today. As we wrap up this emotionally charged episode, one thing is clear - Andee's story isn't just about understanding autism, it's about recognizing the beauty and strength in everyone's unique journey. So, tune in and let Andee's compelling story inspire you to embrace your own differences and turn them into your strengths. https://tonymantor.com https://Facebook.com/tonymantor https://instagram.com/tonymantor https://twitter.com/tonymantor https://youtube.com/tonymantormusic intro/outro music bed written by T. Wild Why Not Me the World music published by Mantor Music (BMI) The content on Why Not Me: Embracing Autism amd Mental Health Worldwide, including discussions on mental health, autism, and related topics, is provided for informational and entertainment purposes only. The views and opinions expressed by guests are their own and do not reflect those of the podcast, its hosts, or affiliates.Why Not Me is not a medical or mental health professional and does not endorse or verify the accuracy, efficacy, safety of any treatments, programs, or advice discussed.Listeners should consult qualified healthcare professionals, such as licensed therapists, psychologists, or physicians, before making decisions about mental health or autism- related care.Reliance on this podcast's contents is at the listener's own risk. Why Not Me is not liable for any outcomes, financial or otherwise, resulting from actions taken based on the information provided. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to Why Not Me The World Podcast, hosted by Tony Mantor. Broadcasting from Music City, USA, Nashville, Tennessee. Join us as our guests tell us their stories. Some will make your laugh, some will make you cry. Real life people who will inspire and show that you are not alone in this world. hopefully you gain more awareness, acceptance, and a better understanding for autism around the world. Hi, I'm Tony Mantor. Welcome to Why Not Me the World.

Today's guest was diagnosed autistic later in life. She was in her 40s, and she's a singer-songwriter. Let's welcome Andy Joyce to the show. Welcome, Andy. Thanks for coming on. Oh, I appreciate you having me. Oh, my pleasure. So I believe you was diagnosed autistic later in life. I was diagnosed almost 16 years ago.

Wow. And what age was that at? I was 44. So what led you to get a diagnosis at that age? Well, I actually wasn't shopping for a diagnosis. What I was trying to do is to figure out why my brain was doing what it was doing. Yeah, because I had all these perseverative thought patterns that I'd never been able to really, break them and it was always really really difficult for me to hold a job find friends find a relationship you know sustain a relationship it was just like this phantasmagorical nightmare and so my partner at so my partner suggested that i see a therapist who specialized in neurolinguistic programming

to try to break that cycle so i found one that took the insurance I had at the time and I went to see them and about 10 minutes into our session they said I think you might be you might have Asperger syndrome because that's what they were calling it then they and when they had autistic people who could talk so what was your response when the therapist brought that up to you I was like oh but no I that's not me I mean I'm not rain man you know it's like I like being touched and da-da-da-da you know it's like no no no no that's one possible presentation. That's not that that that's the stereotype but that's only one possible presentation. You know, you got to look at the diagnostic criteria. You know, you have to think

about what you were like when you were like three years old and what people in your life said you were like at that age. And after talking to my parents about that period of my life and remembering what I remembered about my childhood, I like, my God, they're right. How did, why Why did I not know this? It's like, why didn't anybody tell me? Because I had been seeing therapists forever. It's like I actually sought out a therapist myself at the age of 14. This would have been in the 70s.

No kids did that then. It didn't happen. You said, you know what a weirdo I was. Well, you know, not necessarily a weirdo just trying to find yourself. And I compliment you for at least trying. never mentioned this as a possibility. I had a friend that kind of dropped that into a conversation once, but I had waved it off. And yeah, I was like, why didn't anybody tell me this? And the therapist said, well, they don't know what to look for in a woman your age. Well, that totally makes

sense, actually. The diagnosis basically did not exist for kids who could talk back when I was back when I was a little kid. It didn't exist. You know, autism was only ever diagnosed. rarely and in conjunction with childhood schizophrenia, the combination of which would almost inevitably get you institutionalized. So how did you cope with all this? What was your coping mechanisms? I mean, you was having it pretty rough by the sounds of it. Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. I mean, I bounced around cities. I bounced around therapists, psychiatrists. It's like, and you know, there's a yes, depression, yes, yes. Well, of course I have depression and anxiety. Look at how I've been treated.

