Many people with autism are avid and knowledgeable music fans. I wanted to research why—does music hold greater communication potential? Does it have a therapeutic effect?—and I wanted to explore the different ways people can listen to the same song. My older brother sometimes latches onto specific songs and listens to them on repeat for weeks at a time, and I’ve often wondered how he doesn’t get sick of it—how he hears it differently. Since music offers up an ideal space for introspection, I’ve used the car radio as a vehicle for exploring the thoughts of Andrew, a nineteen-year-old boy with autism, and his parents, who contemplate his future as adulthood looms.

 

This week, Andrew likes the Red Hot Chili Peppers. His parents are pleased that his Bieber phase seems to have ended; last week, every time they got in the car, Andrew would say, “De-spa-ci-to.” And so they would listen to “Despacito” on repeat.

 

Andrew can’t talk much, but he can read, and now, sitting in the back seat, he clutches the lyrics of “Snow (Hey Oh),” which his mother printed out when he first discovered the song on iTunes.

 

“SNOW,” he’d told his mom at the kitchen table, playing it as loudly as his iPad would allow.

 

“Sure sweetie.” She clicked Purchase, then Googled and printed red hot chili peppers snow lyrics. How many albums and binders they’ve filled this way: 4,012 songs on his iPad, organized alphabetically, from ABBA to Ziggy Marley, and rows of binders on his bedroom bookcase, likewise alphabetical. Within the past few months Andrew has moved from Elvis to Ed Sheeran to David Bowie to The Chainsmokers to Lin-Manuel Miranda and, finally, to Justin Bieber. He searches deliberately, informing himself about each artist by listening to at least one full album before selecting his favorite song and playing it over and over.

 

“I don’t know what Andrew gets out of this,” his father remarks lightly from the driver’s seat, connecting his iPad to the aux cord. “The lyrics are nonsensical. And aren’t they about heroin?”

 

“Coke, I thought,” his mother replies, turning around to smile at Andrew, who is beaming quietly at the sheet of paper in his hands. He concentrates hard on following the words, not understanding them, just hitting each one as he hears it come through the speakers. He loves the bounce of it: he can pick out the guitar from the drums and move the balls of his feet to one beat or the other. The song is heavy or light, depending on which instrument he hangs onto. Andrew wonders if everyone who hears his songs feels a form of his feelings or if the meaning of the words makes a big difference. But this is a soft sort of wonder, only a little sad. He loves the complete control he has over his soundtrack.

 

And by not understanding lyrics, it’s easy for Andrew to hear unique renditions. In reality, of course, many — probably most — songs are about love: being in or falling out, that type of love. No one thinks Andrew will ever have that, including Andrew himself. And so those sorts of interpretations never cross his mind when he listens. Instead he hears vague swathes of feeling: a guy getting by and singing about it. A cool tone, mostly melancholy but with definite pluck. He pays attention to how the elements seep in — the opening noises, light taps on cymbals — the tinkle of his cat’s collar, the bells on the door of the diner down the street — and when denser drums roll in, they’re still mild, softly piercing the ribbons of voice which go up and down, his mother’s needle going in and out, threads cinching the song. Andrew pulls it in, closer to himself, the thick ring of guitar strings making the car speakers shiver.

 

But of course a whole song doesn’t stay so mild. Around the two-minute mark, the voice and drums and guitar get worked up — louder, distraught, “dysregulated,” Mrs. Q might say, if Andrew were in the classroom, sitting quietly, and something made it so he couldn’t sit still any longer, and all he could do was jump up and yell. Usually it’s a painful throb. Someone doesn’t ask him something, someone doesn’t understand something, and the frustration waterboards him, and everything is loud, so loud, and he screams. The music screams here too. It’s awful. He covers his ears. Then it moans and collects itself, getting softer and selfcomposed before losing it again at 3:23. Silent throughout, Andrew holds the iPad on his lap and watches the time so he can brace himself for the frenzies. Each one makes him startle a little, in the same way that cinematic gunshots might shock a moviegoer.

 

But he can’t go to concerts, because there, the gunshots are real. The noise becomes violent; it’s everywhere, screaming, sweaty strangers are shoving, and it’s utterly paralyzing. Andrew only went to a concert once, with shrieks and strobe lights and t-shirts for sale, and even though he’s fairly big —5’10”, 200 pounds — he felt so much smaller than the people surrounding him. He hugged his mother the entire time, his sandy head several inches taller than hers and his big back sweaty with fear. In retrospect, he’s happy he went. Now he knows how to listen to music. He can’t listen in such chaos, but only when life is still. If there’s a lot moving around him, even at school, too much crescendos and clashes. But at home, he handles songs delicately. He hears them fully.

 

His parents sit quietly in the front seat, listening to the song, too. His father wears his weekend clothes. Khakis and a blue collared shirt with the sleeves tucked up twice, and the pads of his index fingers thrum the steering wheel. Prim and worried, his wife crosses her little ankles in the passenger seat, blonde hair falling around her face. They can’t help but try to decipher the lyrics, reasoning that, maybe, some speak to Andrew:

 

Hey oh, listen what I say, oh. Surely sometimes he feels completely silenced, shepherded along by aides and teachers according to his state-approved schedule.

​

But I need more than myself this time. Maybe he’s lonely. He has classmates, yes, but no close friends, no siblings, just his parents.

​

And the more his parents listen, the more they think about the song in terms of themselves. Maybe that’s what happens when you hear a song on repeat: conceit is inevitable. They think about their nonverbal teen in the backseat, and they imagine his frustration while feeling their own: The more I see, the less I know, the more I like to let it go, the radio sings.

 

He’s nineteen, and there’s so much to sort out: the rest of his childhood and all his adulthood. ‘Post-secondary placement,’ vocation, guardianship. They feel despairingly small sometimes, with every imaginable system against them. And the system that let them down most … it’s a strange sort of guilt, to know that malfunctions deep within their own bodies were responsible for their beautiful but disabled son.

​

Out of fear of autism, they didn’t have more children. They considered adopting, but Andrew was a big time commitment, and they wanted to give him their full attention. We created him, they reasoned; we owe him. They spoil him with music, clothes, food, routine, everything. Whatever Andrew likes, they do.

​

At night, after Andrew is asleep, his parents talk quietly about the future. They still don’t know if their nest will be empty after Andrew graduates. Is it really best for him to live at home forever? There are so many paths to research…community day programs, group homes, vocational training, jobs themselves...it’s staggering, and it’s all their responsibility. They know their son best. They’re the only ones who understand him: not precisely, but deeply, delicately. They sense how he listens to songs.

 

The three of them sit together and watch the hot fields pass by their windows, feeling indulgently otherworldly as they listen to “Snow.” They see broiling asphalt, deep green soybeans, silky husks of high July, and though they’re not going anywhere particularly interesting, just running some errands, the day seems bold. Things look big and looming as they hear Andrew’s soundtrack, and they sit up just a little bit taller.

​

​

​