Rory
Wednesday, August 6, 2008

I'm on the spectrum

I’m 21, have absolute pitch, was born without eyes and have Asperger’s Syndrome. I remember hearing the carousel music in a San Francisco theme park back when I was four years old. It was in the key of F sharp, which is my favorite key to play in.

My family moved to Australia in 1996, and my life has accelerated since I started performing with my band, Rudely Interrupted. We all have a disability, and we write and perform original music. I’m very excited because the band is making a little bit of history this December—we’re the first ever indie-band to be invited to play at the United Nations in New York to mark the International Day of People with Disabilities.

I named the band Rudely Interrupted because it feels like my life is consistently being interrupted, but being in the band also helps me deal with emotional situations in my life. For example, when I lost a dear friend of mine to cancer, we wrote a song called “Can you really die from a broken heart?” The band helps me put everything into perspective and allows me to use what other people consider to be my weakness as my strength. I'm here to show people what I can do, and just because I have disability it doesn't mean I can't ROCK.