Yeah, and then the next thing was the ADD, because it's very common for late diagnosed adults to get the ADD or ADHD diagnosis before they get the autism diagnosis, especially then because at that time you couldn't co-diagnose somebody with ADHD and ASD. So they're like, okay, we're getting warmer here, getting warmer here, but we're more. We're still not quite there. There's still some key I don't have to unlocking the door to relate to other people. My senses take in things that people make people look at me like, what? Yeah, that's real rough.

I talked with a lady that said she thought she'd lost a whole decade because of misdiagnosis. I had a lost four decades. Wow. But yeah, even after I was diagnosed, I got, at first I was like, really, wow. And then I got angry and then I got depressed because I spent so much of my life, I'd spent 44 years trying to be something I could never be. And, you know, feeling like I was just failing everybody. And feeling still resurfaces sometimes, but I have more ways to deal with it.

So how do you deal with it? What were your feelings that you were going through at that point in time? Well, I was trying not to hate myself, really. And it's like I was thinking, well, maybe if I had the therapist move in with me and say things to me all the time. But yeah, it just seemed like nothing really took. I just couldn't find what I thought of is that magic bullet that would lead me to have the relationships and the acceptance that I craved.

Wow. That's tough to go through, I'm sure. So did you have any sliver of hopes that kept you going? What did you do to dig yourself out of this? Yeah, I mean, it took a long time. I mean, it's like 40. I began my long, slow climb out of the hole when I was in my 40s.

My 50s have been a bottle rocket. I'm gonna be 60 next month, just so you know. That's great. And creatively and in every other way, my 50s have been a bottle rocket. It's like, whoa, it's like, this is what a real life is like. Well, I'm glad that you found it because you deserve it. So what changed did your music become more prevalent?

What did you do to keep digging out of that so that you could keep your life the way that you liked it? When I started doing music again, it kind of took me completely by surprise because I was working on a young adult novel and I was trying to cut it down because I wrote too long and you know, details, details, details. And so I would cut like 100 pages and then add 150. So it was like the literary equivalent of yo-yo dieting, which I like... I like that.

In my research, I had this instinct that if I listened to some old Casey Kasem's American Top 40 episodes from the 1970s, which is what I used to love to listen to and, you know, write all the songs down and study the charts and everything, thing like that, which is a very, very weird thing for a teenage girl to be doing it was back then. I mean, it's just like, you're what? So it's like I didn't tell there, I mean, there really wasn't anybody I could tell these things too. I listened to these old American Top 40 episodes because I wanted to kind of connect with that absolutism that I felt about music when I was in, you know, my teens and tweens. I listened to an American Top 40 episode and the third song in was Brian Hyland's cover of Gypsy Woman, and I don't know what it is. I guess I was listening

with my 15-year-old self's ears, but that man's voice got to me. It's like, when he was done, when the song was done, I mean, I was, I love Curtis Mayfield. I've heard, you know, Mayfield, yeah, I've heard the impressions version of the song many times, and I love it. There was something about how he sang it and, you know, the sound he had and everything, and it just, it just got to me. And when I was done, I kind of sat there and went, what just happened here? Something just changed. At first, I didn't really know what it was.

I started working on another young adult novel. This one was about an autistic girl who becomes obsessed with an obscure teenage girl singer from the 1960s. That kind of leads her to her discovery of her own musicianship. So, and I thought, well, maybe this is what I'm, this is what I'm supposed to be doing. I'm being led on this path to write this other book from having this experience.

My characters would talk to me. I would create a character and they'd kind of talk to me and then say, I'm this and this and this and this. So I'm interviewing Cyanne. I came up with the name of Cyan for my lead character. So I asked him, was Cian your birth name, or did you make that up? She was like, yeah, right.

Like my parents would ever have thought of something like that for me. Yeah. And then she said, you know, if you really want to understand what me and Amy, the singer who she's obsessed with, are like, then you're going to have to start writing and performing songs again. And I was like, uh-oh. Because I tried to do this in my 20s and my 30s, and it was just an epic disaster because I had no idea how to manage how to the social or the sensory environment or what that even meant. Well, that's a great story. And I've heard from many different writers that when they're writing, their characters kind of take over. So did you start in your music and how did that work? Well, when I first started doing this, I was writing my own stuff. I was writing these epic songs. There were like seven, eight minutes long. So it's like I had to kind of learn how to condense my thoughts into smaller bits. Yeah, that happens a lot in the music business. That old writer's joke, if I had had more time, I would have written a shorter book. Yeah, somehow that seems to never work out.

