A diagram involves a visible connection between points, a bridge, a tying together of things that were previously separate, or had a transparent connection. A diagram can make visible a thing that is invisible, for example, a line drawn between two points is metaphorically parallel to a conversation had between people (a bit like a mutual friend).

I see my life as being full of social webs - interconnections and interactions that I often struggle to comprehend. The drawing of a diagram is a way of understanding it/simplifying it. Sometimes I see relationships and social groups like lists and diagrams, like when I was a child and my sister and I would draw fictional people and arrange them into families and social groups, assigning them friends and finding links between them in our imagined world. In hindsight there is so much weight held in this memory. It is an image my sister and I using our parents living room floor as a safe and comfortable place to map out our understanding of a social world that (as autistic children) we were perhaps destined to feel separate from.

This process of drawing to understand has repeated throughout my life in different ways. I find it somewhat ironic that I have often been perceived by friends/family/peers as a prolific drawer or a ‘good’ artist or a ‘good’ designer, when the act of drawing for me is in fact a necessity.  

Now I am drawing to show the way that I understand and the connections that I perceive between things, that are different to the next person that are different to the next that are different to the next. In the context of my research, a drawing is an interpretation of one’s interpretation of an aspect of life; it is imagination, perspective, comprehension, communication, understanding, perspective, calculation.

When we draw together* (similarly to when we make/write/arrange music together) we are creating a collective perspective which is something that is precious and important. We are drawing connections between our perspectives which are different but always tied up in one another and are impacting each other every time they touch. They make us one whole body, a network, a rhizome.

I will conclude by stating that the diagram the autistic way of seeing (or understanding) and therefore is the ideal way of expressing the 'autistic experience'.