So how did your music progress from there? I started having voice lessons because, you know, I wanted to find out what kind of voice I had now. I discovered that part of the reason I guess part of my fascination with Brian Highland is that his, is that his voice would become raspy when it got soft. And I discovered that my voice did the same thing too. and I wanted to make sure that if I sang that way, I wasn't going to injure my vocal chords. Sure. So I went to a voice teacher and she put me through a bunch of range exercises.

I squeaked out a bunch of high notes and she said, sounds like you're a soprano. And I was like, yeah, right, which one, Tony? I like that. That's good. and I didn't say that but I thought it and I was like really he said yeah you got like 10 miles of head voice you're not using that's that's good

so now that you've been doing your music and you're recording and and finding yourself have you got it up on iTunes or any streaming so people can hear it Yeah, I did, I have put a couple of songs up on, up on, you know, up on the services. There's one called Positive ID, one called Make You Want to Dance, and one called Brian Wilson is Afraid of the Ocean. I like that.

Great, great title. So what's the name of your show that you're putting out there now? Absolutely. I have a one-person show that I'm doing called Rhythm and Autism. and it's a combination of music and spoken word and it uses a lot of the songs that I've written and I've also written some special musical material and some spoken word for that and doing that is just kind of felt like the complete right thing for me it just made complete sense that I would go in this direction but it didn't it took a while sure I was like I was trying to

do the singer-songwriter thing and then I you know it's like I was getting really frustrated Portland is teeming with the brilliant young singer-songwriters, and I was never going to equal them. Well, that's the beauty of music. You don't have to equal anyone. You just do what you do, and hopefully people like what you're doing. Yes, yes. That's exactly what I'm doing. And, you know, there's a lot of humor in it. I have this song called How Are You, and I do a little spoken word piece. I can even do it for you now if you wanted. Oh, absolutely. I'd love to hear it, and I'm sure so would the listeners. So the stage is yours. This is called How Are You? I'm increasingly of the opinion that children should have acting lessons, starting in kindergarten.

Because it was right around that age when a friend of my parents asked me, how are you? And I said, I have a stomach ache. I was told that that was the wrong answer. The answer was, I'm fine. How are you? I said, but why would people ask they already know the answer? They still haven't told me. You've seen me around this place once or twice, and you talk to me, and you thought I seemed nice. So when you see me, you stop, and you ask me, how are you?

Well, it's a question with no answer, and we're all supposed to lie, but no one ever believes me, even though I try to say I'm doing great, but not so great you can't relate. So from now on if you ask me, this will be my reply. Well, since you asked, I sleep like Elvis, and I sing like a Siamese cat, and I probably should be doing the opposite of that. And I never did fit in, not even in a loony bin. And how are you? How are you?

How are you? How are you? Oh, and by the by, I stunk up building self-esteem and I flunked serenity. So how are you with breathing next to someone like me? I don't want to be scary to talk to, just scary to abuse. And how are you? How are you? How are you? Yeah, I love that. Phrasing's good, your vocal is good.

Man, that's just awesome. I really love it. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Oh, yeah, yeah. And the message is just awesome. Mm-hmm. I love the line. Why do you ask me when you already know the answer? That is just really good.

Right. Well, there's an, yeah, when I go into the second verse, I have this bit where I say, everything is theater, which is why the illistic world needs autistic people. We dissolve BS on contact. Oh, yeah. But first, they got to let us in the door. I went when I did that I did that bit live that there was a local singer songwriter

night at a performing arts center out here in Hillsboro Oregon and I went when I did that line people just busted up laughing it's like all these people I didn't know they were just in hysterics I was just like hmm it's like it's like even even the normies you know they they don't understand why these silly social rules exist right right I mean that's And that's really good. Thank you. So you include lightheartedness. What else do you put in your show to just round it out so that it fits everyone?

I have some material that I do with backing tracks. Some of them are straight songs. Some of them are spoken word interspersed with singing. Some of them are me playing. which resembles Tracy Partridge's tambourine. So I have a song called Tracy's Tambourine. And so it's like I have this whole bit that I, it's 1971.

You're a seven-year-old girl. How do you tell the world you have a crush on? A percussion instrument. The answer is you don't. Because if we're got out, your parents would have some. What has some explaining to do to the authorities? You think I'm kidding?

So it kind of goes like that. And then I go into the song where I have a backing track that I made. It's kind of, it's sort of in a Partridge family-ish style, you know, if it was like more of a driving rock thing. That's great. I really like it. Sounds like you've really got a good show together. So let's tell everybody the name of your show again. Rhythm and Autism.

Okay, that's great. So if I go to your show, what am I going to expect to see and how long do I expect it to last? Well, it's like I've been workshopping this thing for a while. I do shows of varying lengths. I've done shows anywhere from like 15 minutes to two hours. Right now I'm honing in on a one act that's going to be at 75 minutes. And then I'm also going to be doing a two act at the Walters Center next time. April. They actually booked almost a year in advance. So I got, but I got a booking there to do a special

sensory friendly program where the first half would be 100% free of common sensory triggers. And so it would be like flaplaws instead of clapping, you know, or flapping in time. It's like I have songs about flapping and, and yeah, and I leave the house lights up so I can see everybody flapping. That's a great concept. I love it. And it appears like it, going over. So I guess the next question is the show's done. People have loved it. Now they want the meet greet. They want their pictures with you, autographs. How do you handle that? Do you, does that bring on any anxiety or if you got that pretty much under control can handle it pretty good? So far, it's been fine. I mean, I haven't had people besiege me or anything. They're probably

not going to do that. Well, I ask that because I know some autistic people have their space that they like, and they don't want anybody kind of invading that space. Right. Yeah, well, I try to build that into my preparation. And, yeah, after a performance, I might need to take a couple of minutes to kind of pull myself together. Sure, that only makes sense. I guess the next question is, now that you've started, your music, it seems to be going well. Where do you see it going in the next three to five years? Well, like I said, I'm doing this show at the Walters Center,

which I hope will be a prototype for future shows, where the first, what I'm going to do is I'm going to have a program that details the sensory elements that people can expect from each scene. And, you know, I'll give them ear plugs if they want to use them. They can move around the room if they need to or even step out if there's an element that's hard for them to deal with. And like I said, first half will be, you know, I'll minimize the high notes and, you know, the percussion and all that kind of stuff. And then in the second have, I'll bring in some of those noises that I love, the clapping and the tambourines and stuff like that, but people will have fair warning about what's coming.

Well, that's great. So now we know that your music is doing good. You've kind of given us the path you took to get there. You mentioned that you'd had some low points during your earlier years. So what was your high school like before you got out and started really working on getting to know yourself in developing your music? I was fortunate in that I was able to go to an alternative high school because I went like one semester to the regular high school. And it was such a social and sensory nightmare that I was just like, I just can't with this. And fortunately, there was another alternative where there was a lot more looseness. And we could get up and walk around and sit in whatever position we wanted and that kind of stuff.

And I could leave campus and go to the library if I wanted. Well, it's a good thing that you had the other school to go to. Oh, yeah, definitely. But if I'd had to stick with that regular high school, I don't know what would have happened to me, because it was just horrible. From the teacher's standpoint or from the other students? Or both? Both. Well, yeah, both.

But, I mean, a lot of it was sensory stuff, too. It's like. Okay. And having to get up really, really, really, really early. Yeah, I can get that. I remember those days. Right. That brings up another question.

Did your parents completely understand that you was going through some trying times and you had to figure yourself out at all? My parents were not very much in favor of my going into the alternative school, but they had split up and they couldn't really stop me. So it sounds like it was a very good move that you went to the alternative school instead of the other one because it allowed you to grow and learn and do what you need to do. Oh, God, it was such a different world than, Oh God, it was so different.

It's like in those days, it was commonly thought that, you know, if your kid was having mental health problems, you know, it was your fault. You did something bad, you know. Yeah, there wasn't this theory of neurodivergence like we were born with certain things in our DNA. No, no, no, no. We're all like blank slates to write on. And, you know, so it was, so that, that was like really difficult because they were, because I was trying to follow.

what I knew were their expectations for me, which were that, you know, I'd be, you know, I'd be, I'd be beautiful and I'd be, you know, well liked, and I'd have great grades and, you know, and, you know, and, you know, I'd just kind of breathe through school. The other thing is that I was hyperlexic. That's, that's another term they didn't know about then. But I spontaneously mastered reading before I was three. Wow, that's awesome. Yeah, I don't even remember learning how to read. I just did it. That happens to like in the regular population, the full population, it's maybe one in 10,000 kids. I think with the autism spectrum, I don't know what the exact percentages, but I know it's more than 1%. It's at least maybe 2 or 3% of us.

So that's a much, much higher percentage than with a list of kids. Yeah, that's for sure. So did you have any type of support system at all from coming from any parts? your life? Once in a while, I mean, once in a while I would make friends, but we would talk about stuff. There was just so much that I needed that I didn't get. So basically it left you to work on yourself by yourself. Yep, that was pretty much it. I've got to say, though, you've done really well. Well, thank you. Considering everything that you've been through and gone through, and like you say, it took you so many years to get it figured out. But once you did get it figured out,

you've grasped a hole and this music thing is just awesome. Well, thank you. Oh, yeah. I just really love your concept. There's nothing better than a song that tells a story. Okay, so let's change gears a little bit. You've written a couple of books that you mentioned. Did you get them published?

Well, the one that I was telling you about is called the Amy Virus. Who knew, right? It's like this came out and I finished it in 2016. It was actually on the Multnomah County Writers Project, which is the Portland Library system. It was on their e-book system. And I was never able to get, I mean, I had some paper publishers who were vaguely,

some independent publishers that were interested, but they wanted me to cut like a third of my book out because they said it was going to be too expensive to publish. We'd have to charge $30 for a paperback at this length. And it's like, yeah, okay. And I couldn't get an agent to read it either because of the length. You know, they would just leave word count and go,

no no no no no and so I was trying to I was wrestling with how I would cut it down because it was like I mean I couldn't see how I could get rid of more than maybe 20 pages of it and if that and then and then and then somebody actually read my my book off the ebook system because it was on the overdrive system so any pretty much any library system could could access it and it was on smash words too so and apparently somebody must have have read it and they put up this page of it on TV tropes. I have no idea who did it, but it was just like, this thing is like full of spoiler bars and it's really detailed and it's like, obviously somebody really loves this book. So I said, since it's now been put on TV tropes at its,

at its length in detail, I don't think I can cut it. Well, you probably could have if you'd wanted to, but it just doesn't make sense at that point. Right. Yeah, exactly. Once it went on TV tropes at that length, it was going to be confusing if I had. Right, right, exactly. I'd have to call it something else. Yeah, yeah, and edit or whatever you wanted to do with it. So what about the other one? Did you ever finish it or whatever happened to that? I never finished the first one. Okay. I mean, I finished it, but I didn't finish it, finish it, it was like, I couldn't really get, it's like I couldn't really get it into, I couldn't really get that into an acceptable length either. Right.

I just wrote, I just wrote too long. Sure. So when you write and do things like that, it sounds to me like you really go into great detail, you're very defined, and you explain so that everyone knows what's kind of going on. Yeah, sometimes too much detail. Well, you know, that's all part of it. Right. So what are your hopes now? Now that you've got your show going,

you seem to have a pretty good place in life, understanding and knowing yourself and what the autism allows you to do because of the way to function. What's your hopes now that you can do with either your music or your writing or both? Well, I'm hoping I can take the show into as many places as we'll have it.

I'm actually working with an organization that's helping me develop a school version of it. Oh, nice. Nice. And so some of the frames of reference are going to have to be different. Like with that song about Tracy Partridge's tambourine, I would not only have to explain to them

what the Partridge family was, but I also have to show them what a 1970s lunchbox look like, what a record album look like, what a fan magazine looked like, because they would have no idea. Yeah. Well, you've definitely got an interesting life going. I mean, it's sad that it took you so long to find it, but I'm just glad that you did.

Yeah, thank you. I mean, it would have been nice if I could have gotten it together like, you know, a little bit sooner than this, but this, I mean, this show wouldn't exist in its present form without everything that I've been through, so I feel like... Yeah, I don't know if you watch Star Trek or not. I don't know if you're a Trekkie. one movie they wanted to take and change Kirk. They told him they could take away its pain.

He said, you can't do that. If you take away my pain, then you've taken away my story. Right. Yeah, no. I just want to take this anywhere I can possibly go with it. Right. Yeah, sounds good. I've got to say, this has been a great conversation.

I've really enjoyed it. And I'm just so happy you was able to come on. Yeah, thank you. I really appreciate you having me on. Absolutely. My pleasure, and everyone, make sure you check out rhythm and autism. Thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule to listen to our show today. We hope that you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you.

If you know anyone that would like to tell us their story, send them to tonymentor.com. Contact, then they can give us their information so one day they may be a guest on our show. one more thing we ask tell everyone everywhere about why not me the world the conversations we're having and the inspiration our guests give to everyone everywhere that you are not alone in this world